Good time to consult our old friend Ira U. Cobleigh. Mr. Cobleigh wrote the cleverly titled book “How to Gain Security & Financial Independence” (Hawthorn Books, New York, 1956). Ira’s first chapter has the romantic heading “Thrift and Gracious Living”. Here are his five major goals of thrift:

(1.) an emergency rainy day fund,
(2.) life insurance coverage,
(3.) a specific sum for the purchase and furnishing of a home,
(4.) the education of children, and
(5.) a fund to create or supplement retirement income.

Ira doesn’t mention the importance of paying down high interest credit card debt. It was a different time!

UPDATE: Minutes after posting this, I searched the good Doctor’s name and found my post very high in Google results. My purpose here is to practice thinking and writing about an old book - I don’t care to insult anyone personally. I’ve removed the Doctor’s name below to hopefully avoid unwanted attention.

Today’s forgotten management book is “The Money Personality” by Dr. Fullname Obscured (Simon and Schuster, ‘79). Dr. Obscured’s central (and heavily repeated) premise is that some people have so-called “Money Personalities”, and you can too!

Skip Dr. Obscured’s main idea. Also skip kindly past the humorous front cover - adorned with a seriously gleaming gold dollar symbol money clip. Next, ignore the rear cover’s glamour shot of a navy-sport-jacketed Dr. Obscured posing with (someone’s) private plane.

We can laugh, and we should, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of marketing genius at work. This book will not make you rich - sorry. Much of it will bore you, especially if you’re fishing for clever management ideas. And in fairness, most of Dr. Obscured’s thoughts are sympathetic, bland, and far less malicious than my introduction suggests. If you dislike mundane sycophantic rambling, you probably will not enjoy “The Money Personality”.

Perhaps, like me, you’re willing to tolerate some rambling in patient pursuit of slow knowledge. Indeed there are things we can learn from Dr. Obscured. He was a practicing psychiatrist with deep access to the hearts and minds of the moneyed elite in late ’70s Manhattan. In a way, you might read it like a cultural artifact - a reminder of the sophisticated methods used by authors and publishers to exploit the desires of eager consumers.

“The Money Personality” was sold in the early days of a media marketing wave that brought us many pop-culture classics like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” in ‘84, and “Bonfire of the Vanities” and “Wall Street” in ‘87. Dr. Obscured’s work provides an early and clear economic anthropological view into values of New York’s much celebrated and imitated urban elite.

Enjoy this selection from Obscured’s chapter “Walking the Tightrope for Fun and Profit”:

“The key to good tightrope walking is not a rigid posture but a flexible, supple gait. When the tightrope walker initiates his treacherous act, he knows he will temporarily lose his balance many times. His mind focuses on detecting and recovering from situations where he has lost control. If he stubbornly insists on maintaining flawless control, he will tumble to oblivion. The tightrope walker must assume the existence of periodic loss of control and must be poised for a quick recovery.”

Dynamic and flexible thinking will help you anticipate and react to inherent market risks.

So what?

So nothing. And that’s the point. The tightrope paragraph wasn’t written to teach anything. It’s a subtle way to make a casual reader feel like they’ve learned something. It wasn’t chosen at random, and it exemplifies the tone, style, and substance of the book. Like most of Dr. Obscured’s stories, the tightrope story carries his assertion that bold and exciting rich people think differently than other people. Rich people think differently, and you want to think (and act) like them because it’s better.

The danger here is explicit: if we fail to think and act like rich people, we’re destined to fall, to disappear into some sort of unknown and scary abyss.

It’s trite to observe that business books are marketed toward people that care about money and their careers. People dream of becoming rich, achieving financial security, and that’s all fine. I’m more interested in the way that heavy scientific methods are employed to promote pseudo-scientific assertions; how those assertions are reinforced in all forms of pop culture; and how it’s essential to remain mindful of these historically harmful ideas when consuming media of any kind.

The inside front cover reads:

“The Money Personality is a comprehensive guide to thinking rich that will show you how to develop the personality traits, practical instincts, and optimistic outlook on life that have made thousands of people the financial successes they are today. No book yet has told you as much about the mind of the rich and how it works.”

Excellent illustration of the techniques used by skilled copywriters and professional psychiatrists to concoct and sell a fantasy lifestyle - complete with a cute mental framework and vacuous boxes for easy checking.

Incidentally, did you see that film “Man on Wire” about Philippe Petit? Beautiful story with loads of great footage of the early ’70s Manhattan skyline shot from the top of the World Trade Center.

In 1941, Simon and Schuster of New York published a non-fiction work titled “Men of Wealth” by author John T. Flynn. The book was an ambitious project in that it attempted to summarize Flynn’s complex perspective on twelve of the world’s great economic success stories.

Flynn’s narrative style comes across as sincere, reverent, and frustrated. I’d argue that he deserves a flattering interpretation; his tone invokes a heavily labored revisionist tract, and the end result is human and endearing.

Here’s Flynn describing the role of wealthy businessmen in the wake of the first great US market crash:

“The process was completed when in October, 1929, we heard Gabriel over Wall Street and the President, as that fateful premonitory shiver ran through our economic structure, summoned around him the College of Captains. At that moment, every phase of our life was in the hands of businessmen. The test for their power was at hand and, led by a great engineer and great industrial ministers of state, these bankers and manufacturers and utility magnates were to seize the depression in its infancy and crush it. In that hour the Great God Business might be said to have become supreme, even though the very earth shook under the images of the idol.”

Flynn seemed on the verge of saying something important about theories of prosperity and governance. Perhaps his message was obscured by his great determination to express himself dramatically. Or was the message obscure by design?

Welcome to the redesigned Plan Resonate. I’ve tried to clean up the site; it was long overdue.

The new design runs on Wordpress 2.7.1 - I’m very happy with it. Wordpress people have done a great job reorganizing the control panel for this release.

The layout is based on a theme called “Blueprint” that uses the Blueprint CSS Framework. Both the theme and the framework have excellent attention to detail and are a pleasure to work with.

The new visual design features a logo designed by Mark Mazziotti. Mark’s challenge was to express the corporate and subversive sides of my work. I think he did a fine job and I’m thankful for his help.

The site is a work in progress and will continue to be so indefinitely. Send comments and suggestions.

Former Chief Executive Officer of the Chrysler Corporation, in his 1984 autobiography “Iococca”.

“Loan guarantees, I soon learned, were as American as apple pie. Among those who had received them were electric companies, farmers, railroads, chemical companies, shipbuilders, small-businessmen of every description, college students, and airlines.”

“In fact, a total of $409 billion in loans and loan guarantees was outstanding when we made our $1 billion request. But nobody knew this. They all said that loan guarantees to Chrysler would set a dangerous precedent.”

“Loan guarantee” was Chrysler’s semantic response to the popularly named “bailout”. This week automakers are negotiating a new bailout, modeled after Wall Street’s TARP plan.

Maybe we should check on the TARP plan first to see how they’re doing? Brad’s review is pretty funny. I also enjoyed reading former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s  views on TARP and Chapter 11:

“There’s no good reason for taxpayers to continue bailing out the Street. TARP hasn’t worked. Some $350 billion later, credit markets are still quite frozen. The only obvious beneficiaries of TARP have been the executives, creditors, and shareholders of the big Wall Street banks, who have come out better than they would have had there been no Wall Street bailout.”

Reich presents these (not shocking) conclusions while presenting a reasonable plan to help automakers survive the current economic conditions. Reich’s plan is that we make use of existing Chapter 11 protections for failing businesses. In the most basic terms, Reich proposes that the state provide $1 of public money for every $2 risked by the industry shareholders.

Catastrophic collapse of the automakers is probably not a politically viable path. Reich’s plan looks like a moderate, next-most-expedient option for rebuilding a deeply flawed industry.

Last weekend I was at Candlestick Park watching the local team squander a nine point lead against the 2-3 Eagles. Some of my neighbors and I got to talking about Plato and one of them shared this interesting quote:

“The Eleatic Stranger: Let us consider, in the first place, that there are two kinds of arts entering into everything which we do.”
“The Younger Socrates: What are they?”
“Str: The one kind is the conditional or co-operative, the other the principal cause.”
“Y Soc: What do you mean?”
“Str: The arts which do not manufacture the actual thing, but which furnish the necessary tools for the manufacture, without which the several arts could not fulfil their appointed work, are co-operative; but those which make the things themselves are casual.”
“Y Soc: A very reasonable distinction.”
“Str: Thus the arts which make spindles, combs, and other instruments of the production of clothes, may be called co-operative, and those which treat and fabricate the things themselves, causal.”
“Y Soc: Very true.”
- Dialogues of Plato, Statesman, [281, 21]

We disagreed as to whether the Gold Rush girls were conditional or causal. It was the Eagles first road win of the season.

Nothing complex or confusing about bad debt.

“Let’s have some stunts, folks.”
“Yes, let’s!” shrieked Juanita Haydock.
“Say, Dave, give us that stunt about the Norwegian catching a hen.”
“You bet; that’s a slick stunt; do that, Dave!” cheered Chet Dashaway.
Mr. Dave Dyer obliged.
-Main Street, Sinclair Lewis, 1920

The rescue nee bailout is the farcical next verse in a grand song and dance. Don’t expect the show to be taken off the air anytime soon.

Maybe partying will help. That, and campaign finance reform.

Tom Foremski interviews Olaf Swantee of Orange Mobile at Silicon Valley Watcher. Swantee is working to address sustainability concerns from the resource efficiency angle and he ranks this issue as one of Orange’s biggest challenges.

It’s a nicely produced video interview and I recommend you check it out. Here’s an excerpt:

Swantee: “There’s a lot of operators out there that believe that mobile communications is a commodity, you know, that this thing [gestures to cell phone], the prices are going down. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, also by being at HP, that in a mature market you have to innovate. If you don’t innovate, if you don’t create differentiation, you will be marginalized in a price war in the end.”

This stock Michael Porter competitive advantage stuff has withstood the test of time. Yet these days marketers and designers are learning to take take resource efficiency into consideration. I’m going to share some ideas about HP and present what I believe is THE major challenge facing consumer electronics companies.

In many ways HP sets a good example for others to follow with their various corporate social responsibility initiatives. They do so to remain competitive, to attract and retain talented employees, to attract and retain certain classes of capital; all justifiable returns when viewed from a cost-benefit perspective. Arguably they also pursue such initiatives because it’s part of the culture of doing business in silicon valley. You might even assume that HP designers and marketers believe in resource efficiency as an ethical obligation, a sort of moral cost of doing business.

Like any company working to implement some form of sustainable management, inevitably they’re creating situations where the goals of the sustainability agenda are in direct conflict with other organizational tactics. For example, you’ve probably seen HP’s outreach related to recycling ink cartridges. Would it not be “greener” to invest less in consumer oriented downcycling and address the problem upstream with a refillable cartridge design?

HP has recently published information about cutting edge life cycle analysis (LCA) as it relates to data center design. They’re reported to employ such thinking in their component designs and packaging decisions. These decisions represent tangible and growth oriented investments in the future of the organization. HP uses promotional and R&D dollars to make  resource efficient design techniques an effective part of their brand narrative. This narrative is crafted to help differentiate their products in a mature and highly commodified market.

Have they avoided the commidification trap that Swantee alludes to? Not entirely, and we can speculate on what their margins would look like if they hadn’t placed a premium on smart design. But such speculation is irrelevant as we’ll never know what position HP would have been in had they not followed their recent course. Regardless, HP is wise to continue learning. The lessons their designers and marketers are learning represent a significant and expanding source competitive advantage in an economy increasingly confronted with emerging resource constraints.

At the same time, HP’s marketing department is pressured to create an unreasonable number of new product designs, each marginally different from the others, in a classic marketing tactic of planned obsolescence. HP has played a leading role in the culture of disposable electronic gadgetry.

Does anyone remember the late 90’s when Sun painted a massive billboard in Portland that read “Stop the Technology Madness”? The madness hasn’t stopped. Not yet. Technology and consumer electronics companies are under as much pressure as ever to shorten their concept to launch cycles - innovate! - regardless of complaints from the sustainability team. Consumers are aware of the shortened warranty periods and limited support. Designers are aware of the impact that disposable gadgets have on landfills.

Still product managers are driven to promote insignificant design changes as breakthrough innovations. Innovations create differentiation and differentiation improves short term market valuation… or short term net margin? Whatever else you might think about it; it’s a proven model. It worked. It still sort of does.

This type of overinflated “innovation” has played a central role in HP’s design and marketing decisions. Unfortunately such thinking is obsolete for any organization that hopes to use design and marketing to avoid commodification in a mature market. The reason being is that too many people have played that game. It’s played out. People were successful playing the game and so the game itself changed as the direct result of their success.

In the words of Michael Porter:

“Understanding what allows it to be unique will also ensure that a firm does not undermine the causes.” (Competitive Advantage, 1985)

False innovation is not a unique characteristic in the consumer electronics market and therefore should not be viewed as a source of brand differentiation. In Porter’s terms, planned obsolescence is a “driver of uniqueness” as a policy choice. Similarly, investing in resource efficient design can be a driver of uniqueness in the areas of learning and spillover. The point of interest is that planned obsolescence and resource efficiency seem to be inherently in conflict. Consumer electronics marketers need to develop methods to reconcile this conflict.

The challenge now, as I see it, is to develop transitional marketing models that support moving away from the technology madness of planned obsolescence and disposable gadgetry. Companies like HP (and Orange Mobile) are up to the challenge and they deserve respect and recognition for many of their management practices. This transition will require leadership at the policy level and at the design and product marketing level. I’m optimistic about their chances.

San Francisco Commonwealth Club direct mailer:

“When you rub elbows with the right people, some of it rubs off on you.”

Never had that problem personally although I’ve heard bathing in tomato juice can help.