Syzygeist

The Queen Who Couldn't? (Or Wasn't Allowed?)

(Note to readers: The following is an allegory of Wall Street. Correspondence between this tale and the recent firing of Zoe Cruz by Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack is coincidental beyond the author's capacity to explain.)

Long ago and far away a girl child was born of Greek parents.
The Gods had been very generous to the girl. She grew to be brilliant, beautiful, passionate and dedicated to the pursuit of ideas, and of excellence in herself and those around her.
The Gods in their generosity decided that no one should be gifted without any burdens, and so they made the girl impatient and outspoken. As time went by, the girl grew to become a highly successful foreign exchange trader and risk manager in a Wall Street money-machine world dominated by men.
 Some loved the woman because she was brilliant, some because she was beautiful, and some because she had an extraordinarily joyful laugh that had the power to erase negative moods of those close to her and fill others with light.  But for some of the same reasons, and also because she was a woman, a number of the more senior men hated her. None hated her more than those whose jobs she threatened or whose income and influence she might overtake in her ascent to the throne. And sometimes when her brilliance flashed in a way that made men feel small or inept a current of hatred ran in the corridors and collected in the corners of the castle, as if waiting.
It came to pass that after some years of stellar performance she was promoted by the king of that time to rule the very region of the kingdom that he had ruled before ascending the throne. He had ruled with a mixture of brilliant charm and brutish cunning uncommon among leaders of his ilk, one of whose responsibilities was to prepare the next ruler. For in these Wall Street castles, those who ascended were privy to unspeakable wealth and therefore often protected their personal riches or reputation before the good of the kingdom. Some courtiers in the castle reviled his choice while others rejoiced to see this luminous woman on her path upwards. It is too simple to say that the richest and most powerful of the men felt enmity while the largely underpaid or legitimately ambitious women felt uplifted, because there were many on both sides of the gender line who were challenged and threatened and inspired by her. So it was not surprising that whisper campaigns wafted through the castle at her expense almost from the beginning.
It further came to pass that the king who promoted her was driven out by a new king, which left her among lieutenants who had been appointed and promoted to positions of influence by the first king. While they pretended to serve her they also schemed to block her ascent to the throne, for none wished to be governed by a queen, however gifted she might be. So they pointed to her emotive tendencies and overtly expressed opinions that they could fault, watched for any serious errors they could pin on her, and bided their time.
 For a while she prospered under the new king, who admired her, but the courtiers soon conspired to drive him out, and to everyone's surprise the first king returned.
Of course things could never be the same between the returning king and her, for both of them had changed. She had grown closer to being a queen in her own right and he was battle-scarred from fighting to stay on thrones he had occupied among courtiers he could never fully trust. So should we be surprised to learn in our story that he would try to get rid of her in the first major war that made her appear weak or unprepared to rule the kingdom in his place? Because that is what happened, and the people of the kingdom, amid all the whispers and their own prejudices and fears - not just about the nature of the king they had versus the king or queen they wanted, but about themselves - are still trying to determine what happened in the final days, when the king accused her of failing to serve, of being ineptly blind to some new danger, and drove her out. Was she really the gifted one all along, destined to rule but made a victim of a powerful man's whim? Or did she bring it on herself in her own human frailty, and then fall victim to those who always wished her ill? Many had opinions but none seemed able to settle this vexing question, which was in its way a mirror to all their own fears and disappointments about life in the castle of wealth, where greed and scheming at the top overran compassion and fairness, and stories were born not so much of truth but in the interests of the richest and most powerful, who would always shape history to their own ends.

A Case for Vision, Fearlessly

I have been working for months with a top level executive who has been redefining his strategic challenge in the context of the last 10 years on Wall Street - what he feels he has and has not achieved. He wanted to reset the bar for himself and the organization he heads, personally, professionally and globally. And he has set out to do so in a visionary way.
Now he must convince the organization above and below him that this is the way to go - at least for the next four years.
 Along comes the most extreme crisis in financial markets in his lifetime - a perfect storm of collapsing asset values, weakened balance sheet and challenged business models. How should he handle this confluence - of ambition for the organization, and himself - with conditions that incite fear amid uncertainty, as well as greed amid perceived scarcity? If the pie is to shrink - as it surely must in the near term - how is he to get other leaders in the organization to step up and work together more productively and collaboratively than they ever have? If REAL change - a transformation and restructuring partly demanded by adverse markets - must be their response, how can they define and deliver this optimally?
Presumably this challenge faces many leaders in many organizations in 2008, not just on Wall Street. Let's assume we know we must restructure in the face of collapsing budgets. How to do that in a way that does not sell out the future for the present, nor backslide to old or timeworn practices that must be replaced by new ways of operating?
This requires clear intention, conviction about the path forward, and commitment to follow it.
We have evidence that short-term thinking amid profitable times has too often failed to build foundation for the future. What about short-term thinking in UNprofitable times? Won't that produce even worse results for the medium to longer term? The danger is that companies will fight to survive to see tomorrow, only to discover on the day after they have either eaten their seed corn or failed to plant for the next harvest, whether in human resources or technical capability or investing in markets for the more distant future.
These challenges can be addressed by conducting the right strategic conversations at the right levels of the organization - top down, bottom up and side to side. Executives and managers must:

• Clarify strategic intention (often scenarios help here, provided a vision has been set);

• Define the sacred (profitability is only one index);

• Understand the commitment (experience and talent are just two dimensions of required organizational capability); and,

• Act to be, where leadership by example is a sine qua non.

I find myself working hard with my client to identify and address the many dimensions of the challenge, some transparent and some opaque. In the perfect storm you must determine what is the next right thing to do, and then you must do it right. Much of this is in the content of your plan and how you communicate it. You must make sure your vessel is ready to go the distance, and your crew with it. This means you have thought about the risks, the range of uncertainty, and the actions that ensure the present AND the future. Failing to acknowledge the darkest possible scenario now - a real depression? - would be foolish. But in such times of stress strategic advantage is to be gained by thinking fearlessly about the future and bringing along the people in your organization needed to help create it.

The New Era of Imagination

I stood in the voting line in Harlem at 118th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard on Tuesday morning and watched a small boy react to his mother's disappearance into the polling booth. She had just asked the poll-watcher's help because, she explained, "I've never voted before." The boy looked apprehensive as the curtain closed behind her and I encouraged him to follow her in.
"You'll be glad you did," I said. "This is history being made today. You'll never forget this."
He looked at me with the expression a child often has when he doesn't know what to make of a stranger. Beside me an older woman looked across at the boy, who might have been six years old, and added, "Not only that - this means maybe someday you can be President."
Around me the sound of murmurs rose in assent. It occurred to me that I had not been so surrounded by African Americans since attending a church service in Arizona a few years ago, and this felt a bit like that church to me, with an unspoken prayer in the air. The convocation of voters in Harlem was unprecedented, as several had told me. They had never seen such lines of voters here, ever.
So now we know how it came out: the "unthinkable" for some, but much dreamed of and hoped for by many others, punctuated at the end by President-elect Obama's reiteration of his battle cry, and a reminder and encouragement to any who would listen and respond:
"Yes, you can."
As he repeated it at the end of his post-balloting speech on Tuesday night, I felt chills to think what it might mean if taken up in all its implications around the world.
"Yes, you can."
As a young college graduate I worked with delinquent and disadvantaged youth in Massachusetts and once heard a social worker say "a young person cannot aspire to a future they can't imagine." I believed it then and now. Obama's imprecation made me think about all the aspiration that might be liberated in the world by his election. What if every young person - whether of color or not - who grew up under a sense of oppression by caste or class or race, could now imagine...  "Yes, I can."
What might they aspire to do?
Well, the answer must be: whatever the question suggests to you and however it touches your desire and will. The new US president has appeared as living proof that he could, a man of 47 whose father was Kenyan and mother American, and who as a youth was fatherless, and footloose, but was aided by the love of good people, and propelled by the earnest application of his mind and heart and the purposeful determination to succeed.
What if we could multiply all those young people, everywhere, by newly imagined possibility and the levels of aspiration it will conjure up? What might then be possible? And what more might be possible if the US reclaimed its moral leadership in a world desperate to make the most of every individual's talents and efforts.
I keep thinking about this, with a sense of hope, and I asked the question over lunch to a fellow banker, who also sees America's place in the world, and the world itself, shifted momentously by this election.
"What might be possible?" He smiled at the question.
"More than twice what you're thinking," he said. "Whatever it is."

Vote Obama

It occurs to me that it may be hard for me to reach anyone "undecided" in this campaign - at least among my friends, voluntary readers and business associates. This brief blog, however, is intended for them, wherever and however this may find them.
I do not personally find it a close call between Obama and McCain, for a host of reasons. And as a child (politically) of the 60s I am reminded of my feelings about JFK, and his leadership style. One candidate for me is, as JFK was, the candidate of hope, aspiration - spirit, if you will, that encourages me to believe that better, not worse, will be around the corner if we choose him. And certainly America in my lifetime has not previously had greater need for the best leadership it can get from its political process.
I will borrow a few phrases and ideas from the Economist (Nov. 1-7), which reached the same conclusion, apparently for some of the same reasons.
We follow from an administration "whose war on terror has left America less feared by its enemies and less admired by its friends." And the state of America's reputation in the world now means the new leader's challenges are  "not just a matter of handling the rise of India and China, drawing them into global efforts, such as curbs on climate change; it means reselling economic and political freedom to a world that too quickly associates American capitalism with Lehman Brothers and American justice with Guantanamo Bay."
I belief Obama has demonstrated a greater capacity for doing that than McCain, by a wide margin. I also believe, after living in the United States on both coasts, working as a journalist and in business from the Central San Joaquin Valley to Wall Street, and abroad, and after months of campaign-watching, that this is election is, as a business colleague of mine (and a native of the Middle East) observed, "America's referendum on racism."
I don't believe that if Obama were white we would hear some of the arguments raised - "elite?" "aloof?" inexperienced?" - about a man who was head of the Harvard Law Review and early on committed himself to social and economic change, eventually waging such an astonishingly effective campaign that has, as the Economist notes, "out-thought, out organized and out fought the two mightiest machines in American politics - the Clintons and the conservative right."
So for me the choice is clear, on many counts. I have reason - and every hope - to believe that Obama may win on Tuesday. But I would not want to think I had failed to raise my voice in his favor in the waning hours, if only to reach one or two people who might be persuaded that this is the right thing to do in 2008 - for America and the rest of the world.