A Teaching Moment

Hi! Happy Friday!

If you wish Information and Improvement from the Knowledge of others and yet the same time express your self firmly fix'd in your present Opinions, modest sensible People, who do not love Disputation, will probably leave you undisturb'd in the Possession of your Error; and such a Manner you can seldom hope to recommend your self in pleasing your Hearers, or to persuade those whose Concurrence you desire.
        --Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of B.F.

Trump is boringly average as a CEO and represents a teaching moment to  clean-up corporate America.



Just as a reminder, Irreni World Scale is not about punditry but solutions.

The solution here is to clean up corporate America by using Trump's nomination as CEO as a teaching moment about corporate America power behavior.

Trump will continue merrily along as a CEO after this election. If by some off chance he does get prosecuted for sexual harassment the origin will have been during a political campaign not corporate management. That is shameful.

It is time to indict and prosecute the entire corporate establishment in America that accepts this kind of behavior from any CEO. It is unconscionable to me that this behavior for Trump's 40 years as CEO is allowed and will continue unabated in corporate America.

Trump is a boringly average person of power. Trump is an executive trope. Trump is par for the course. Trump is a hackneyed stereotype. There is nothing remotely original about Trump and his behavior as a CEO. Nothing. His asshole behavior is expected behavior and has been forever for people in power.  The only thing that stands out from the crowd is the extent of his behavior, not the behavior itself.

CEOs are assholes. 


On a different note  a Starbucks mocha is, for me, the ideal delivery system for my morning mouth dance of cinnamon. Mmmm. It is not so much that I like the Starbucks mocha as it is I love the cinnamon swirl on top. Okay, just had to clear my head. Let's go.

Mybrid: "Alex, I'll take assholes for $200."
Alex: "This man ran for president as a CEO in 2016."
Mybrid: "Who is Donald Trump?"

I often get asked why I'm not in management. I have a graduate degree from UC Berkeley in computer science and I'm working in Silicon Valley. Seems like a natural.

The short answer is CEOs are assholes and life is too short to get caught up in that network of negativity...for me. Let's name a few asshole CEOs I'm familiar with in my profession: Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), Scott McNealy (SUN), Larry Elison (Oracle), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Dave Pottruck (Schwab).

Trump represents a typical Fortune 500 CEO.

My personal experience is I worked for Dave Pottruck. Dave Pottruck is an interesting case of asshole CEO. Like Trump, Pottruck had both sexual and anger issues. Pottruck's rise through the ranks of Schwab as a company was in part to compensate for a reputation on Wall Street of being "out of New York" and being too "soft" to make it on Wall Street. Wall Street is proud of having a reputation of cussing, anger, and that being an asshole is a requirement to get ahead. Trump fits right in. Make no mistake about it: Trump is boringly average as a person of power.

Dave Pottruck was a "no nonsense" guy, i.e. tough guy, that Wall Street would respect. Pottruck was also a womanizer. Sound familiar? Pottruck's behavior landed him in anger management class and landed the company Schwab sexual harassment payments before he became CEO. I will say it again, Pottrucks behavior was on full display before he became CEO. And Pottruck kept his CEO job for years.

There has been much made about Hillary Clinton being an asshole. Well, guess what? That is corporate America. That is the good ole boy network. The CEOs are small children who rule by anger, cussing and yelling. And many of them are sexual harassers. 

Hillary is in many ways an asshole's asshole and what's required to run this country.

Asshole management is why I contract rather than work full-time and climb the corporate ladder. Life is too short to play anger management games. Back stabbing and negativity runs corporate America and Hillary Clinton has a personality to deal with it.

The asshole problem is much larger than Trump. It is an entire power ecosystem that promotes dysfunction in leaders and on down the line. It doesn't take long climbing the corporate ladder before one encounters requirements of being an asshole.

This is a male legacy. If we want women in power, reasonable people in power then we need to clean up the asshole network. Because let's be real: good ole boy network is just a euphemism for asshole network.

Finally, I will leave you with an example of someone who both ran a business and also engaged in politics and he did so by being pleasant.

I give you Benjamin Franklin:
I continued this ... Habit of expressing my self in Terms of modest
Diffidence, never using when I advance any thing that may possibly be disputed, the Words, Certainly, undoudtedly, or any others that give the Air of Positiveness to an Opinion; but rather say, I conceive, or
I apprehend a Thing to be so or so, It appears to me, or I should
think it so or so for such and such Reasons, or I imagine it to be so,
or it is so if I am not mistaken. This Habit I believe has been of
great Advantage to me, when I have had occasion to inculate my
Opinions and persuade People into Measures that I have been from time to time engag'd in promoting. And as the chief ends of Conversation are to inform, or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well meaning sensible People would not lesson their Power of doing Good by a Positive assuming Manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create Opposition, and to defeat every one of those Purposes for which Speech was given us, to wit, giving or receiving Information, or Pleasure: For if you would inform, a positive dogmatical Manner in advancing your Sentiments, may provoke Contradiction and prevent candid Attention. If you wish Information and Improvement from the Knowledge of others and yet the same time express your self firmly fix'd in your present Opinions, modest sensible People, who do not love Disputation, will probably leave you undisturb'd in the Possession of your Error; and such a Manner you can seldom hope to recommend your self in pleasing your Hearers, or to persuade those whose Concurrence you desire.
        --Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of B.F.

Politics as Science!

Demand Irreni World Scale!

Anti-theism is feminism!  

Think disruption!

Empathy for all!

Moral relativity: think it, breath it!

Prove it or lose it!

Conversations equal consensus! 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Scale your empathy, scale the world! 

Find your tribe!

Be sexy people!

The future is coming! 

Innovate at a rapid pace!

Slow speed ahead!

Well come! and well met!















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