Why We Believe We Are Entitled to Health Care

I learned the Supreme Court voted to uphold Obamacare today while I was in a brainstorming session for a drug that will launch next year. I had the same thought I've had on other occasions when people define the "right" to health care: how can someone have a right to a product that has just been invented, or to a skill that certain individuals study for decades to acquire and perfect? Of course, if we want to be strict with our language, Obamacare doesn't give anyone a right to health care, it creates a new entitlement to health care.

I've always had a problem with the notion of a government entitlement. It implies, to my ears, that the State determines what people need to get by in life, and then sets out to give it to them. And that the people have to be vigilant in making sure that they get what's coming to them. I hear, in my head, a smart but whiny teenager, "If my sister is getting a new car, then I'm entitled to one, too!"

But leave aside my grumpy dislike of the word: should there be an entitlement to health care? And what would we include (and exclude) within that entitlement? A lot of people clearly believe there should be a very broad health care entitlement, including medicines like contraception that stretch that entitlement far beyond life-and-death issues. So, are we entitled to all pharmaceutical products? Even this one? Is every surgery part of that entitlement? Even this one? Suddenly it becomes hard to find the line.

I kept sitting in my meeting, thinking about these issues and (as it happens) eating a wonderful chipwich. My mind went to FDR's Four Freedoms, and specifically the Freedom from Want. That idea is largely defined as implying a right to adequate food, clothing and shelter, and sometimes to the right to a job that pays a living wage. It seems odd, first of all, that we would push for universal healthcare before we would push for universal access to those more basic elements of survival. But it also seems apparent, if we defined a food entitlement as broadly as we define the health care entitlement, that we would be enshrining universal access to chipwiches into law. Of course, people like me would love that, and I'm sure the chipwich people would love that (and clearly, the pharmaceutical industry was bullish on the notion of increasing their potential market with Obamacare), but that doesn't mean it makes economic or practical sense.

Forgive me for going on, but I'm trying to make the argument that we have very muddle-headed thinking about what a health care entitlement should actually do, and what it should (or shouldn't) cover. I'm going to assume that my chipwich analogy has you convinced that we can't give all people access to everything that falls under the header of health care. But why isn't this instantly apparent to people?

Well, I'd like to offer two completely speculative suggestions. The first is that health care consumption is much more passive for most people than is their consumption of food, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities. If you need food, you go out and buy what you think is best and what you can afford. Even if you are on food stamps, the choice of food and the act of getting it is still in your hands. But taking charge of your health in a similar way is almost impossible. You very rarely even know what you need until someone else tells you: if you feel "bad", you go to a doctor who pronounces what you need, and then hands you a piece of paper which you docilely take to a pharmacist, who hands you a bottle of nondescript pills that you assume will do what everyone told you to do. And most of this is paid for by your insurance, so you don't even really know what it costs. Essentially, your health is already basically someone else's problem, so taking the step of saying it is the government's responsibility isn't really that dramatic.

The second possibility is that improving our health through popping pills or invasive surgery is evolutionarily novel. The psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has developed the theory that intelligence evolved to deal with evolutionarily novel problems, the type of things we wouldn't have to deal with every day. As he puts it:

We know what to do when it comes to mating.  We know what to do when it comes to parenting and learning a language associated with other people. All these things our ancestors did already have ready-made solutions in our brain, but occasionally there are novel problems that required our ancestors to think and that’s how intelligence evolves. Some people who could think and reason and solve these evolutionary novel problems did better occasionally, so my contention is that intelligence evolved to deal with novel problems and as a result more intelligent people are more likely to recognize evolutionarily novel entities and situations.

So, you'd expect that, faced with the proliferation of new treatments, intelligent people would be more comfortable dealing with them and coming up with ways to make them more accessible. But he continues:

The key part of the equation is that intelligence leads individuals to seek novel solutions and as a result they become more likely to adopt novel preferences and values, so intelligence makes people do unnatural things.

I read this to imply that, in the face of evolutionarily novel situations, people are willing to try something different, but we aren't automatically going to pick the right or most workable solution to the problem we face. People generally know what to do to get food, clothing and shelter, but the novelty of accessing health solutions might make us willing to consider "unnatural" alternatives.

To go back to food analogies: we would never say that everyone has the right to prime rib and lobster every day, because we all intuitively understand we'd go broke. But the novelty of health care makes us blind to that simple truth. Of course, eventually economic reality will overwhelm our confusion and the good intentions that have led us to this point.

Is Buzz Dead?

In the digital world, you are never very far from the masses turning on you. Anything that gets popular seems guaranteed to spark a backlash. (For a good example, consider Stop Kony.) But could the legions of skeptics and critics out there actually overwhelm the initial benefit of publicity and viral popularity? That's the entertaining thesis of this post, arguing that buzz is dead. The author, Richard Rushfield, extends the theory from the obvious realm of pop culture (where backlashes against emerging trends are as old as disco) to politics. Rushfield observes: 

A poll today revealed that Mitt Romney’s favorable ratings have risen over the past few weeks, during a time when he’s largely been off center stage.   There’s been the Bain brouhaha, but Romney himself has mostly let others take on the fight, with Pres. Obama and Romney surrogates occupying the foreground, while he’s taken a step or two back. Compared to the primary battles when he was standing in the floodlights every day. 

Likewise, I’ve seen it demonstrated before that Obama’s approval rating tends to go up when he was out of the limelight, during the Republican primaries or when he’s been on vacation for instance.   

Looking at this it seems very clear that there is no such thing as positive attention in the Twitter age; that anyone who sticks their head up is going to just have it picked apart by 100,000,000 gnats.  The internet has largely become a roving lynch mob and you can’t stop a lynch mob with comedy GIF’s.

Rushfield then goes on to suggest a few antidotes to getting caught up in an anti-buzz backlash, including appealing to a group that isn't interested in broader societal acceptance (what he calls the "Game of Thrones model"), being intentionally ironic in gaining buzz in the first place, or just being really, really good. I'd note that none of these models seems particularly applicable to politics, the last in particular.
But why should we be so quick to turn on the hot trends of the moment? Why, I'm so happy you asked! It just so happens I have a theory:


1) Social media elevates people (or, in the case of politics, sound bytes) too quickly: There have always been one-hit wonders. But now social media amplifies the effect even further, as videos go viral and people want to share the latest thing. But the problem is there is no deep loyalty to these artists, and so when the backlash of criticism comes no one has much reason to defend them. That's why I would guess Gotye isn't going to be selling out arenas in three years, while the Black Keys will. The latter have been building a fan base for a long time, and those people will sustain them even when the snark inevitably starts building up. (A quick aside on how this works in politics: a campaign puts out a "talking point" that tested well in a focus group. In the real world, it gets promoted by that side's partisans, but the opposition attacks it for being artificial and the vast majority of America either doesn't care or else agrees that the point is phony. Talking point goes away, partisans complain that their campaign doesn't know how to communicate.)


2) Attention is a zero sum game: People only have 24 hours in a day. Every time you watch a stupid video because it is popular, you get annoyed: someone stole that time from you! Even worse, other people are now going to watch this "popular" thing when they could be watching some much better and underappreciated thing that you like. So, before you move on, you attack that awful thing that wasted your time. 


3) People don't always want to like what you like: Sure, if you post that your mom just got out of the hospital or put up some amusing meme, people will probably "like" it without concern about their digital self-image. But a lot of your friends probably think the bands you like, the politicians you like, the clothes you like and the celebrities you like are boring, stupid or worse. So, through a combination of wanting to assert their originality and wanting to passive aggressively criticize your taste, they post a snarky comment. Of course, not on your page (because that's how friendships end) but on the video's page.


That combination is deadly to marketers and promoters trying to build buzz on social networks. The interesting thing, when you're in a marketing brainstorm meeting that flits on to social media, is that most marketers ascribe to "consumers" behavior that they would never imagine themselves doing. Would you "like" Weight Watchers on Facebook out of solidarity with your dieting friend? Aren't you at least a little skeptical of any post that includes, "Everybody make this your status today to show the world..."? How often do you check out an artist that your friend likes, versus the number of times you roll your eyes and congratulate yourself on your superior taste? (Well, that last one might be mostly me, as my wife says I'm a music snob...)

Bottom line: you can, if you understand social media and the Internet well enough, manufacture a surge in attention for a brand, a cause, or a piece of content. What you cannot do is trick people into liking it once they see it, and you might, by pushing it too hard and too fast, alienate someone who might have eventually come around if they hadn't felt it was overhyped. Buzz isn't dead, but it is dangerous.

Believe in Digital, not Facebook

In my own modest way, I'm something of a digital evangelist: I think marketing, even in conservative areas like healthcare, will be fundamentally a digital activity by the end of the decade. And what does it mean for marketing to be digital? Simply that it is targeted to the point of personalization, highly measurable, and allows a big role for customer interaction and feedback. I think a lot of people who would basically agree with that description look at Facebook, and its over 1 billion users, and believe that they're looking at the future of marketing. And yet I think Facebook is ultimately way over-valued and will be a small part of most brands' marketing budgets. So how can I believe in digital and not in Facebook?


Now, lots of people don't like Facebook. Some of it is jealousy: you can't make $100 billion in your IPO without bringing out the haters. (Of course, some people are upset because it now seems their initial valuation might have been based on withholding some more negative forecasts.) But I am on record as hating Facebook before it was cool, writing about how Facebook may not be able to live up to the hype back in 2010, and last year speculating that Facebook's brand will not allow it to become a place where people buy things. My dislike is grounded not (just) in jealousy, but it real questions about their business model.


If I were to break down the logic that has made so many people think Facebook is worth so much, it is this: they have gotten a billion people to reveal tons of information about their lives, which will let companies conduct personal marketing at scale, reaching millions of relevant customers with exactly the right message. But one of my favorite authors, David Goldman (aka Spengler) makes an interesting point challenging that assumption:

No one is likely to learn much about anyone else by reading their Facebook page, or, indeed, by becoming their Facebook "friend". A Facebook page is constructed to maximize our appeal and white out our warts. We learn as little from the pages of Facebook "friends" as prospective employers learn about job candidates from a resume.

Later, he crystalizes the central paradox of Facebook:

[Facebook] attracts hundreds of millions of users by providing them with a platform for narcissism and the means to lie about themselves more persuasively, but it hopes to make money by learning what it is that they really like, the better to show them advertisements. Sadly, the system is worth a great deal of money, but not 100 times earnings.

I said earlier that digital marketing has three pillars: personalization, measurability, and interactivity. Facebook superficially seems to offer those things, but does it really? As people worry more and more about what their Facebook profiles are telling marketers (and family, and potential employers) they are likely to curate their digital selves more and more, stripping out a lot of the quirky or embarrassing details that would help marketers understand them as individuals. So much for personalization.


But Facebook is certainly measurable, right? Well, you get a lot of data from marketing on Facebook, which is good. But unlike search marketing on Google, for example, there isn't a clear answer for the question, "How much is a Like worth on Facebook?" People who really get it know you can probably define the value of that relationship for your brand if you're willing to crunch the numbers, but what people want is someone to say, "It's $8!" so you can build some assumptions into a marketing plan. But I would contend that since any marketing activity on Facebook (for most brands) is going to be geared towards generating goodwill and brand equity, rather than a direct response sale, measuring the value of Facebook marketing is going to be as squishy as measuring other forms of brand-building tends to be.


Finally, interactivity. Surely Facebook wins here, right? Well, for some brands. Brands that can take a point of view and be controversial, or have a large enough "cool factor" that those folks using Facebook as a personal advertisement want to associate with it. But there's a catch: the more brands that are in the conversation, the less attention there is for each brand. And unless you can define a unique audience segment you want to talk to and be consistently relevant and interesting, you're likely to be talking to yourself. So while some brands may develop a cohort of engaged followers, Facebook can't guarantee followers the way TV can guarantee eyeballs or Google can guarantee clicks.


Maybe so maybe there's a reason that a lot of companies, most recently GM, are saying that their Facebook ads aren't working. Of course, it might be that they don't know how to use the platform, but if a large and sophisticated company like GM fails on Facebook, we should expect a lot of other marketers will, as well. That hardly makes it a universal platform, and calls into question whether it will ever live up to that huge valuation.


I believe Facebook can be a tool to help you find your audience in the digital world, but it is hardly the only tool, and it frequently may be the wrong tool. It has fundamental limitations that will keep it from being a one-stop shop for marketers. But digital is much, much bigger than Facebook: it includes everything from online video to search and display ads to niche social media to this humble blog, and within those multitudes is a solution to most any marketing challenge. So go ahead, doubt Facebook along with me if you'd like, but don't let that stop moving you towards the digital future.

Is Your Decaying White Matter Making You Afraid of the Unfamiliar?

If you write about the inner workings of the brain, you soon find out that we don't actually know all that much about how it works. Sure, we have a reasonably good theory of how the brain processes sensory information, and we think we're starting to understand which parts of the brain do what, but how the elements of the brain interact and how all those processes lead up to consciousness is still largely the province of informed speculation.

So it is good to be humble when we theorize about the brain. Especially since we're still finding out things about its function that surprise us. For example, a recent study found out that the white matter of the brain, long treated as the unimportant part, seems to be the basis for the brain's overall "processing speed" (I use the quotes because we should also be careful with the mind-as-computer metaphors) and attention span. Thus, say the researchers, the increasing degeneration of the white matter in the aging brain can lead to, among other things, trouble coping with unfamiliar situations.

The prevailing theory of why people become, in common terms, stuck in their ways in old age is that we develop hard-to-change habits of mind. I've read a number of articles that imply that repeated behavior strengthens neurological pathways that lead to habitual processes, sometimes called "chunking". In other words, the brain forms habits to aid cognition, and sometimes we create bad habits through the same process of repeated behavior. And while this study doesn't undermine that theory, it does offer a complement to it: degeneration of white matter might make it harder to form new habits and leave us more reliant on the old.

Think, for a moment, of what that implies: your mind may inhibit you from comfortably doing something different from what you've done before as you get older. That's somewhat different, and more negative, than the idea that habits are hard to break. It also has implications for marketing: when targeting an older audience, the disruptive techniques that work so well to get the attention of the young might actually be upsetting or disorienting. Not a fun notion for those of us advertising to the baby boomer audience.

The good news, at the individual level, is that scientists believe that cognitive training may help resist white matter decay. But this study provides sobering evidence to support the notion that aging societies (and most societies globally are aging) will be more resistant to what's new and more uncomfortable with change. Which doesn't bode well for those of us who believe some pretty profound changes are necessary.

Apple Gets an FDA Letter

April 23, 2012

Mr. Tim Cook
CEO, Apple Inc
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014

Mr. Cook:

As I hope you are aware, under USC Title 15, Chapter 48, Section 2101, Congress has expanded the FDA's regulatory powers to cover all businesses that a consumer could reasonably (or unreasonably) believe are in some way involved in the production or distribution of ingested substances. Obviously, a company named Apple is now well within our purview. (And, if I may be frank with you, the use of a business name that creates the expectation of nutritional value when none is provided may, in and of itself, be the violation of several key regulations.)

However, it is my purpose today to provide a warning about Apple's current non-compliant marketing practices, hereafter to be referred to as NCMPs, and an order to cease and desist all such practices immediately. As these issues may be unfamiliar to a businessman who has not had previous dealings, I would encourage you to discuss the contents of this letter (subject to the counsel of your internal legal department) with executives from any pharmaceutical company, who are more than familiar with these regulations and how to comply with them.

Topic A: Promotion of product feature "Siri" included with Apple iPhone 4s

Our regulators have been deeply disturbed by numerous NCMPs associated with your introduction of "Siri". First, our scientific advisors challenge the often-repeated notion that this application represents "artificial intelligence" in any meaningful way. The literature on AI is well-established, and establishing that a device demonstrates it requires, at minimum, that it pass a Turing Test.  As there is no evidence Siri has done so, you are hereby not allowed to use this phrasing, or any similar phrasing, in promotional messages. Additionally, it is an NCMP to refer to Siri as a "personal assistant", as this implies human characteristics and abilities that it cannot possess. (You may use the word "assist" to describe the applications MOA.) To avoid any possible confusion, all television advertisements depicting human users easily and naturally interacting with Siri are deemed not compliant and must be removed from all media immediately. Finally, there is a lack of fair balance in your Siri-related communications. To avoid future NCMPs, you must include the rate at which Siri misinterprets commands given to it, and any possible safety risks associated with such errors.

Topic B: Promotion of "The New iPad"

First, we find the naming of the iPad problematic, and ask you to find a more suitable name within 90 days to avoid the product being withdrawn from the market and the levying of significant financial penalties. As you should realize, there is a high risk of confusion between the iPad and the iPod, which is a completely distinct product with a different indication. Without being too prescriptive, we would suggest that a name like "TouchTablet" would be more clear, and thus in the best interests of users. Additionally, it is a significant NCMP to use the neologism "Resolutionary" to promote the product. The obvious intent is to imply that this is a revolutionary product, when most experts believe that a sharper screen and better cameras represent, at best, an incremental improvement over previous models

Topic C: The Apple Store

An audit of your retail locations has unearthed a number of violations that must be addressed immediately. First, it seems you have been offering free setup of your products for some time, which is an obvious NCMP. Any incentive to purchase a product other than offering certain permitted discounts is a violation of regulations. Second, you are henceforth no longer permitted to call your technical support area a "Genius Bar" unless you can document that the average IQ of your support staff is over 135.

We find that these are the most severe regulatory violations, although we would strongly suggest you establish a registry to help investigators determine whether, as some initial studies indicate, your iPhone products are in fact addictive.

The attached 274 page form should help you get started in your reply to this letter. We look forward to working with you to clear up these violations, and ensure, for the good of the consumer, that your future marketing efforts are conducted in a more thoughtful and balanced way.

Sincerely,

Dan Reed
High Inquisitor for Ridiculously Regulated Products


Editor's Note: I have fortunately never received an FDA letter myself, and I'm sure they're a bit more nuanced than my parody. But all of these theoretical violations on Apple's part do parallel the type of rules that pharmaceutical companies have to comply with when they want to talk about their products. So here's my question for my readers: do you think strictly limiting communications in this way actually helps consumers? Or, as I believe, do these rules actually makes it harder to communicate clearly about how health products can help people?

Reflections on My Next Decade in Advertising

Last year, I wrote two posts about the state of the advertising industry, and why I felt like it might be a good time to get out of it. At the time, I was moving to Google, and wondered if and when I would ever haunt the halls of an ad agency again.

It didn't take very long. I'm now back at my old agency, and as I reread those two posts this morning, I started thinking about what was right and wrong about my not-so-old take on the business. So I wanted to take the time to revisit those ideas, and sketch out why I think advertising has a bright future.

First, a note for those of you who think that advertising as a business is going to be dismantled by tech companies like Google: you are missing out on amazing opportunities to build brands and do more meaningful work because you're in love with old, unaccountable media. Right now, media supply is the constraining factor for most marketers, meaning you have to spend a lot to connect with the right people. With the improvements in targeting (which moving into the offline world as well) along with the explosion of engaging content, it will be increasingly possible to spend less in reaching your audience. With less money going into buying your reach, it leaves more to create content your audience might actually enjoy, even seek out. This should be a great thing for advertising agencies. (And if you don't believe this is possible at mass audience scale, don't believe me, believe P&G, which has already moved pretty far down this path.)

Second, a little bit of self-criticism. Last year, I wrote:

What do I mean about 'relationships before reach'? Simply put, that the number of people who saw your ad is no longer the standard for evaluating success. A campaign should be winning over converts, true believers who will help advocate for your brand. If you have a great product, this is very doable. Just create the story of why your product can improve your customers' lives, put the product in their hands, and watch the fireworks. (Easier said than done, I know.)

This now strikes me as a bit of digital magical thinking (and there's a lot of that out there) that isn't supported by the way we actually live. For example, I'm a big fan of Narragansett Beer. I follow them on Facebook, read their blog, and ask for my wife to go out-of-state to buy me some as a Christmas present. I am as much of an advocate as they can reasonably hope for, and yet as far as I can tell I haven't influenced anyone to go out and buy the stuff. Now, I'm sure they have other advocates who do drive sales for them, but activating your true believers is not often going to be enough to build your brand in a competitive marketplace unless your product is truly extraordinary. Like, "This pill made me grow five inches, cleared my skin, boosted my IQ and healed my broken leg," extraordinary. Otherwise, you're still going to want to get your message out their to a lot of people who have never heard of you before, which means reach still matters. A lot.

So what is the next decade going to hold? Well, last year I wrote: "What is this illness [in the advertising industry]? In short, it is a business model that is predicated on gaining efficiencies through scale, when that scale is likely to prove inefficient for the indefinite future."Advertising folks have made a lot of money because they could navigate the complexities of the 20th century communications world and get a message out there. As I wrote then, there is going to be pain as the models built up over decades collapse. But we can now reach consumers more efficiently, though the path to do so is often even more complex than the old model. So, I anticipate spending the next chunk of my career answering two questions:

1. How do we reach the right people at the moments when they're receptive to what we have to say?
2. How do we delight them once they've given us their attention?

A few people have started to figure this out. But there's lots of room for innovation, and the only sure way to fail at it is not to try, while the path to success probably involves failing fast. (By the way, I predict "fail fast" will become the new "think outside the box" in the next few years.)

My bedrock belief is that audience attention has replaced media spend as the limiting factor on advertising's success. So our starting question has to evolve from, "What do I want to say and where can I tell it to my audience?" to, "What does my audience care about and how can my brand connect with that?" That shifted focus will cause a cascade of other changes in the business, but ultimately make advertising more enjoyable to make and to consume.

But I'm still thinking all this through, people, so feel free to try and change my mind. Where is advertising going, and how do we get there?

When We Say the Wrong Thing

Did Rick Santorum come this close to calling Barack Obama the slur-that-shall-not-be-named? The answer is probably no, as evidenced by the fact that the media, instead of saying he did, merely pointed to the video and asked its audience, "what do you think?" If this was a blog about politics, I'd spend my time railing against what a scuzzy tactic it is to drive traffic by drumming up a non-existent controversy, or how this type of story reinforces the divisions in our society by implying that the "other side" is secretly thinking awful things.


But this is (supposed to be) a blog about the mind, and now that I've done the savvy blogger thing of connecting my post to a topical event, I'm going to give some time to discussing the "Freudian slip", and whether it is really the telling event we think it is.


I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Julie Sedivy got there first, her excellent post on the topic covers the current science on the subject of speech errors. I particularly liked this analogy:

Speech errors occur because when it comes to talking, the mind cares much more about speed than it does about accuracy. We literally speak before we’re done thinking about what we’re going to say, and this is true not just for the more impetuous amongst us, but for all speakers, all of the time. Speech production really is like an assembly line, but an astoundingly frenzied one in which an incomplete set of blueprints is snatched out of the hands of the designers by workers eager to begin assembling the product before it’s fully sketched out.

This "just in time" language production is inherently risky, in that our minds only have a broad sketch of how they're going to express the thought they have. Believe it or not, an entire book has been written on the topic: Um… Slips, Stumbles, And Verbal Blunders, And What They Mean. In a review by Charles Ester, I learned that we make errors in between 5% and 8% of the words we utter each day. What is generally agreed is that or mistakes as speakers are balanced by our skills as listeners. In other words, we quickly pick out the speaker's intent and discard the incorrect information from all of those slips and disfigurations in speech.


Unless, of course, the mistake ends up being particularly noteworthy or humorous, in which case it will be noticed. George W. Bush might have been at the far side of the bell curve in terms of language assembly errors, but he was known as a poor speaker in part because some of his miscues were very funny (I personally love, "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family") and of course were noteworthy as they were coming from the most powerful man in the world. 


But here's the thing: we knew exactly what caused Bush to mess up. His brain mixed up "put food on your table" and "feed your family" and out came a bizarre visual image. And of course, President Obama and everyone else who speaks in public has their share of mistakes. We recognize these as errors we could just as easily make, and yet we use them to help make our partisan arguments. Why? 


I think, perhaps, we've confused a slip of the tongue, meaning a speech construction error, with a gaffe, meaning a statement where a public figure accidentally says something they would rather not admit in public, or that reinforces the public's reason to dislike that figure. In this (otherwise excellent) Jonah Goldberg column about the "etch-a-sketch" remark made by Romney's communications director, the headline is, "A Fawlty Slip of the Tongue." That remark was not a slip of the tongue, but rather a gaffe, confirming the view of many people that Romney has no core, and just says what he needs to in the pursuit of power. 


In our public life, a gaffe can usefully highlight a fault in a public figure, but we should just let the slips of the tongue pass by without comment. It seems pretty clear from the science, and from common sense, that these errors don't carry the meaning we'd like to assign to them.

On Meaningful Work

Next week, I'm leaving the best company in the country to work for. I didn't quite make it a year. Frankly, though there were plenty of reasons, the simplest reason why is that I wasn't happy at Google. Sure, the food is great, the people are nice and smart, and there are plenty of cool perks. But none of that is sufficient if you don't find the work you're doing engaging, and you think another job can offer that.


In the course of researching this post, I came upon the following anecdote:

Three men are found smashing boulders with iron hammers.  When asked what they are doing, the first man says, "Breaking big rocks into little rocks." The second man says, "Feeding my family." The third man says, "Building a cathedral."

Most of the time, I couldn't shake the feeling I was just smashing rocks at Google, and I tried to feel better by telling myself I was doing it to provide for my loved ones. But I never felt I was building a cathedral here, or even a house. In some ways, Google's cathedral has already been built: their search engine is one of the greatest gifts to the modern world imaginable. And I know the leadership envisions building other ones just as impressive. It is likely that the failing to see past the rocks is mine.


In the same article where I found that story, the author, a psychologist who studies what makes work meaningful, outlines three principles:

First, the work we do must make sense; we must know what's being asked of us and be able to identify the personal or organizational resources we need to do our job.  Second, the work we do must have a point; we must be able to see how the little tasks we engage in build, brick-by-brick if you will, into an important part of the purpose of our company. Finally, the work that we do must benefit some greater good; we must be able to see how our toil helps others, whether that's saving the planet, saving a life, or making our co-workers' jobs easier so that they can go home and really be available for their families and friends.

 A lot of the meaning in work, then, has to come from within. If I can see myself contributing to the welfare of my coworkers, it might matter less that I am bored by the tasks I need to complete during the day. But it would be wise if more companies thought through how they can make a job sensible, purposeful and beneficial. Other researchers have looked at the link between a sense of meaning at work and job performance, and found that productivity rises significantly when employees are engaged in work they find meaningful. And yet most companies look to "sugar high" motivators like perks and bonuses to provide lasting motivation: 

When we asked 669 managers from companies around the world to rank five employee motivators in terms of importance, they ranked “supporting progress” dead last. Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.

If I worked in HR, I would make it my business to figure out what meaning my best employees found in their work, and try to instill that sense of purpose in as many other people as possible.


So, the last question: why do I think I'll find more meaning in my new role (returning to the advertising agency I left for Google) than I did in this one? Well, I'm going to take my direction from this amazing Clayton Christensen article and use the uncertainty and change in advertising as a chance both to share what I've learned and to learn from others. Here's Christensen's advice:

Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

I think my life will be judged, by myself and those I care about most, by how I grew as a person, what I built, and who I was able to help. I'm going to a place where I think I can accomplish a lot in all three areas. I can't wait to dive back in.


So my question for you: what do you think makes work (and life) meaningful?

Why I Am Leaving Pierce & Pierce

Editor's Note: The Op-Ed resignation of Goldman Sachs' Greg Smith has attracted a lot of attention, and even a few parodies. But a bit of research unearthed that this manner of quitting, while unusual, in not a Wall Street first. In fact, a similarly-worded letter was written over 20 years ago. We present that earlier letter of resignation here in its entirety.

Why I Am Leaving Pierce & Pierce

By Patrick Bateman

TODAY is my last day at Pierce & Pierce. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Harvard, then in New York for 10 years, and now in an undisclosed location far from the reach of the law — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as healthy and morally upright as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be elevated in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Pierce & Pierces is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but lack of culture was always a vital part of Pierce & Pierce’s success. It revolved around self-interest, venality, narcissism, and creatively screwing over our clients. The superior intelligence and ruthlessness was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to rob our clients blind and have them thank us for it. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with ego and belief that you are the only person that matters.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. In 1986 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied. Sixty-three survived to join the firm. I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them I was about to decapitate them.

When the history books are written about Pierce & Pierce, they may reflect that the current CEO, Paul Owen, and the president, David Van Patten, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s body count, and the consequent lack of leadership, is a serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of destroying otherwise viable businesses in the United States, screwing over innumerable clients in the Middle East and Asia, and slaughtering countess prostitutes and homeless people. My clients had a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars before I went to work on them. I have always taken a lot of pride in convincing my clients to do what I believe will benefit me, even if it means less money for them, or the gruesome death of their loved ones. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Pierce & Pierce, and among the police who have been pursuing me. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about charisma, never admitting you are wrong, and committing unspeakable acts of violence to stifle the voices in your head long enough to complete your next deal. Today, if you make money for the firm the “right way” (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Pierce-speak, ironically, for not executing your clients with axes. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: preserve your clients’ money—and their lives—by finding big opportunities for asset growth. Call me old-fashioned, but I preferred it when “hunting elephants” meant chasing down a fat man at your secluded estate in the Hamptons and butchering him. c) Avoid prosecution for both securities fraud and homicide.

Today, many of these leaders display a Pierce & Pierce culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can bamboozle or massacre our clients better. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was our exclusive focus.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: It is only worth getting clients to trust you if the end goal is to take their money or their life. Otherwise, why be bankers in the first place?

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about mergers is, “How’s the client feeling?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “ethics,” “responsible stewardship” and “doing it right” doesn’t exactly turn into the next American psycho.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to kill a prostitute with a nail gun. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, listening to Whitney Houston albums, understanding designer suits, getting to know our clients and what their blood tastes like when they’re afraid, learning how they defined success and how we could use that vision to scam them.

My proudest moments in life — graduating from Harvard Business School, getting the best table at Dorsia without a reservation, murdering dozens of people from all walks of life without ever being caught — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Pierce & Pierce today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make money and mutilation the focal point of your business again. Weed out the morally upright people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. People who care about anything other than making money will not sustain this firm — or the high mortality rate of its clients — for very much longer.

Patrick Bateman is resigning today as Pierce & Pierce’s director of murders and executions mergers and acquisitions. He is now going to work in a similar role at Goldman Sachs.

A Cynic's Progress or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love #stopkony

Joseph Kony is now famous: if you haven't heard of him, then you and I clearly don't travel in the same circles. And I'm not sure what circles you hang in, actually, since the half-hour YouTube video that made him famous now has over 76,000,000 views since it was posted on March 5th. (By comparison, an American Idol episode this season gets about 18 million views.)

I actually was introduced to the phenomenon in a work capacity: at Google, a group of us catalogue some of the trending videos on YouTube as part of a weekly summary email, and Invisible' Children's video shot straight to the top. A bunch of people in the office were buzzing about it, and of course saying how awful the situation in Uganda was and how they had already ordered their awareness kits.

I don't know what awful thing this says about me, but every neuron in my brain started firing the same message, "BULLSHIT!" So I watched (ok, skimmed) the video, and saw that the big plan was to plaster a bunch of posters all over the country ("70% of these things are going to be hung in Williamsburg", my terrible brain whispered to me) and, by bringing awareness to the issue, help finally track down Kony in 2012.

So, cynical bastard that I am, I went looking for evidence that this campaign was, in fact, some poorly thought out hipster crap. And it wasn't hard to find. There's even an entire blog that popped up to criticize the campaign. As the writer puts it:

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

They've even caught some flack for posing with the guns of one of the groups fighting Kony, and in general behaving like wealthy white people parachuting in to solve Africa's problems. (As a random aside, if I'm doing humanitarian work that brings me in contact with a militia, and they'll let me pose with their RPG, I'm taking that picture every time. You're telling me you're not? I call shenanigans.)

Before I go on, because I feel myself getting into the weeds here, and I have about twenty other links I could share, let me refocus myself by saying this post is not, primarily, about whether Invisible Children are a good and noble organization. What it is about, primarily, is why I would react the way I did, and why some people are so willing to embrace a cause like this uncynically while others are so quick to point out the flaws and potential downsides.

My short answer is that some of us embrace (and are often crippled by) complexity. We want to think things through, look at all the angles and - most importantly - not get caught up in the crowd. But what we end up doing is identifying with the fellow "sophisticates" who also see through the simplistic story that our peers are so passionate about. Let's be honest, this is more about our identity than the rightness or wrongness of the cause in question. For example, check out this post: it all but screams, "I'm informed, I don't just go along with the crowd, respect my intellect!"

I was doing the same damned thing, I realized. And I realized that it was OK not to love everything about what Invisible Children was doing and still have respect for their passion and their skill in bringing needed attention to an obscure cause. I was inspired by Chris Blattman, who was hating on Invisible Children before it was cool, with this post three years ago:

The new IC film clip feels much the same, laced with more macho bravado. The movie feels like it’s about the filmmakers, and not the cause. There might be something to the argument that American teenagers are more likely to relate to an issue through the eyes of a peer. That’s the argument that was made after the first film. It’s not entirely convincing, especially given the distinctly non-teenage political influence IC now has. The cavalier first film did the trick. Maybe now it’s time to start acting like grownups.

This post, cited by many of Invisible Children's present-day critics, combines an aesthetic critique (do they really have to express their cause through t-shirts?) and a worry about the unintended consequences of unleashing poorly informed activism on the world. Well, now that the commentariat has picked up on this complaint, Blattman seems to have had a qualified change of heart:

To give credit where it is due, scratch beneath the surface, and Invisible Children take a more nuanced view than they get credit for (or showcase). Their self-defense is here, and it’s a reasonable one. Also, my (admittedly limited) experience with their programs on the ground is that they are better than the average non-profit in northern Uganda. The bracelets are silly, but you could do worse than to support their field programs.

So, as my parents would say when I screwed up, what can we learn from this? Well, first, that we shouldn't let our predispositions or our aesthetic judgments cloud our view of what a person or group is trying to accomplish when they're out there advocating for a cause. We should judge whether their cause is just and whether they are pursuing it in a supportable way. In this case, I think the words of Michael Gerson are wise:

The criticism is sometimes made of advocacy groups – on Darfur, or conflict minerals, or the LRA – that they oversimplify complex issues. This charge is often leveled by foreign policy experts who multiply complexity for a living. One gets the impression they would rather ignore meddling idealists and write their white papers in peace. But experts and advocates both have important roles. The views of experts should inform the policies of public officials. But advocates help to push officials toward decision and action.  

Second, that what we think of as sophistication is often so much intellectual preening. What good are the Invisible Children critics doing at this point? They aren't putting the #stopkony genie back in its bottle. Unless Invisible Children is misusing funds (a charge that is hinted at but not actually leveled or supported), anything they do to help bring Joseph Kony to justice is a good thing. And while you can argue that there are more worthy causes or better ways to help the people affected by Kony's LRA, it is unfair to expect Invisible Children to care about the cause you care about or do things the way you would do them.

Third, this campaign laid out a blueprint for how to engage a groundswell of support for a cause that a lot of people can learn from. They told a simple, powerful story and gave their viewers some simple actions they could take after hearing the story to lend their support and feel like they did something. Now, I know a lot of people think the Invisible Children's version of the Kony story is too simple, but that's a really unfair criticism. The simplifications they made in telling their story are not lies, they are simplifications made in the interest of telling a clear and compelling story. If you want to inspire people, that's critical.

In the end, I will remember Joseph Kony's name for a long time. If writing a letter to my congressman can help keep the pressure on to bring him to justice, I'll do that. Millions of people have gotten that message on YouTube, instead of watching another cat video. I'm still a cynic, still a bit of a snob, but I nevertheless salute Invisible Children for their creativity and dedication. Let's hope they succeed, and 2012 is the last year the world has to worry about Joseph Kony.

The Politics of Abundance

I was kicking around some ideas about optimism and pessimism when these questions occurred to me: how can we be, in every way that matters, richer than ever, and yet be going broke (both individually and as a nation)? How is it that our demands for more keep exceeding the rapid increase in standard of living we've seen in the last century? And why is it so hard to make political agreements about what we should be spending on when we have so much more than we used to, and so many things (food, energy, technology) are much cheaper than they ever were, historically speaking? 


My short answer: our minds are very poorly equipped for a world of abundance. People have been theorizing about this in the realm of food and diet for some time: if we evolved as a species in an environment when food is scarce, the theory goes, we may have genes that would help us survive in that world, but that might prove harmful if our environment changes and lots of calories are readily available. What if the same thing is true in the way we think about 'goods' more generally? Our minds evolved to help us survive when most of us would only have access to a small amount of clothing, shelter, health care, and luxury items. We would therefore  jealously guard any of those things we could get. But we also would know that (with the possible exception of the odd king or queen) that no one else had much more. 


Fast forward to the late 1800's. It was only then that shopping as we know it was really invented. In the decades that followed, modern medicine was made possible by the development of penicillin, the first malls were developed, the now "conservative" 30 year mortgage was introduced to make home buying much more practical, and the first real suburbs sprang up, enabled by the new Interstate Highway System, which also jumpstarted the tradition of the family vacation. 


So the features of modern life that all seem so entrenched and traditional really only emerged in the decades after World War II. Before that time, very few people would grow up with the expectation of comfortable, modern homes, clothing that expressed their personal style, medicine that could actually cure diseases and extend life in meaningful ways, and myriad leisure activities.


Experiencing all this from a young age, and seeing everyone around you experiencing it, is now the norm for most Americans. (Even in the poorest households in the country, two-thirds have cable TV, and 80% have air conditioning.) So when we struggle to get all these things, for example when our prescriptions become overwhelmingly expensive or when we can't buy a house where we want to live, we don't view it as normal, we think of it as the world screwing us over. And we want someone to DO SOMETHING about it, damn it, which is when we turn to the government for nationalized healthcare or loan programs that help us get our dream house.


David Brooks, in his recent appreciation of James Q. Wilson, stated his belief that Americans have lost the moral sense that helped us make good political decisions. He writes: 

During the 1960s and ’70s, [Wilson] noticed that the nation’s problems could not be understood by looking at incentives. Schools were expanding, but James Coleman found that the key to education success was the relationships at home and in the neighborhood. Income transfers to the poor increased, but poor neighborhoods did not improve; instead families disintegrated. 

The economy boomed and factory jobs opened up, but crime rates skyrocketed. Every generation has an incentive to spend on itself, but none ran up huge deficits until the current one. Some sort of moral norms prevented them.

I would suggest that the moral norms were largely the residue of living in an age of scarcity. In the time before modern pharmacology, consumer finance and government-supported home ownership, the only chance of eventually acquiring the trappings of the good life was decades of frugality. That is no longer the case: even if the consequences of debt destroy many lives, it is hard to think about that when someone will give you the money to get what you really want or need right now. Despite what Republicans like to think about Americans' desire for balanced budgets, our government debt is a true reflection of how most of us, as individuals, choose to live.


When I Googled "The Politics of Abundance", the few results I got talked about how government could encourage more abundance in our society. That'd be nice, but I think the real political challenge is to balance the desire of nearly everyone to take part in the abundant health, wealth and comfort of our modern society with the need for people to work hard and earn these goods for themselves over a lifetime.


Maybe our politics are so screwed up because this is basically impossible.