5 Star – Page 121 – Public Intelligence Blog

Drew Me In and Fasciated Me, February 4, 2008

Sean Penn

I was offered a free rental today, and casting around for something I had never seen before, I grabbed this one thinking it would be about how Nixon was outed from office, not actually assassinated. I put it in on background as I struggled with creating the index to a 550 page new book, and within 15 minutes I stopped and the movie had my undivided attention.

Sean Penn is perfect, deep, emotional, and inspires commitment to the movie and to his plight as a failure who is honest. As I am a student of how “honest” governments are in fact a form of legalized organized crime, I may have appreciated this movie more than most, but I do not hesitate to recommend it to anyone. What price integrity?

Other DVDs that have captured my imagination (we are limited to ten links) include:
Death of a President (Widescreen)
Fight Club (Widescreen Edition)
A Man Called Horse
The Last Samurai (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Glory
Lawrence of Arabia (Single Disc Edition)
Lord of War (Full Screen)
Hackers
The Snow Walker
Gandhi

2008/02/022009/10/30

Review: Managing the Nonprofit Organization

5 Star, Associations & Foundations, Best Practices in Management, United Nations & NGOs

More ImportantThan Ever as Boundaries Blur, February 2, 2008

Peter F. Drucker

I realized a few years ago that government as we know it is a complete failure. The US Government as we know it has failed to provide for domestic or global security, has failed to spend our money wisely, and it is broken across all three branches. At the same time, the political parties, corporations, bankers and many asset managers, have also failed, along with the media, religion, and labor unions. I decided two years ago to create the Earth Intelligence Network along with 23 other co-founders, and yesterday the IRS told me they planned to approve our 501c3 letter, so I pulled this down to refresh myself, and was surprised to find that I had read it but not reviewed it.

The book was first published in 1990 and includes interviews with nine contributors as well as original material from Peter Drucker.

Two sentences stand out for me:

1) The non-profit delivers a changed human being.

2) The non-profit leader is responsible for translating glorious mission statements into executable, measureable, visible specifics.

After a year's work with many others, and aided immensely by the recent identification of the ten high-level threats to humanity in priority order, courtesy of LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret) and other members of the United Nations High-Level Threat Panel we not only recognized that the lines are blurring as segments of government that are honest, segments of private sector marketplaces that are moral, segments of civil society that are committed to responsible stewardship of their local communities and areas and non-plenishable natural resources; but we began to see the non-profit as central to weaving a shared understanding of the threats, the policies and budgets that can eradicate the threats, and the knowledge that needs to be transferred to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like the Congo, if they are to avoid our mistakes.

This book, in short, is my crutch, my reinforcement, my inspiration, and my proof positive that we can translate our mission into specifics, and do what we have set out to do.

Early on Peter Drucker emphasizes that while the non-profit is the largest employer in America, the share of money being donated to non-profits has remained relatively steady. I suspect that has changed since this was written in 1990, but his second key point in this context is that it is not enough to find donors, one much recruit contributors who wish to be active “in community” and for acommon purpose.

I confess to not being a people person, but I will also be an unpaid member of the board, so I would emphasize that in looking for our first non-profit manager, we are going to look for someone with three skills this books helps describe:

1) Ability to create logical executable specifics
2) Ability to interact effectively with high-end planned givers (humans)
3) Ability to recruit and keep happy passionate people who love life and want to pursue life-affirming, world-changing objectives.

The middle core of the book has a lot of underlining. Here are some of the highlights.

+ Strategies are the bulldozers.

+ Strategies are action-focused with measureable results.

+ Set the goals twice as high as a “normal” or business as usual organization might aspire to.

+ Tailor the message to each unique segment (e.g. one message for foundations seeking to harmonize high-end spending programs; another for individual donors seeking to find the best possible way to contribute $100 to one needy person anywhere (hint: cell phone and paid annual subscription–one per village will change the world).

+ Training matters, and not just of staff; also of donors, volunteers, everyone being helped or in any way engaged in the overall mission. [In my terms, if someone cannot recide the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers form memory, or know where to find the 52 transpartisan answers to 52 tough questions, then we have failed to train them or educate them.]

+ Planning is not just about objective results, but about a vast social network of relationships that need to be nurtured for the long-term.

+ Dissent is priceless, discourtesy should never be tolerated.

+ Page 115: “The most important *do* (italicized in original) is to build the organization around information and communication instead of around hierarchy.” See the image above, something I created in the 1990's. All the candidates running for President today are top down command and control freaks, with one possible exception. Epoch B leaders create a bottom up constant churn of information, and for me, this one sentence validated, reinforced, and inspired.

+ Educate up the chain and sideways, not just downwards.

+ Ensure every person is immersed the real-world (e.g. poverty at its worse in the slums of Rio de Janeiro or Caracas) so that they are refreshed as to the reality and the meaning of their mission the rest of the year.

I was very surprised to find a chapter on “How to Make the Schools Accountable,” pages 131-142, an interview with Albert Shanker, at the time president of the American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO, but it fits perfectly. Three points:

1) CEOs and Labor Leaders need to hold schools accountable.
2) Schools that pursue long-term deep learning find that short-term financial and other objectives fall into place.
3) Hold everyone accountable for giving their all, and end complacency, a sense of tenure, a lack of passion for what should be a life-affirming world-changing endeavor (those words are from other books, see list below).

The index is excellent, and the last page of the book educated me on the continuing value and offerings of The Drucker Foundation.

My take-away from this book is that any strategy that focuses on sharing information with as many parties as possible, and finding ways to optimize sense-making of the collective, and harmonization of many different programs and budgets across multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain boundaries, will in the end produce results that no amount of government mandate, corporate bribery, foundation give-away, or wailing calls of doom, could possibly achieve.

Peter Drucker's legacy adds a new line to an old saying; the last line below:

The men who manage men manage the men who manage things.
The men who manage money manage all.

The men who manage information not only manage the men who manage money, they create new open money, information capital that enhances, influences, and exploits all else.

Great book. The audio series is ideal for those driving back and forth from bedroom communities into big cities, and vice versa.

Other links to books I have reviewed and recommend:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

I do not list books I have written, edited, or published, but urge the reader to consider some of them as well. In early March we will be publishing COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, that is free online now and forever more, and then in May, free online from April, PEACE INTELLIGENCE: Assuring a Good Life for All. And finally, in July, free online in June, COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE: From Moral Green to Golden Peace.

I am certain that public intelligence and bottom-up self-governances are going to put an end to fraud, waste, abuse, corruption and secret earmarks, and that the non-profit, and those who share rather than hoard informationl, will in fact save the world and profit handsomely from doing so, on multiple levels, not least of which is giving seven generations of their descendants a sustainable Earth where everyone is a billionaire (Medard Gabel's vision).

2008/02/012009/10/30

Review DVD: The Hannibal Lecter Collection (Manhunter / The Silence of the Lambs / Hannibal)

5 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)

Manhunter is the Red Dragon, all three brilliant, February 1, 2008

Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Julianne Moore

Manhunter actually corresponds to the book featuring the Red Dragon.

This is one of the most interesting mind-thrillers I have ever enjoyed. The books, links below, are also recommended for those whose imaginations can create a richer tapestry than any DVD might offer.

Red Dragon

Silence of the Lambs

Hannibal

The new DVD, Hannibal Rising, is also superb and credible and I review it separately. Here is the link to the book and the DVD.

Book:

Hannibal Rising

DVD:

Hannibal Rising (Full Screen Edition)

Anthony Hopkins is the gold standard, but I must give full credit to the actors in Manhunter and Hannibal Rising, they are superb. While I missed Jody Foster, whose Silence of the Lambs performance was extraordinary, Julianne Moore is amazing, and fully her equal.

This set, both books and DVDs, is for the intellectual connosieur.

2008/01/272015/05/11

Review: 1491–New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

5 Star, History, Truth & Reconciliation, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Extraordinary, Inspires Need for 183 Other “Lost History” Studies, January 27, 2008

Charles C. Mann

Paul Hawken recommended this book during a Seattle lecture introducing his latest book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. It took me a while to get to, but it is certainly an extraordinary achievement, and it has enormous meaning for future studies of both lost histories of 183+ indigenous cultures and languages, and for a new appreciation of how humans can and should shape the environment, not just try to protect it.

The maps alone are a treasure, and are complemented by perfectly selected photographs and graphics, including one on page 144 that documents the deaths of 50 million indigenous Indians in Mexico alone, over the course of a 100 years from 1518 to 1623. The maps highlight the extraordinary contribution of this book and this author in documenting the scope and sophistication and massive numbers of native Americans across both continents, and with some documentation going back to 5000 BC.

The author opens by pointing out, as “Holmberg's Mistake,” the long-standing incorrect views that history began in 1492, and that the indigenous people's were few in number and lacked any semblance of influence or “agency” over what historians over hundreds of years assumed was a “state of nature” in which the indigenous humans were nothing more than a higher state of animal.

The book, which comes with 140 pages of endnotes, is world-class scholarship and world-class investigative journalism. It compellingly documents an Inka Empire spanning a continent in the 15th century and before, with 25,000 miles of roads that last to this day. Tens of millions, many languages, a great deal of trade, sophisticated culture with metalurgy and stone masonry equal to or superior to the Europeans.

I was particularly impressed by the author's description of how language analysis, looking for common words or syllables, helped to document a breadth of unique languages going far back in time.

Overall the book documents how the introduction of smallpox from humans and many other pandemic diseases from pigs that spread to wildlife and then humans, killed perhaps 100 million indigenous American Indians (north and south).

The book ends, appropriately for our time, with a section on the Five Nations of native American Indians who in the early 17th Century were practicing the Great Law of Peace. The Chinese brought Dick Cheney's airplane down over Singapore with precision electronic pulses, and have demonstrated that they can sneak up on our carriers and also immobilize or neutralize are mobility and weapons systems which are completely unprotected against advanced electronic warfare. Simultaneously, the Chinese are waging peace across the southern hemisphere, and rapidly displacing the US and Europe as the primary external actor (see my one-page memorandum on Chinese Irregular Warfare).

I mention other books below that are relevant to the larger issue of “what can we know” about the past or about reality that can help us craft a future that delivers a good life for all, including the five billion poor, a prosperous world at peace. I am persuaded that the emphasis on secret intelligence and military “might” has gone a long way toward destroyed the Earth and Humanity's hopes. The ten books below do not include any books I have written, edited, or published, but I do want to mention that they are all free online at OSS.Net, or more recently, Earth Intelligence Network, where we have posted the new edited work, “COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.”

2008/01/272009/10/30

Review: 101 Myths of the Bible–How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History

5 Star, Misinformation & Propaganda, Religion & Politics of Religion

Destroys the Bible as Immutable–Totally Engrossing, January 27, 2008

Gary Greenberg

I've read close to 20 books on religion in relation to politics in the past several years, and two books have consistently fallen behind in my stack: this one, and Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus). Of the two, this one, published in 2000, five years earlier than Misquoting Jesus (but not mentioned at all in the latter) is vastly better organized, more interesting, and more pointed.

I note that the publisher and Amazon do provide the entire table of contents above (101 myths, each listed in the table of contents) and I recommend that the table of contents be considered as helpful to my recommendation that anyone interested in religion and/or virtue buy and read this book.

The author himself captures the highlights in his own preface:

+ Africa and Egypt provided most of the raw material for the Biblical stories, i.e. neighboring cultures, not “God” or even the disciples, provided the original information
+ The stories were part of a long0running propagandaa war between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel
+ The author focuses on contradictions, clear and compelling evidence of Bible myths originating in earthly cultures, and stories that simply cannot be true (e.g. cities claimed destroyed that did not exist)
+ Although explained more ably by “Misquoting Jesus,” the book clearly shows how the Bible is NOT original, nor is it even accurate. It consists of stories whose origins are earthly, rewritten over and over again, and imbued with false authority.

For me, the greatest humor and wisdom came from Israel being firmly rooted in Arab (Egyptian) myths, yet being unable to be it's brother's keeper, instead genociding the Palestinians and stealing Arab water thorugh long underground pipes.

Below are other books I recommend, and two DVDs, one on Gandhi and one on Tibet. I have come to the conclusion that organized religion is inherently a sham, illegitimate and corrupt, but that the values that religion seeks to impact are good in so far as they can be adopted by communities. This is not rocket science–the Golden Rule and the Great Law of Peace actually create prosperity and well-being.

The Complete Conversations with God (Boxed Set)
Gandhi (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition)
Tibet – Cry of the Snow Lion
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
God's Politics LP
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors

2008/01/222009/10/30

Review: Outsmart the MBA Clones–The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing and Branding

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Information Operations

Gold Standard for Marketing a Brand, January 22, 2008

Dan Herman

This is a five-star book. Amazon won't let us change the stars. I realized I was imposing my ethics in taking away one star. For what it seeks to do, this is a five-star book.

This is a well-written book, ably illustrated, that is easy to read and appreciate. A few flyleaf notes:

+ Real-time branding, leveraging opportunities instead of plans

+ Accelerated world, focus on customer psyche

+ Price is NOT a strategic obstacle or advantage

+ Differentiation is everything (at the 5% level)

+ Promotional campaigns of dubious value

+ Good management is not strategy

+ Market research flawed for its focus on aggregate (group) statistics instead of psychology of the individual consumer

+ Vision plus values can make a difference

+ Identify, Invent, Implement

+ Stellar use of examples through-out the book

+ Opportunity scan: content, consumers, market, competitors, us (from outer circle to inner sweet spot)

+ Very useful and thoughtful lists, easy to understand and reflect upon

+ 15 stages of consumption within which differentiation can occur

+ Loyalty bankruptcy a challenge

+ Hypnotic branding and Fear of Missing Out both can be leveraged

Although I am a long-term strategist and focused on saving the Earth for my three boys and future generations, there is no question but that this book is the gold standard in short-term branding and market exploitation for short-term profit. It was worth my while.

Other books of possible interest:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons (Bk Currents)
The Ecology of Commerce
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

2008/01/112009/10/30

Review: Bloomberg by Bloomberg

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Superb, self-effacing, common sense, deeper insights into the company, January 11, 2008

Michael Bloomberg

I bought this book on 1 January when news first came out of the University of Oklahoma “bipartisan” gathering, but I did not have a chance to read it until this week. I went to Oklahoma, only to see this good man embarrassed by a truly rotten press conference that invited mockery. My three page trip report is at Earth Intelligence Network.

I'm going to summarize what I learned from this book,and then conclude with an observation on how Bloomberg could go to the next level while simultaneously cleaning up our government and educating the 5 billion poor free, one cell call at a time.

There is absolutely nothing in this book that is conceited or self-serving. This is straight talk from a hard worker, an Eagle Scout at a very young age, an ethical businessman, an inspired information entrepreneur. This is an honest worthy book I wish I had noticed sooner.

The author lived in a one-room studio apartment for his first 10 years, working 12 hours a day as a matter of routine, not counting his early morning jogging, where he says he gets his most creative thoughts.

It certainly helped that he had a $10M termination payment from his first job, but this book positively lights up around the combination of open workspace, open mind, how to create a company on the fly, fully integrating customer views, ignorning banks and other pyramidal consultants. The author discovered the “power of us” a quarter century before Business Week did its cover story on this topuc, 21 June 2005.

What I was not expecting, and what made the book riveting for me, is the complete well-paced coverage of how the author realized he could monetize financial data, then information about the people behind the data, and then information on the politics behind the people.

A few of my fly-leaf notes:

+ Build from scratch, don't buy over-priced companies or capabilities.

+ Trust me, or go out the door.

+ Do'ers with fires in their belly make for a great team

+ Pioneered compact low-cost workstations with English buttons

+ Excelled at rapid prototyping where good intention was better than any business plan

+ Really superb overview of how numbers can lie, how dangerous an automated numbers game can become

+ Outsiders do what's asked; insiders do what's needed.

+ Superb vision for the future of the hand-held cell phone as the single device, he knew this long before Eric Schmidt came along to help Google.

+ Corrects my long-standing mis=hearing of Marhsall McCluhan's book title, The Medium is the Massage (not Message, that was a separate quote)

+ Really excellent stories aabout how hard Bloomberg had to fight to be accredited both in Washington DC and in Tokyo as a legitimate news organization

+ “Ignorance and arrogance are a deadly combination.” I wish he had realized Oklahoma would be a dead end–bi-partisan is code for keeping the two-party spoils system. Transpartisan is where its at, visit Reuniting America, 110 million strong and growing. See the definitive book on the death of the two parties, Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.

+ I agree with his view that computers should not be allowed in the classroom throughout elementary school.

+ Throughout the book, it is clear the author knows what I learned from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both personally and through his book, Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy, Change is Hard. Specificially, big change takes 25 years (I am in year 18 of reforming secret intelligence and creating public intelligence, he is now in year 1 of reforming democracy and saving the Republic as well as moral capitalism).

+ The chapter on Management 101 is decent, sensible, and worthy of study.

+ I've spent hard time trying to do digital innovation, and the details in this book just blew me away as I followed the innovations the author led back in the 1980's when CIA tasked me with creating a “smart desktop” for clandestine operations. Had I known then about this man, I would have gone to his doorv and offered to help him put CIA out of business. There is still time.

I put the book down with both a feeling of pain–the Oklahoma debaacle should never have happened–and hope. This author embodies three big ideas: moral informed capitalism, honest informed self-governance, and educational reform.

I have three ideas I offer to anyone who can reach the author, I do not believe the book I created for him (Democracy 2008, see it at Earth Intelligence Network) was delivered to him by his staff, one reason he got humiliated in Oklahoma.

Idea #1: Fund a global “True Cost” project within the Natural Capital Institute's rapidly growing World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER). Get Paul Hawkins in to energize everyone, and become the Moody's for true cost information (e.g. designer T-shirts with 4000 gallons of water, water bottles whose plastic required more water to make than is contained in the bottle, etc). This will change markets within 2-3 years, especially since ScanBack would allow Bloomberg to deliver this information to end-users via their cell phone at the point of sale.

Idea #2: Forget about running for President. It's a lousy job. BE the virtual president, forming a Transpartisan Sunshine Cabinet (Senators Nunn and Graham should be respectively Defense and Intelligence), and leveraging True Majority and Reuniting America to lead a national conversation firmly grounded in a balanced budget, on how to orchestrate $1 trillion a year in planning giving to eradicate the ten high level threats by harmonizing the twelve policies, while also creating the EarthGame to help the eight demographic challengers avoid our mistakes.

Idea #3: Examine Telelanguage.com and figure out how to register and put online 100 million volunteers who can use Skype, Telelanaguage, and their Internet connection to teach the 5 billion poor in any one of 183 languages, one cell phone call at a time.

The above will sound self-promoting, it is not. I have labored with 23 other co-founders to do Mike Bloomberg's staff work for the next decade, and if someone can get him to carefully consider these ideas, I give them to him freely. I don't need a job, but I do need a planet my three boys can grow up in, and I believe that if Mike Bloomberg stops trying to leverage political has-beens (with a few exceptions), and instead creates an architecture that can deliver public intelligence in the public interest, he will achieve his grand vision, faster, better, cheaper.

Thank you, those whom Dick Cheney has inspired into reading my non-fiction reviews. I never, ever, expected to be of service to the Nation in quite this way. If my reviews help us restore the Republic, of, by, and for the people, working with moral capitalists and leaders like this author and John Bogle (The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism then the author's unbridaled optemism could be warranted.

Category: 5 Star

Review DVD: The Assassination of Richard Nixon