…would you read an interview conducted over lunch in Ljubljana with a provocative Slovenian Marxist philosopher called Slavoj Zizek. After munching on medallions of veal and lamb with thyme the “perpetual thought machine in manic motion” offers his interpretation of the current financial crisis:

The ruling ideology is trying to shift the blame from the global capitalist system as such on to its accidental deviations – such as overly lax regulation or the corruption of big financial institutions. In some respects this has allowed capitalists to assert their values even more aggressively: while bailing out Wall Street they are shredding collective bargaining agreements at General Motors and relegating the problems of global warming, Aids and hunger.

“The problem is today that when you have chaos and disorder people lose their cognitive mapping. So it is an open struggle as to whose interpretation will win,” he says. “Never forget that this is how Hitler won.”

According to Zizek, the reason Hitler came to power in the 1930s was because he offered the most attractive interpretation of disastrous events. He simply flattered the Germans by claiming that their army had been betrayed in the first world war and by laying all the blame at the feet of the Jews.

We order fruit salad.

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

Answer: They are, according to the International Labour Organization, the only four nations on the planet with no paid maternity leave.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports, countries not run on twisted draconian principles of 19th Century capitalism, are debating whether to increase government mandated paid maternity leave. Imagine. The UK is considering an increase from nine to twelve months. Sweden offers 480 days of paid parental leave.

The FT considers the ‘cost to employers’ argument that some 3rd World countries (and these United States) claim is too burdensome, but concludes:

Maternity leave provides clear benefits to society. Apart from the advantages of babies spending their early months with their mothers, breast-fed children have lower rates of infections, childhood diabetes, eczema, obesity and asthma.

Companies benefit from maternity leave by allowing women to return to work when their children are a little older, rather than forcing them to resign if they want to be with their babies. Employers hold on to people and escape the additional costs of having to replace those who leave.

Little wonder President Obama saluted “the hardest-working people on Earth” in his recent address to Congress. With family values like these, Mom has no choice.

I noticed in my blog stats page that the search terms ‘financial crisis explained’ and ‘current financial crisis explained’ were showing up in the top 10 search key phrases for my blog. When I entered them in Google I couldn’t believe my eyes:

I mean, if this is the #1 search result on Google for something of this magnitude?

Not that the article I posted is really what I think, it’s just a recommendation to two articles in the Sunday New York Times which struck me as appropriate to the subject of my blog (executive communications) since, I noted:

Both articles shed light on the dynamics of executive communications when group-think rules. Thinking outside the box before the box imploded was not encouraged or rewarded. Pity.

But c’mon people, this can’t be the #1 explanation of the current financial crisis, can it? Say it ain’t so.

Continuing the tradition began three years ago and the year after, I can reveal that in the past 365 days I have, surprise, become another year older.

I fully embrace the transparency senior executives and politicians tolerate in regard to their age and biographical details. These days it’s only the plebs who have no online identity where anyone who is interested can find out your age, marital status and similar ‘private’ data points. As Sun Chairman Scott McNealy once remarked “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”

I’ve now reached the age where 57 years of variety is the spice of life. It’s not only policemen who look younger, suddenly President’s do. As my Irish father-in-law once remarked, you’re not really old until the Pope is younger than you are.

A new venture by NSA Northern California past-president Scott Q. Marcus looks interesting. Scott lives up in the redwoods in Eureka and is turning his geographical isolation to an advantage with a blog on Long Distance Marketing.

Scott writes of the challenge of finding and developing a customer base that is not located near your base of operations:

The question is “How?” That is one foundation on which this site is built. How do you reach potential clients and customers who live far away from you? What works? What doesn’t? In this “new” age of marketing, what are the most effective tools to find your clients? Of even more import is how do they find you?

His blog will document creative approaches to that challenge. One approach is to publish a quarterly magazine called ‘Two Words’.

For a ringside seat at the birth of a new business venture, bookmark Scott’s blog and join in the conversation as he launches himself into cyberspace – WOOOOSH!

Professional speakers are used to being introduced at large events by the disembodied announcer “Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome…” known in the business as the VOG or Voice of God.

The idea that God speaks in an amplified, authoritarian, disembodied baritone is central to the Judeo-Christian tradition. It goes with the misogyny and long white beard.

However, there seems some basis in human development for this belief. Consider the opinion of Robert Lepage:

“the first voice that a child hears when it is in the womb is not the voice of the mother, because the child is part of the mother. The important voice that the child hears is the voice of the father: that’s the voice that changes where the child lives because it excites or stresses the mother. So when we come out we desperately try to put a face on that voice. And that’s intimately connected to the voice of God – or the absence of the voice of God.”

Lepage is the director of Lipsynch, “an epic nine-hour performance which spans 70 years and explores the voice as a compelling metaphor for human expression and interaction” currently playing at the Barbican theater in London. Sounds fascinating.

Coverage of the Summer Olympics has included television reports of wonderful varieties Chinese cuisine. As the 2008 Games approached the Chinese government took it upon themselves to provide approved translations of menu options on offer in local restaurants.

This, according to an article by the wonderfully named Fuchsia Dunlop (a name I’ll never tire of!) in the Weekend FT.

She lists the literal translations of many Chinese dishes found on restaurant menus:

“Chicken without sexual life” (a young chicken)
“Iron flooring cremation” (cookies baked on an iron griddle)
“Pock-marked old women’s bean curd” (stir-fried tofu in hot sauce)
and “the fragrance explodes the cowboy bone” (no other translation given – my imagination runs wild…)

Lost in translation

At the root of these amusing lists is not some Chinese inability to grasp the basics of English translation. Rather, the lack of congruence between Chinese characters and roman script impedes clear communication:

You can only go so far in borrowing from Chinese because beyond a certain level you have to know the actual Chinese characters to understand precisely what you are talking about. In Sichuanese cuisine, for example, there are two cooking methods that would both be transliterated as kao, but you can’t tell them apart unless you see the actual characters. The different characters for “salty” and “umami” are both rendered in the Roman alphabet as “xian “

The inability of one civilization to render the finer points of its culture into words that would be clearly understood by another is not limited to cuisines. Many social and cultural nuances are lost in translation – business arrangements; educational systems; humor, love, marriage and death. It’s made apparent when we see the literal English used in these menus. Official attempts to provide a standardized alternative are equally limited. Fuchsia Dunlop explains how these are:

…a pale reflection of one of the world’s most marvellous cuisines. Lyrical descriptive terms – like feicui (jadeite) for greenish foods, and guaiwei (strange-flavour, used for an intriguing combination of tastes) have been lost in the translation, and mapo doufu has severed its connection with the lovable pockmarked old dame of Chengdu. As Raymond Zhou wrote in the China Daily, this standardised translation is “a double-edged sword. It removes the ambiguity and unintended humour . . . But it takes away the fun and the rich connotation too. It turns a menu into the equivalent of plain rice, which has the necessary nutrients but is devoid of flavour”.

As with food, so with business. Corporate communications either lose their flavor or suffer unintended mis-translations in the journey from West to East and back. This is all part of the rich tapestry of human life. Give me an exploding cowboy bone any day over the stark accuracy of the standard translation.

Sci-Fi legend Bruce Sterling (Heavy Weather, The Difference Engine, Distraction and other great novels) is one of the cyberpunk gang of authors who have seen through the more pollyanna views of ‘cool new technology’ to warn that innovation can potentially create disruptions in everything from the climate system to the social system.

I’ve been a fan of his since coming across Heavy Weather in the mid-1990’s. Climate change was not cool back then. We’re so much older than that now and the planet is so much warmer.

I was delighted, and honored, when I ran into him earlier today at the FiRE Conference in San Diego and he agreed to be interviewed for Professionally Speaking.

I really had no idea what he’d talk about. The last thing I expected was a discussion on the Mafiosi-like features of the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels. In fact he’s planning to set his next book in Europe. To hear him explain why he finds modern “post-national” Europe so fascinating, and why he predicts the view from across the Atlantic will soon “return to the slightly paternalistic attitude of American’s as poorly educated hay-seeds,” click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Interview: Bruce Sterling [9:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve noted before that there are precious few women engineers in most American companies. This, despite women being in a majority on campuses, as they beat out their male counterparts in the increasingly competitive college admissions process. Indeed, women are substantially represented on the lower rungs of the career ladder in technical and engineering departments.

But the story changes as they reach their mid- to late-thirties. Over half of all women voluntarily quit their jobs. What gives?

Monday’s Financial Times has a detailed analysis by Columbia University economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett who identifies five factors forcing out female engineers:

1. Many are turned off by male behavior. A reported 63% of women in science and engineering experience sexual harassment.

2. Women feel isolated.

3. Many lack role models and no-one to mentor their career progression.

4. They prefer not to embrace risk-taking career gambles.

5. Finally, they are caught between a rock and hard place when it comes to maintaining 70+ hour work weeks AND managing child and elder care.

Hewlett offers some sound advice for companies who wish to maintain their pool of qualified female engineers and scientists past their 30’s. Failure to do so, she points out, is a national issue:

“In the US alone, reducing female attrition by one-quarter would add 220,000 qualified people to the science, engineering and technology labour pool.”

Please come to Boston in the springtime
I’m stayin’ here with some friends and they’ve got lotsa room
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a café where I hope to be workin’ soon
- Joan Baez

I was on a business trip to Boston last week. It’s where I lived on arriving in the USA 34 years ago to study at Tufts. I used to walk through Harvard Square on my way from Somerville to catch the bus to Medford.

Harvard Yard in Springtime

Harvard is beautiful at this time of year.

Everyone hears about New England foliage in the Fall. But the Spring time is wonderful. The trees in Harvard yard were full of blossom.

There were no students in sight. Studying for Final Exams must keep them all inside.

Channeling Paul Allen and Bill Gates

Stepping outside the walls of Harvard Yard and into the Square I suddenly recalled my “there but for the Grace of God go I…” moment. It was January 1975. Paul Allen was visiting his friend Bill Gates who was an undergrad at Harvard. Allen is browsing at the news stand in the center of the Square. He spots a copy of Popular Electronics with the Altair 8800 computer on the cover. He buys a copy and rushes over to Gates’s dorm saying “It’s happening, the home computer is here!”. Gates drops out of Harvard to write the BASIC compiler for Altair and MicroSoft is born.

Now, for all I know, I was browsing at the same news stand that very afternoon. I used to stop there most days to check out the UK newspapers. I could’ve chatted with Allen, offered to help out with his new idea. See what happened. Of course, I didn’t. Nor could I have. I was a sociology grad student who loathed the DEC mini-computer I had to use for my Statistics course. And it was probably too cold for any small talk.

But in honor of the missed opportunity I decided to buy a copy of Popular Mechanics (since Popular Electronics merged with another magazine and is no longer available) from the same news stand. Call me superstitious, but you never know…

And in one of the most weird and geeky things I’ve ever done in my blog, here’s my proof of purchase!