Spontaneity in Business

Spontaneity in Business

The best webcam on the market today for the home office is the Logitech C920 HD Pro Webcam. After hundreds of hours of online instructing, meeting, and socializing, I have put this claim to the test. I created several video conferencing stations around my home to avoid being stuck in one place or position. I have tested numerous webcams and this one is by far the best. The video and sound that it produces are high quality and the system resources it consumes to do it are comparatively small. Contrast, for example, Microsoft’s webcam. After using it – or rather attempting to use it – for several long meetings, I just threw it in the trash.

Logitech has the opportunity to dominate the webcam market right now. Due to COVID-19, for the past four months and continuing indefinitely, businesses have been forced to modify how they deliver products and services, how they conduct meetings and conferences. Customers who would not have considered video conferencing are now happy to get something more than a phone call or an email. Logitech missed the opportunity because it failed to deploy spontaneity.

Spontaneity is responding to a new problem or an old problem in a new way. There is a lot we don’t know about Logitech. What we do know is that prior to COVID-19 there was no spontaneity at the work table or that the leadership did not value the spontaneity that was at the work table. There was nobody at the work table saying, “Hey – what if there is a catastrophic event that requires us to increase our production 100 fold, how could we pivot and make that happen?” We can learn from Logitech’s mistake. We can invite spontaneity to the work table. And when it shows up, we can listen.
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Brandon Blankenship
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Economic Hope

Economic Hope

When I approached a red light in July-hot downtown Atlanta yesterday, a group of young people gave me hope about the economy and about people generally.

They purchased a bunch of bottles of water and ice, placed it all in a cooler and were selling cool water bottles for $1 each. I made a rough calculation that they were making at least 100% profit. They were providing a desired product. At a convenient place.

A spontaneous initiative using tactical empathy to deliver a valued product or service. That is economic hope for the future.

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Brandon Blankenship
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Moral Leadership Is Part of the Plan

Moral Leadership Is Part of the Plan

The political genius of the founders of the United States is that they juxtaposed two competing concepts in their minds at one time. One concept is that base human nature can be observed and it should be woven into the structure of government rather than rejected. The other concept is that it is possible to design a structure of government that is somewhat utopian – where people have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There may be a form of government that better addresses those two competing concepts than a democratic republic but history has not yet revealed it.

Even so, democracy is an oppressive form of government by definition. There is always a majority that oppresses a minority. That is why the founders ultimately enumerated certain rights. The majority is quite capable of fending for itself. Certain rights are protected so that the minority can equitably fend for itself. These rights empower the minority in its opposition to the majority, especially where the majority is coercive. Consider the power of free speech, free assembly, and arms. If there is a national morality, it can be witnessed in the debate between the majority and the minority.

Morality is holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct

Built into the design is an assumption that the relationship between the majority and minority would not just be governed by the Constitution or even law itself but by moral people. Read and hear what they said:

George Washington – The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.

John Adams – Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

John Jay – No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom, both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts…

Samual Adams – … good morals are the only solid foundation …

Alexander Hamilton – When morality falters the Pandora’s box of corruption, crime, and decay set in to be followed by the demise of the nation.

And we have to let go of the myth that someone is not a moral leader because they did something immoral. There are those who would set George Washington’s contribution to zero because he was a slaveholder. Those who would set Martin Luther King, Jr.’s contribution to zero because he was unfaithful to his wife. Moral leadership is based on the totality of the person.

And the totality evidences a person who privileges empowerment over de-humanization; encourages the loud, messy moral debate between the majority and the minority, privileges truth over doublespeak, and eats only after everyone else has been fed.

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Brandon Blankenship
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To Really Know Someone Start By Admitting That You Don’t

To Really Know Someone Start By Admitting That You Don’t

Perceived omniscience. To perceive that you know everything. If you live long enough, you might just figure it out yourself. You might just know that you are right and be proven wrong in a dreadfully public way. If you live long enough, two very smart people will tell you the opposite thing and tell you how certain they are that they are 100 percent right. One of them is wrong. Or both of them.

The same thing happens with people. As long as I perceive that I know everything about a person there is no reason to question, to investigate, to explore who that person might be. So, it isn’t until I admit that I really don’t know them at all that I can begin the journey of knowing them.

That one reason couples can be married for years and not know each other. Business partners can work together for years and not know each other. Lifetime friends can not know each other. Yet, you and I, in the course of an afternoon, can know each other.

Consider that you know the person you are spending time with today. Consider that you might be wrong. Start the journey of discovering who they really are instead. To really know someone, start by admitting that you don’t.

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Brandon Blankenship
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The Most Learning Happens While Reaching

The Most Learning Happens While Reaching

When I was growing up, I started making model rockets. I started with a kit but after a while, I built my own. The engines I could buy at the store didn’t go as high as I wanted, they were unreliable in wet weather, and I couldn’t buy them locally. Building my own engines might solve all those problems.

One day I was reading through my brother’s high school chemistry book. He was ten years older than me and I thought I might find answers about the proportions of chemicals to mix in my rocket engines, how big (or small) the rocket nozzle needs to be and such. Internet search engines hadn’t been invented yet and books were where you went to learn things.

My brother blew by, slammed the book shut, laughed, and said, “you don’t even know what you are reading.”

He was right. And I don’t hold a grudge for his saying it. But what he didn’t understand was that I had set a goal to double the height that the store bought rockets flew. I did not know how to do it, but I was reaching to learn how. Reaching, that is where learning happens.

I have never fully understood anything in a chemistry book. But today, even after all these years, I remember which chemicals to mix at what ratios and how to calculate the size of the nozzle to make a model rocket engine climb into the sky.

I try to pay my experience forward in a restorative way. When I encounter someone reaching to understand something that might be way too advanced from where they are, if it is my book to give, I try to just give it to them.

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Brandon Blankenship
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Defining Culture of Compliance for Law Firms

Defining Culture of Compliance for Law Firms

While developing the “Culture of Compliance” materials for the Enemy in the Camp continuing legal education course, I struggled for an accurate definition of a “Culture of Compliance.” There are lots of resources surrounding a Culture of Compliance – books, videos, lectures, white papers, etc. Few attempts have been made, however, to define it. I could not find a single attempt to define a Culture of Compliance in the context of a law firm.

To me, law firms are unique organizations in this regard as several of their collective sworn duties give safe harbor to those who intend to work against a Culture of Compliance. For example, the duty of confidentiality encourages groups within the firm to safeguard client information not just within the firm but within sub-groups in the firm. This lack of openness has shown to be fertile ground for non-compliant attorneys and staff employees (sometimes referred to as a Corporate Silo). To restate, the lack of openness resulting from the desire to protect client confidence gives a hidden enemy room to act out of sight.

In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, explains why the definition is so elusive. The “Culture” is not one thing that can be identified. It is a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole – a system. His definition is found in his search to define morals:

Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible.1

When defining a Culture of Compliance in a law firm (or elsewhere), each of these things or parts that make up the system has to be developed in such a way that they work together to form the Culture. Each thing or part omitted leaves room for a hidden enemy.

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Brandon Blankenship
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  1. Haidt, Jonathan, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are divided by Politics and Religion, P. 224.