Denying science for fame & fortune (review of The Parrot and the Igloo by David Lipsky)

Clarence Cook Little is the OG of science denial. 

Big Tobacco recruited Little to head up their industry research committee in 1954. The committee was the brainchild of panicked cigarette CEOs and John Hill, head of PR firm Hill & Knowlton. 

Cigarettes were under fire as researchers made the connection between smoking and lung cancer. Time magazine published a story headlined “Beyond Any Doubt”. Reader’s Digest ran with “Cancer by the Carton”. 

Instead of refuting the research, Hill told the CEOs to push for more research. Pit scientist against scientist. Sow doubt, confusion and uncertainty. Keep customers smoking and delay regulation and litigation indefinitely.  

The Tobacco Industry Research Committee set out to muddy the waters. Funded by Big Tobacco, run by Hill & Knowlton and headquartered one floor below the agency in the Empire State Building, the committee funnelled more than $300 million over 40 years for research aimed at making tobacco safe for smokers.  

The committee needed a public face. Big Tobacco and Hill & Knowlton went looking for a “scientist of unimpeachable integrity and national repute.” They landed on 66-year-old Cook, who admitted he took the job because he needed the money and enjoyed visiting New York City. In an interview with Time, a fellow geneticist described Cook as “a handsome numbskull.” 

“Clarence Cook Little set the mold, says David Lipsky, author of The Parrot and the Igloo. “The first scientist whose job was to remain publicly and inconsolably unconvinced of something. He would develop the first uncertainty catchphrase: ‘not proven.’” 

Little was the first but not the last to shill for Big Tobacco. Lipsky says a cigarette industry recruiting document from the early 1990s lists “best-case qualities in scientists being fitted for team colors. ‘Ideal,’ runs the memo ‘are people at or near retirement, with no dependence on grant-dispensing bureaucracies.’ That is, without inboxes or nosy colleagues; institutional bachelors.” 

Big Tobacco eventually conceded the win to science. Lipsky says the shills who found fame and fortune defending cancer sticks followed the Big Oil money and rebranded themselves as climate science deniers. It didn’t matter if they weren’t climate scientists or even scientists. They only had to play the part online and during media interviews. 

Lipsky singles out two Canadians among the small but vocal and media friendly band of climate science deniers.  

Timothy Ball went on Fox News billed as Canada’s first Canadian PhD in climatology and a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. “Dr. Ball was not, as he liked to say, Canada’s first climatology PhD,” says Lipsky. “There were plenty before his doctorate; Canada is a big, science-loving country.” 

In fact, Ball’s doctorate was in geography. He was a geography and not a climatology professor. While he hadn’t published any carbon dioxide research in peer-reviewed science journals, Ball had written for History and Social Science Teacher and Manitoba Social Science Teachers Journal.  

Steve McIntyre was a semi-retired mining executive with time on his hands. His hobby was asking climate scientists for their raw data. If ignored, McIntyre filed Freedom of Information requests.  

“The laws allowed McIntyre to pursue this new hobby from the desk and peace of his Canadian home,” says Lipsky. ”McIntyre became expert in the intimidating arts; the weapons of hint, worry and push. Of the midday insinuation that expands to fill all thoughts at night.” 

Along with filing FOI requests, McIntyre harassed scientists in online science forums hiding behind the alias Nigel Persaud.  

“As Nigel, McIntyre would make any attack”, says Lipsky. ”On the other hand, Nigel could be unflaggingly – even embarrassingly – supportive of one Steve McIntyre.” 

Exposing climate science deniers took its toll on Lipsky. “I became a very unpleasant person writing this book. There’s something about reading people who are lying that makes you suspicious and argumentative company.” 

You’ll have a similar reaction reading Lipsky’s book. In selling their souls for fame and fortune, deniers have sowed doubt, eroded trust in science and cost us time we don’t have in the fight to keep our only home from baking, burning and flooding. 

Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Should you stay or should you go? (review of Julia Keller’s Quitting: A Life Strategy)

Good things come to those who wait. Quitters also get their share of good things. I’m proof of that. 
 
I’ve quit four jobs in my career. Started with a nonprofit and then moved on to a hospital, steelmaker, college and university. Worked with hundreds of colleagues and dozens of senior leaders. And got immersed in different workplace cultures although the similarities were always greater than the differences, despite how unique some employers billed themselves. 
 
As an added bonus, I work in PR which comes with an all-access backstage pass and ringside seat. I’ve seen a lot, learned a lot and done a lot of cool things. I haven’t regretted a single quit. 
 
I always knew when it was time to move on. My curiosity went from piqued to peaked. The learning curve flattened. Instead of taking the job and running with it, I started sauntering and standing still. My employer wasn’t getting me at my best. I was denying someone else the opportunity to have a go. I was cheating myself and testing my family’s patience.  
 
“Quitting is an act of love,” says Quitting: A Life Strategy author Julia Keller.  
 
It’s also “an escape hatch, a long shot, a shortcut, a leap of imagination, a fist raised in resistance, a saving grace, and a potential disaster – because it may backfire in spectacular ways, sabotaging careers and blowing up relationships. It can ruin your life. And it can save it too. All in all, though, it’s a gesture of generosity toward yourself and your future, a roundabout why of saying ‘not this. Not now. But later…something else.” 

Keller says we’re conditioned to persevere. We value grit over quit. Winners never quit and quitters never win. “Quitting is presented as an extremity. A last resort. A point of no return. The disconnect between quitting’s benefits and its bad reputation can be jarring. Quitting may feel right, but it looks wrong. 
 
“It some ways, we overthink the issue of giving up, searching for complex reasons for what can, after all, be boiled down to a simple binary choice: Quit or keep going? 
 
“In other ways, we seriously underthink it. Because quitting is something we do, yes, but it’s also an idea – an idea about the world and what shapes it, and about our responsibilities to ourselves and to others. And about how to be happy.” 

If you’re wrestling with whether to stay or go, Keller recommends asking yourself three questions. “Are you making your choice based on what you believe will work for you or on the fear of being labelled a quitter? Are you choosing what you truly want or what somebody else thinks is best for you? And if were labelled a quitter, what’s the harm?” 

Quitting doesn’t have to be a sudden and dramatic clean break. “It can be thoughtful and deliberate and meditative,” says Keller. “It can be subtle, a thing of nuance and delicacy. It can be the result of a slow-dawning realization and a gradual shift, a graceful accommodation and a canny pivot. 

“If we begin to see quitting in a different light and stop automatically equating it with failure, its potential may emerge – its promise as a life strategy. It might even sound like a compliment.” 
 
So if you’re wondering whether to quit, you already know the answer. Take the leap or at least a subtle and thoughtful first step to something else. Life is short. 

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999. 

Bricks versus clicks (review of Jason Del Rey’s Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart and the Battle for our Wallets)

From Bentonville, Arkansas and weighing in with revenues of $661 billion, it’s the 61-year-old champion of everyday low prices with more than 10,500 brick and mortar stores, Walmart.

And from Seattle, Washington with $514 billion in revenue, it’s the 29-year-old online retailer and e-commerce champion of one-click convenience, Amazon.

In this clash of the retail titans, we can’t afford to have a winner.

“A world where one winner sells all is a world where everyone loses,” says veteran business journalist Jason Del Rey. The world’s largest retailers are locked in what Del Rey calls “no-holds-barred power struggle for dominance” with billions of dollars and millions of jobs at stake.

“In an ideal world, the continued competition between these two rivals will pressure both to evolve in ways that provide more societal good than harm – whether in the form of lower prices for cash-strapped consumers, convenience for those whose busy lives or physical limitations require it, more humane working conditions for everyday people, or maybe, someday, positive changes to health care if we’re lucky.”

Yet, as Del Rey acknowledges in his new book Winner Sells All, we’re not living in an ideal world. Both companies have had their turn in the barrel as Public Enemy Number One. “Admittedly, that’s a lot of hope and optimism laid before two mega-corporations whose actions haven’t always inspired those feelings. So outside forces – whether they be regulators, new startups, or labor groups – will still be necessary to apply pressure where the rivalry alone is not producing the best outcomes, and not only for citizens in their lives as consumers but as workers and community members too.”

It’s been a tougher fight for Walmart, judging by what Del Rey reports in his book. He conducted more than than 150 on and off-the-record interviews with current and former executives at both companies. Walmart was slow to see Amazon as an existential threat. And the cost-conscious leaders running Walmart’s brick and mortar stores had issues with the e-commerce executives who were playing the long game by putting growth ahead of profits.

“By around 2005, Amazon leaders believed they had matched or beaten Walmart on both product prices and on merchandise selection, but still potentially trailed Walmart in convenience because of Walmart’s sprawling network of stores and how those physical outposts could be used as pickup locations or delivery points for speedy online orders,” says Del Rey. “But over time, Amazon executives watched in disbelief as Walmart failed to focus on one of its key advantages.”

Walmart’s since snapped out of its digital slumber. The construction cranes in downtown Bentonville remind Del Rey of what Seattle went through when Amazon turned a neighbourhood of warehouses and shipyards into its headquarters. To pull even with Amazon in the war for top tech talent, Walmart’s building a campus on 350 acres that’ll include a Marriott hotel, corporate health and wellness centre and a childcare centre.

Both companies are still trying to figure out how to make money delivering groceries to our front doors. And health care, delivered in-store, online and in our homes, is the grand prize. More than 40 per cent of customers surveyed by Walmart said cost was their biggest impediment to getting health care and 80 per cent of U.S. stores are located in medically underserved communities. Delivering lower cost and more convenient health care could prove to be the knock-out punch in this decade-long clash of retail titans.

Could another company like Spotify or Instacart win out over Amazon and Walmart? “By the last quarter of 2022, many of the upstarts that might one day threaten Amazon and Walmart found themselves on shaky ground,” says Del Rey.

And how about TikTok, with its promise to create a new and improved e-commerce experience for its one billion users? “Any large fulfillment network would take many, many years to pull off, even if things went smoothly.”

So for now, this clash of the titans continues with billions of dollars and millions of jobs on the line. Let’s hope they go the distance and push each other to do better.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

This Bud’s not for me (review of Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts and Change the World by Sally Susman

Photo by Ben Mater on Unsplash.

It’s what Anheuser-Busch didn’t say and do that’s the problem.

The beer company hired Dylan Mulvaney to post a one-minute video promoting a Bud Light contest. Mulvaney’s a transgender influencer with millions of TikTok and Instagram followers.

The company was quick to cave to a backlash from the easily triggered and perpetually enraged.

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” said the CEO in a statement that could’ve been written by ChatGPT. “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

The CEO added the company has a “proud history of supporting our communities, military, first responders, sports fans and hard-working Americans everywhere.”

Missing from that statement was any mention of proudly supporting the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. The CEO also couldn’t find the courage to call out the transphobic politicians, C-list celebrities and the clowns who were shooting up and crushing cases of Bud Light.

And no one from the company publicly or privately reached out to Mulvaney, who said “what transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined.”

Anheuser-Busch could use Sally Susman in their boardroom.  Susman’s been through the culture wars as Pfizer’s executive vice president and chief corporate affairs officer.

“Silence on some topics – such as racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and other matters of humanity – is unacceptable,” says Susman, author of Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts and Change the World.

She’s created a five-question framework to help Pfizer know when to stay silent and when to speak out. It’s a framework that any organization can adopt.

“I may not know what tomorrow’s controversy will be but I do know how I’ll evaluate it for my company,” says Susman.

Start by asking if the issue relates to your organization’s purpose. “This question is a meaningful brake to prevent a company from weighing in on every issue. It is not necessary to offer a viewpoint on every single cultural whim or social movement – in many cases, silence is golden. Don’t overuse your microphone or people will stop listening.”

How does the issue affect your stakeholders? “For me, there is one constituency above all others: an institution’s employees. Their views take priority. Staff who feel ignored or alienated are often your most troublesome detractors.”

What are your organization’s choices for engagement? “Do not become a prisoner of other people’s agendas and plans.  Choose the message and messenger that most clearly expresses your view.”

What’s the price of silence for your organization? “The question often trumps the others,” says Sussman. When white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, Pfizer’s CEO told employees that “the racism that was on display has no place in a civilized world. The hate groups – and individuals – behind this weekend’s vitriol and violence are not welcome in our communities and need to be held accountable.”

And finally, how does the issue relate to your organization’s core values?

Susman shares leadership and communication lessons learned from tours of duty on the frontlines of the culture wars. “The fights over masks and vaccine mandates revealed a deep divide that is neither ephemeral nor tied to the crisis of the day. This rift isn’t only about a virus and our response to it. The more troubling aspects of social and cultural change that the virus threw into high relief will take more than a particular policy vote or potent new antigen to heal.”

All organizations can be leaders in closing that divide, says Susman. “We must be intentional and prioritize the work of bridge building. It will take courage and candor at a time when your instinct may be to run and hide. Curiosity about one another as humans with different perspectives and creativity in how we connect will be essential. We should pause and prepare for how we want to lead in this more complicated world. Humility will be a surprising and effective response to the aggression.”

I’ll drink to that unless it’s a Bud Light.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager with McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books since 1999.

Show don’t tell your employees that you care (review of Never Lose an Employee Again by Joey Coleman)

Don’t confuse one-off new employee orientation (here are the rules – do this, don’t do that, go here, not there) with the warm welcome of year-long onboarding.

The wunderkind you just hired is quitting. At least she gave you two weeks notice. Another promising new hire left during lunch and never returned. The employees who’ve stuck around are mailing it in after nearly a year on the job, still making rookie mistakes and frustrating you to no end.

Why don’t employees care as much about the business as you?

Here’s an uncomfortable answer.

Your employees don’t care because they believe you care more about the business than you care about them.

You might tell them that you care. And you might even think it. But employees aren’t seeing, feeling or believing it.

“You can say you care about your employees and you can even tell them that you care but when was the last time they witnessed you do something that showed you care?” asks Joey Coleman, author of Never Lose an Employee Again.

When it comes to new hires, Coleman says you have 100 days to show how much you care or you’ll pay a steep price.

Lots of organizations squander those 100 days by confusing orientation with onboarding.

Orientation is about working through a checklist. It’s filling out paperwork with a Human Resources rep, sitting through mandatory training, going on a whirlwind tour and being introduced to anyone and everyone you meet along the way. No one who sits alone in a cubicle completing a WHMIS quiz on their first day on the job thinks “wow, this is the organization for me”.

But they can think that if you use onboarding to warmly welcome new hires and set them up for success.

“Onboarding is a more robust, comprehensive approach for bringing a new employee into the organization,” says Coleman. “Onboarding assists and supports the new employee over time so they can develop the skills, knowledge, and attitudes they need to be successful in their role.”

There’s definite room for improvement. A Gallup survey found that just 12 per cent of employees believe their company did a great job of onboarding. “For those of you who don’t want to do the math, that means that 88 per cent of employees find their company’s onboarding to be lackluster.”

Think of onboarding as a journey with eight phases for new hires to move through within that crucial 100 days.

“The eight phases track the employee journey from the time someone first considers working with the organization to the time when the employee refers potential new hires and sees the employer as an indispensable part of their life. Every employee has the potential to travel through all eight phases, but not all employees will. Some employees will leave mid-journey. Others will stall out along the way.”

A key phase overlooked by many organizations is the time between new employees accepting the job and their first day at work. They can be wrestling with an acute case of hire’s remorse, wondering and worrying if they made the right decision. You need to affirm their choice.

Another important phase is when your new hire achieves their first big goal. “Acknowledge the significance of an employee reaching their desired results and celebrate this milestone achievement,” says Coleman.

In every phase, Coleman says you can pick and choose from six ways of communicating with your new hires and showing that you care.  There are in-person conversations, email, mail, phone calls, videos and gifts.

“Each of these communication formats creates a different level of emotional connection and experience,” says Coleman.

Here’s one final piece of advice for organizations looking to retain great talent. “Do unto your employees as you would have your employees do unto you. Forgive me for paraphrasing the Golden Rule, but it’s that important.

“If it would irritate you to have an employee cancel a one-on-one status update or briefing with you the morning of the meeting, don’t do it to them. Don’t cancel one-on-one meetings with your employees. Show them how valuable they are by treating meetings with them as sacrosanct.”

When it comes to caring about your employees, showing trumps telling and what you show them just might get them caring as much about the business as you.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager with McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books since 1999.

The business of disinformation in an industry built on woo-woo (review of Conspirtuality by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker)

Did you hear the one about your neighbourhood yoga studio that’s actually a griftshop and QAnon recruitment centre?

Too bad it’s not just another off-the-wall conspiracy theory.

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker warn about the toxic marriage of New Age spiritualism with QAnon-infused fever dreams in their book Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.

“Anti-vax sentiments and kooky ideas about hot yoga increasing one’s immunity to a virus were not new, and the fact they were exploding during a pandemic was on-brand for an industry built on woo-woo,” say the authors who are veterans of wellness and yoga practices.

“But was it really possible that former friends and colleagues could cross the Rubicon into believing that Democrats were harvesting the blood of children in satanic rituals? That they could be pulled across the threshold between green smoothie social media into the cesspools of anonymous message boards?

“Well, yes, it was. And worse than that, for some influencers that threshold became a chalk line in a game of hopscotch. How, with all their talk about healing and oneness, had they fallen into a rabbit hole of right-wing paranoia scented with New Age candles?”

Follow the money. The fear of losing it and the promise of making a ton of it can lead the best of us astray. Yogaworld’s not immune, according to the authors who’ve all worked in it. It’s a precarious business at the best of times and the pandemic was among the worst of times for studio owners with soaring rents and instructors living paycheque to paycheque.

“The modern urban yoga studio has always been on the bleeding edge of rising real estate prices, especially in areas where the working class is driven out and yuppies flood in with income to burn on boutique wellness.

“Studios, which functioned as a hub for gig-working teachers, would always make some money for a while but the margins would tighten as rents went up. What saved the bacon of most urban yoga studios was the high ticket price of the yoga teacher training program. As studios raced to keep ahead of their rents, and yoga teachers searched for pathways toward influencer-dom, the entry-level training became a pipeline for 500, 750 and 1,000-hour upgrades.”

Along with pricey and endless training, the authors say entrepreneurial teachers and studio owners with big bills to pay veered off into the world of pseudoscience by selling everything from supplements and essential oils to crystal therapy, cacao ceremonies, meditation circles and transformational breathing.

“In tragic cases, a yoga school could try to boost its income by going further than organizing a pyramid of self-feeding trainings,” say the authors. “They could buy into a multi-level marketing scheme. The MLM machine carries an added sting when it exploits the New Age, yoga and wellness worlds. When yoga teachers are recruited into an essential oil scheme, the constant pressure can turn every interaction with a client or student into a recruitment pitch. A yoga studio owner can easily cross-market high-priced teacher trainings with the promises of MLM participation using the same language of self-development and financial autonomy.”

The authors say the global pandemic that shuttered studios and forced everyone online put already anxious New Age spiritualists at risk of being an even easier mark for conspiracy theorists. Both went into the pandemic already harboring a mutual mistrust of Big Pharma and Big Government.

“Conspirituality and QAnon came along to provide a way for political angst and aggression to be disguised in the language of spiritual righteousness and transformation.”

Is there a way out? The authors end their book with cautionary stories of people who lost, or became estranged from, loved ones who fell prey to conspirituality.

“They have figured out something that a lot of us will have to learn in the post-QAnon, post-pandemic world. How to live in one world while caring for someone in another in a way that keeps the door open. We believe this is a position that more and more of us will have to confront.”

So if you wander into a grift shop disguised as a yoga studio, don’t sign up for training programs, treatments, supplements, pills, circles and ceremonies. Walk out the door and keep searching until you find a studio that’ll sell you nothing but conspiracy-free yoga classes.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Beware of dream jobs (review of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work by Simone Stolzoff)

I got three things right with my career.

I avoided soul-crushing commutes by always working and living in the same city. My current commute is the best yet – a stress-free 20-minute walk through a park and a neighbourhood.

I worked for big employers – a hospital, steelmaker, college and university – full of good people doing important work. I’ve enjoyed never being the smartest person in any room.

And I never bothered to find my calling, pursue my passion and land my dream job. I opted instead for jobs that were good enough. I cared about the work but only liked, and never madly, truly or deeply loved, what I did for a living.

Simone Stolzoff would agree that was a smart choice.

“The notion that we should always love our jobs creates outsized expectations for what a job can deliver,” says Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job. “It ignores the tedium that exists in every line of work, blinds us to the flaws a dream job may have, and creates conditions in which workers are willing to accept less than they deserve.”

Dream jobs can turn into nightmares. You work long hours for little or no money (hello, unpaid internships) on the vague promise of a permanent position or promotion once you’ve paid your dues, proven your worth and separated yourself from the pack.

You’re constantly reminded of the hordes of people who’d do anything for the opportunity you’ve been given. You’re told that you’re blessed to be part of a family, even though your real family will be the only ones who remember all the nights, weekends and holidays you worked.

Taking the sting out of your sacrifices will be perks that initially make your dream job seem even dreamier. Don’t be fooled by the late night meals delivered to your desk, the car service that takes you home, the 24/7 on-site gym, basketball court and the fully stocked kitchenette, says Stolzoff. Your employer isn’t offering these freebies out of the goodness of their heart – they want to keep you working without distractions or a care in the world for as long as inhumanely possible.

“The office doesn’t need to be your car or your gym or your go-to dinner spot – and not because cocktails or office gyms or catered dinners are inherently bad. It’s because work should be a means to an end. And in the end, we should go home.”

Some of us choose not to go home because the line between what we do for a living and who we are gets blurry. Our jobs become the primary or sole source for our sense of identity, self-worth, community and happiness. That’s a big problem when we get laid off, let go or burn ourselves out.

“I don’t believe a more transactional approach to work needs to come at the expense of caring about your job and doing great work,” says Stolzoff. “There is nothing wrong with aligning your work with your interests or working hard to refine your craft. Rather, I’m advocating for a collective reorientation of our expectations. Much as it is unrealistic to expect a spouse to fulfill our every social, emotional and intellectual need, it is unrealistic to expect a job to be our sole method of self-actualization. That’s a burden our jobs are not designed to bear.”

Stolzoff interviewed hundreds of people for his book. “I found that those with the healthiest relationships to their work had one thing in common: they all had a strong sense of who they were when they weren’t working.

“Developing a healthier relationship with work starts with defining what you want that relationship to be. If not, your employer will happily define the relationship for you.”

Stolzoff ends his book with a simple suggestion. When making small talk, don’t ask strangers what they do. Ask instead what they like to do. It’s a question worth asking yourself as well if you’re looking to reclaim life from work.

“Maybe you like to read fiction. Maybe you like to cook Mediterranean food. Maybe you like to watercolour or to write. Maybe you do those things for work. Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s good enough.”

Photo by Krill_makes_pics on Pixabay.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Facing a catastrophe without a playbook or a rainy day fund (review of Liz Hoffman’s Crash Landing)

The good times were still rolling when the masters of the universe gathered for their annual capitalist cheerfest in Davos, Switzerland.

The World Economic Forum was in full swing in late January 2020 even as Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China, was on lockdown.

“Corporate executives, hedge fund titans and government officials disembarked from helicopters and black cars to spend five days doling out management advice to the developing world and patting themselves on the back for it,” says Liz Hoffman, journalist and author of Crash Landing.

Solving global warning was the hot topic. The coronavirus was a non-issue and alarm bells had yet to go off. “Nobody makes friends at Davos by being a bummer,” says Hoffman.

No one was ready for what was just weeks away.

While the economy was on an 11-year boom, corporate debt was ballooning as companies borrowed to finance acquisitions and buy back their own stock.

“Companies doled out nearly all of their profits to shareholders in a bid to keep their stock prices climbing. Those that kept large cash reserves were ridiculed as fat and lazy, relics of a sleepier age of American business when rainy-day funds were common. It was all part of the broader push to efficiency that was a hallmark of twenty-first century corporate management. Bloat was out. Thin was in.”

Household debt was also soaring. Wages had stagnated and millions of workers were forced out of stable union and corporate jobs and into the gig economy. Like corporations, they had no savings to fall back on and were one missed paycheque away from disaster.

“The global economy was teetering on a precipice, but everyone was simply admiring the view.”

And then everything everywhere fell apart with a swift and total global economic shutdown.

“For the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies, March 11 was a day of unprecedented decisions made on the fly. Their stocks were tanking. Their employees were terrified. For the lucky ones, their business was merely suffering; for others, their business seemed to no longer make sense.”

Hoffman reports on how senior executives at Hilton, Ford, Airbnb, Delta Airlines and Morgan Stanley kept their companies going through the pandemic.

So how did some of the world’s biggest companies survive? They were the beneficiaries of trillions of dollars to be repaid by future generations of taxpayers in what Hoffman calls the mother of all government stimulus efforts.

“The prospect of such a giant pot of money had set off a rush in corporate American to get in line at the fiscal trough. Some industries could rightly argue they would be toast without help. Others saw a chance to secure special breaks in a moment when the spigots seemed open.”

CEOs faced new challenges at the back end of the pandemic as the economy recovered as quickly as it had tanked. “Supply and demand are the two basic forces at work in an economy,” says Hoffman. “The pandemic upended that balance twice, and nearly all the economic pain it brought – and will continue to bring for years to come – can be explained by that act of disruption.

“In the early days of the pandemic, supply outstripped demand for nearly everything – flights, hotel bookings, cars, concert tickets, restaurant tables, even labor. On the way out of the pandemic, those forces reversed. That exploding demand ran headlong into massive supply shortages.”

While CEOs wrestled with the Great Resignation and a less than enthusiastic return to the office, the rest of us were stunned at our grocery bills and higher costs across the board on pretty much everything.

“What is clear is that the economy that emerges from the pandemic is not the same one that crashed headlong into it,” says Hoffman. “Soaring inflation has consumers doubting the dollars in their wallets for the first time in four decades. The labour market will take years to find an equilibrium, and that period will test whether America’s debt to essential workers is repaid financially in the form of better pay and more investment.”   

Repaying that debt is a question worth asking on this side of the border as well.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Illustration by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash.

Our one and only father-son talk was my dad’s parting gift

Taking a break from reviewing business books to remember my dad.

My dad left nothing unsaid during our only and only father-son talk. But I did. And it took 26 years to find the words.

This first ran in the Hamilton Spectator – thanks to my editor for letting me hit pause on the reviews and offer a belated thank-you to my dad…

Two years before I started reviewing business books, my dad and I had our one and only father-son talk.

We wound up having two different conversations. I was making big plans while my dad was saying goodbye.

He was in the hospital and I was in denial. My dad had just turned 50. My parents had visited a few weeks earlier. He seemed tired but not sick.

On Monday morning, my dad skipped work and walked into the emergency department. On Saturday afternoon, he was taken off life support in the intensive care unit.

In the middle of that brutal week, my dad asked if we could talk.

I sat on my dad’s hospital bed playing the part of prodigal son. I’d already turned in patience-testing performances as  the weird kid, sullen teen and self-absorbed twenty-something. To make up for lost time, I promised road trips, ball games and cottage rentals once he got out of the hospital. “Take a good look around because we’re never coming back here again,” I said, repeating something my dad routinely and loudly announced for as long as I could remember.

My dad humoured me. He knew how things would play out. There’d be no Sunday drives and visits to ballparks and cottage country.

As soon as my dad was diagnosed, a doctor showed up and pitched a clinical trial offered only to patients with nothing left to lose. “This isn’t a miracle cure,” said the doctor. “At best, this’ll buy you some time and most of it will be spent in hospital. Or the treatment could kill you as soon as you start it. Whatever happens, you’ll help us find better ways of helping patients like you in the future.” My dad agreed to do his part for science.

Another doctor completed the trifecta of things my dad feared most – getting cancer, dying young and going on life support. “We need to put you a ventilator,” said the doctor. “You’re fighting for every breath. We need to give your body a rest so we can start treatments as soon as possible.” My dad signed up for that as well, knowing he might never regain consciousness so he could get injected with a potentially lethal cocktail of drugs.

Before going on life support, my dad wanted to make sure important things weren’t left unsaid between us. He somehow kept it together even though he was overwhelmed, terrified, furious, exhausted and sad. I did not keep it together.

Our talk was my dad’s parting gift. He could’ve asked about all the missed birthdays and Father’s Days. Why hadn’t I visited, picked up the phone or put a card in the mail? But he didn’t go there. He was forgiving, gracious and kind. He said what I’d always known but hadn’t acknowledged or said in return. I’d assumed there’d be more than enough time for me to be a grown up and make amends.

Unlike my dad, I left something important unsaid during our final talk. I never said thank you. My dad had grown up poor and somehow managed to break the cycle. He became the first in his family to go to university. I can remember riding shotgun to campus in his rusted out Volkswagen Beetle and running around the map library in the geography department. He worked his way through school while being a dad in his early twenties and keeping a roof over our heads.

My dad scrimped, saved and sacrificed. All his lunches were brown-bagged. His vacations were staycations. His only impulse purchase was a jumbo-sized rear-projection television. He never drove a new car off a dealer’s lot. He stuck it out in a job that was wearing him out.

He did all of that year after year to build a better life for his family, to give us the opportunities and experiences he never got. And he pulled it off.

So a very belated thanks to my dad. You did good, right up to the very end.

Happy Father’s Day.

Quit pruning your tall poppies at work (review of Lisa Bragg’s Bragging Rights)

Your work speaks for itself.

The cream always rises to the top.

And good things come to those who wait and pay their dues.

Wishing this is true doesn’t make it so. If you’ve bought into these myths, know that things won’t go the way you hope.

While you’ve got your head down, less competent and unremarkable coworkers are talking their way into opportunities that could’ve and should’ve been yours.

“Rules and the status quo aren’t set in stone,” says Lisa Bragg, author of Bragging Rights: How to Talk About Your Work Using Purposeful Self-Promotion. “The notion that we shouldn’t talk about our accomplishments with pride because it isn’t polite limits our human potential, and it keeps power limited to the old gatekeepers.

“We’re having the tough conversations about what’s going wrong, but we’re struggling to have the conversations that should be easy – about our successes, accomplishments, experiences and performance.

“It’s an essential exchange in the world of work – to be seen and heard and to see others.”

It’s not just self-sabotage that does you in. You might work for an organization that’s caught up in the Tall Poppy Syndrome.

Instead of being celebrated, high performers are cut down. They’re dismissed as posers. Self-promotion is seen as immodest and impolite. Feelings could get hurt by the rest of the team.

“Tall Poppy Syndrome occurs when people are criticized, alienated, disliked or rejected because of their success and achievements,” says Bragg.

“There’s a massive cost to the people it impacts and the organizations where this permeates. Those who are a cut above the rest, high achievers, or different and eccentric will be cut down to meet the field of mediocre performers.”

This is how you wind up with bad managers, lousy leaders and an exodus of people who are good and great at their jobs.

It’s worth asking who holds the garden shearers and why they’re so quick to prune.

Are they trying to save their self-promoting colleagues from ridicule and resentment? Or are they trying to save themselves and defend the status quo, knowing that their colleagues’ brilliance throws their lacklustre work into sharp relief?

Bragg’s come up with a bragging rights strategy for purposeful self-promotion. It’s about knowing the answers to seven questions. How are you? Who are you? Who do you serve? What do you know? Who do you know? Who knows you? And what’s next?

“I want you to feel comfortable putting your work in the spotlight. I want you to feel so comfortable talking about your work as success, right out in the open, in the daylight. For all of us, I want bragging and self-promotion to be so common that both are expected, accepted and nurtured. I want us to expect it of ourselves and encourage it in others.”

Encouragement also needs to come from enlightened leaders. Put away your organization’s garden shearers. Recognize and celebrate your tall poppies. Shine the spotlight on your hidden gems. When you pay compliments, don’t let anyone dismiss or downplay their achievements or drift into self-deprecation.

According to her research, Bragg says 85 per cent of respondents know they need to self-promote more and 90 per cent believe they need to self-promote to get ahead in their careers.

Bragg can help you gain the confidence and skills to do it right and be a role model for all the hidden gems and tall poppies at work and in your life.

Photo by Corina Ardeleanu on Unsplash.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed more than 600 business books since 1999.