If you're like me, you spend a fair bit of time at SBX for business networking, relaxed client meetings or to "change your air" while working on a deadline. So, I was surprised to see that Starbucks felt if necessary to stop preparing pots of brewed decaf in the afternoons. Seems that tossing the unused brew when it's a ripe 30 minutes old was getting costly.
Erik Deckers over on Twitter shared this link with me earlier today. Here's a taste of the article (a quick and good read):
Good news for marketing agencies, printers, and direct mail companies from B2B Marketing magazine. According to their “exclusive” survey, only 25% of all business-to-business marketers are going to cut their budget. But nearly one-third of them are actually increasing their marketing budget, while another 44% are leaving them intact. That’s good news for anyone in TV and radio advertising, digital marketing/advertising, and, of course, direct mail.
As I’ve been speaking to other marketing professionals around Indianapolis, they’ve all been saying the same thing: marketing spending is staying flat or increasing.
Increasing? In a down economy? Absolutely.
That may seem counterintuitive to some, especially the bean counters, but spending more on marketing now is smart. That’s because the 25% of marketers cutting their spending are your competitors. They’re hiding with their heads in the sand, which means their message isn’t reaching customers, which means customers aren’t buying, which means income is shrinking, so they bury their heads a little further. (Read on)
Right on! I'd also add R&D and strategic planning. Here's why.
My Great Grandmomma was a woman from the American South who came North to escape the oppression of Jim Crow and find economic opportunity. Not educated past the 6th grade, she was filled with what the old folks used to call "Mother Wit," a kind of smarts that can't be taught in school. Momma Lena would look at the times we're now living in and remind me that "Trouble don't last always." She'd tell me to do everything I could to get ready for my blessing, adding "be ready to be found." That last bit was in her attempt to get me married off (Momma Lena, my Hubs is a marvel and I'm sorry you never got to meet).
Now, my spiritual path is one that this church-going lady would scratch her noggin hard over (I call myself a BaptiBuddhist Yogini), but her message keeps ringing in my head as I talk with fearful clients.
But, I digress: This won't last.
If we continue to freeze our spending completely, when the clouds pass, we'll be left in the ditch...by those companies that invested in (wait for it...wait for it...) marketing, R&D and strategic planning.
We see examples of firms that invested deeply even when they didn't have the sales figures to back up that investment.
A few years ago, when Apple's sales were sluggish and their customers spoke hushed tones about the Apple gospel of "not a PC," they invested--mightily. They learned more about themselves, their customers and the market. They created new products there weren't even names (or desires) for yet. They studied trends and created a few of their own. They created knowledge centers and centers of learning for customers and employees. They crafted their message. They created communities and systems in which those communities could interact. They cemented their brand. They became evangelists.
Apple and many other companies have succeeded by not giving in to scarcity and fear, but this says more about their strong, adaptable culture than, perhaps, anything else. That company's marketing systems are built to flex. Having gone up against the Microsoft Machine since their inception, they're accustomed to being the underdog with far less in cash reserves than their Redmond-based cousin.
That means that they had to get smart in whole new ways. Having proven that they could build a brand, largely, by word of mouth, they used their Mother Wit to design marketing systems that grabbed the attention of their customers--both those present customers and those who would have never thought to buy anything from Apple. We all know people who own PC's and iPods or iPhones, or shop at the iTunes Music Store.
I do think, however, that spending the same money on the same things is a no-go. The markets are fluid, malleable things. During this downturn, companies can--and should--be taking a close look at their knowledge systems (training, R&D, etc.) for ways to beef-up knowledge sharing and folding new learnings into development. Companies can also be looking (as they should have been along) at who their customers are, what they want, how they want to get it and how they want to be interacted with.
In short, this downturn is a "teachable moment," speaking volumes about continuous improvement in marketing, communication, product design, planning and execution--all the systems that make up a company.
The statement in the post about nonprofits and not cutting marketing or mailings is pretty brilliant. The recent presidential campaign is a testament to the power of marketing and of the creation of new, flexible systems for communication of messages to customers (in the political sense, voters). These nonprofits (Obama, Clinton, McCain, Romney, etc. for President) told us quite a bit about scalable messages and scalable marketing systems. And let's not forget, while the Obama campaign was raising money by the semi-load in its last month, we had already been in a recession for the better part of a year!
Just sent off a happy gram to the good people at Change.gov about small business. Here's what I said:
Small business is the engine that drives the economy, but the government has had little real focus on small business development in years. Multiple heads of the SBA in the Bush Administration, little in terms of money and talent. Little commitment. Now, we see the erosion of small business and the very agency tasked to support business growth is struggling for its own survival.
If the SBA was a small business, they'd be having their own fire sale.
Here's my coaching for you: Transform the Small Business Administration and appoint a new Director--fast!
SBA Scope
The scope of the SBA is too broad to help all of the very diverse business needs: non-employee microenterprise small businesses (0 employees), microenterprise small busineese (1-10 staffers), small-small businesses (10 - 50 or 75), small companies (75 - 250 employees) and larger small businesses (250 - 500 people).
Right now, with very little resources and scant support, they are tasked with job creation. There's little time, energy or resources for anything else.
REQUESTS
SCOPE
Divide up the SBA into business support segments (as described above). Given the fact that there has been shrinkage among non-microenterprise small businesses (something like 12% over the past half dozen years and dramatic growth among microenterprise (especially non-employee micro-e businesses), where are some inescapable facts: we can't afford for these businesses to fail (and add more job seekers to the tightening job market) and these businesses fill an important role in America.
Create an office of microenterprise small business soon, lest these businesses disappear.
SCORE
While I am sympathetic to the plight of new businesses, I am also cognizant of the fact that with its reliance on SCORE rather than existing consultancies, the federal government has set itself up to compete with some of the very small businesses they are there to support.
Further, the SBA is training business leaders that the services of consultants should be cheap or free. They never learn that as their businesses grow, their needs for more advanced business consulting and support services grows as well.
HR
Finally, I find it shocking that the SBA does not offer specific HR services and consulting to the businesses they support. With all eyes on the meltdown over executive compensation, union wages and other weighty human resources matters, I can't help but wonder whether the SBA is enabling the next generation of businesses to overpay execs, exploit workers, and hobble themselves with comp and benefits decisions they should (1) never have made and (2) would have made differently with specific counsel.
Thanks for listening.
Best,
Lalita Amos, MRHM
Total Team Solutions, LLC
OK, now this was a little bit of a brain burner even for me (and we all know how much I like my noggin scorched). I asked the Hubs out of a cheap Sunday night date--books, computers, Kindle and coffee. So, I'm a cheap date. I already knew that.
Anyway, the Starbucks was the now usual dichotomy--great service in a dirty store (with the nastiest stains on the upholstery). While there, I noticed that the 10 by 10 foot area rug in the center of the seating area wasn't very securely tacked down along one edge. I noticed it--not because I was trying to strike up a conversation with it. I tripped over it. Every single time I walked to the counter or the restroom (I did say I was drinking java, didn't I?). I felt like less of a busted ballerina when I saw a cop trip over it on his way out the door.
Um, oops!
So, before I left, I thought I'd bring it to the attention of the shop keepers. Here's how that conversation went:
Me: Excuse me. I wanted to let you know that the carpet isn't secure on that one side (pointing) and that I and one of the cops had tripped over it.
He: Yeah, I know.
Me: I saw that you'd used some other kind of tape on it. A little double sided carpet tape would take care of it.
He: You saw we'd tried to fix it already (smiling tiredly--end of shift). We were going to get some electrical tape (!) but the store'd already closed.
Me: Electrical tape?
He: We can only buy from certain stores. Our DM said if the electrical tape doesn't work, for us to get what we needed from another place.
Me: Um, OK. Night.
I used to work for the world's largest producer of Bibles. Curiously, they're the same company that produced that Madonna Sex book book a few years back. There was a pervasive atmosphere of religiosity. But what there wasn't was tolerance (got to find a better word than this) for other faiths or faith traditions. Like the sometimes maligned Chick Fil-A which routinely probes applicants on their family status and religious beliefs and practices but has come under fire for limiting opportunities for those in the "wrong faiths" (like Catholicism or Judaism), companies which provide space for religious expression (as opposed to religious accommodation like foot washes for Muslim adherents) are being watched for signs that they have an express preference for some expression over another.
This article from Workforce has some great tips for a faith friendly workplace like this from GM "If you want your faith group to be in Ford’s Interfaith Alliance, you’ve got to support the ability of other groups to meet." Read on.
BEGIN RANT
As I mentioned in my tweets, I was a speaker on a panel at Purdue. Wonderful program that connected minority and women-owned businesses with purchasing managers from Central and West-Central Indiana. Sure enough, after having dozens of business cards pressed into my hands (and passing out my share to people I'd like to stay in contact with), it's started: The unsolicited subscriptions to email newsletters.
In the old economy (pre-AOL/Compuserve/Netscape of the early 1990's), it wasn't inconceivable to get a paper and ink newsletter when someone got your business card. Back then in the pre-Can SPAM Act days, all one had to get was an address (which they could find in the phone book) and they were off to the races. Now, Can SPAM Act or no, people assume that if you give up that email address, you're asking--begging--to be added to their email list. Better yet, the really industrious ones think that selling their email mailing lists is what Martha Stewart would call "a good thing."
It isn't. If I get one of these, I get 10 and they don't just magically disappear by force of will.
I've maintained that networking (more aptly discussed as "prospecting with people who are uninterested in buying") as we've come to know it is such a bad idea. I routinely remove myself from those mailing lists...and toss the card of the offending biz person.
Better would be to ask how the person who gave out the card wants to be interacted with and then writing that on the back of the card. The chances of deepeming a relationshipo through relationship-appropriate communication is enhanced.
'If You Didn't Want My Newsletter, Why'd You Give Me Your Biz Card?"
Glad you asked. I thought you could keep it on file in case you met someone who could benefit from my services (or your associates, mine), that we could consider getting together to learn more about each others' businesses, that we might get together for tea to strategize ways in which we could both win (like a joint venture or other collaborative opportunity), that you might be interested in the free items on my website, that you might want to listen to my podcast and possibly appear on one, that you might use the biz card as a book mark...
Being added to your SPAM list was the last thing on my mind.
END RANT
(See? That wasn't too bad, was it?)
Now, before any of you smart alecs go off mumbling that I've got a Kindle habit, let me be the first to say it: Hi. My name's Lalita and I'm a Kind-a-holic. Garland's found me slumped on the couch in front of the fireplace, glasses askew, clutching my reader like a just-returned foundling.
It's a cautionary tale.
Though, I will say that I've met some very interesting people hereabouts. Kindle owners, all. Today, it was Patrick, the man who started my Kindle crush. Like any self-respecting crack dealer, he let me have a free taste. He handed his Kindle over to me--a stranger--at SBX and let me play with it for the better part of an hour while he checked his email. Seeing him today, we was beaming when he saw me walking back to my table with my Kindle, which I've named (in the Amazon system), Gizmo (food and water--bad!).
He was with two friends, non-believers, to be sure, and leaned into me to tell me about all of the Kindle loot he'd gotten and still coveted. When he got to the subject of Kindle covers (he's got 3 or 4), he remarked to me, a fellow conspirator, that he "could see how women can get that way about purses.
And the bridges of understanding get stronger.
Friends have asked me to post a little about what I'm reading on my Kindle. Here's the short list:
Books
I shifted to a smart-enough phone from my Kyocera Palm-based smart phone a year or two ago and almost experienced projectile vomiting, shuddering and sweating--and that was just in walking into my local Wireless Toyz store to talk with them about the possibility of a switch.
President-Elect Obama, for security and other reasons, will more than likely need to let the Blackberry go. I wish him luck.. Oh, and a mop and bucket.
I was very small when I first heard Miriam Makeba. I'd come downstairs early one morning to see my mother putting on some music to jam to while cooking, cleaning and doing laundry. Momma danced through the house all day and when I asked her what the songs meant, she said she'd gotten the records from Sophia, a South African student who was studying at Purdue, just across the river. We'd ask her next time we saw her.
Sophia was like nothing and no one I'd ever seen--she was tall (or so she seemed to me at 8), mahogany, had a melodious accent, wore thread and beads in her long hair and was a refugee. Since the 1960's the South African government had been rescinding the visas of traveling students and others. Effectively, she and the others in her little contingent, were exiles.
Sophia brought us Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. Momma brought Sophia Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis. What an exchange.
Our little house in that newly-integrated neighborhood (that would be us) was filled with people, music and foods from around the world.
Though it was that day I spent with Sophie--she was teaching Momma how to do my hair South-African style (in little semi-rural Lafayette, Indiana!) that I found out what Ms. Makeba was singing about. Her songs were about rural life there. They were about the evils of apartheid. They were about a deep love of Africa...about Zulu life. Sophia would say "here, she's saying 'Momma hurry. Don't let the Afrikaner police catch you!'' and "here she's singing a wedding song. Can you say the letter ! (the symbol for the click)." And my mother would pass her more beads and thread.
Ms. Makeba has suffered greatly before and during her exile. Before leaving South Africa, she and her band mates had been in a terrible accident with another car. The emergency medical personnel only helped the whites. Ms. Makeba's Black South African friends were left to die on the side of the road.
Human road kill.
Years later, she would return to South Africa a heroine. Nelson Mandela persuaded her to return after his release. He wrote this, in part, of her passing.
Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years.At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us. (read the rest)
So, when I heard that Ms. Makeba died on Monday while singing in Italy, I pushed back my desk chair and listened quietly to the retrospective on her life. And remembered...dancing through Momma's kitchen, singing songs a far away woman had taught me to sing, with beads clicking in my hair.
...and no, I'm not talking about stale Halloween candy.
But here's a nifty new Kindle trick: Tweeting. I've figured out how to post tweets using my Amazon Kindle (which is relieving the premature curvature of my spine for all the biz books, magazines and HR, OD and brain/behavior journals I was lugging around like a Sherpa). Using the experimental functions, I created a bookmark for twitter and sign in. Then, I just posted as usual.
As many of you know, I love technology--the smaller the better. Oh, and pens (mmm, pens...), but I digress. So it should come as no surprise that some of my early dates with Garland, my fabu-hubs, were to Best Buy, Comp USA, Office Depot and the like.
Better than dinner and the movies. Yeah, Garland got off cheap.
So, I hate it when a tech retailer struggles. I also hate it when that bad feeling I have about a business turns out to be right. Circuit City, never a personal fave (and, people get this: I'm pretty catholic in my tech retail tastes...just give me stuff to covet) announced last Wednesday that “it will immediately close and liquidate 155 stores and lay off thousands of employees as it struggles to survive an increasingly dreary holiday shopping season” (read the rest of the WSJ story here).
Circuit City, the nations second-largest electronics retailer assured investors that it won't be closing, but that it “planned to reduce about 17 percent of its domestic work force, and slash operating, payroll and marketing expenses. Circuit City currently operates 721 stores and outlets in the U.S. as well as 770 mostly smaller locations in Canada, and employs roughly 55,000 workers including holiday help.”
I'll say it: Yipes! CC’s PR plate twirlers have got their work cut out for themselves in spinning this as one of those Martha Stewart "good things" in advance of the lucrative holiday shopping season. Second thought, with K-Mart ramping up a "buy lay-away" campaign (Lay-away is something I remember from my childhood...when we were poor) and Wal-Mart expecting banner sales, they may have seen the writing on the wall in choosing to weigh anchor and run.
In a (begin snark) brilliant move (end snark) to cut costs, CEO Philip J. Schoonover, thinking that floor sales in his company was something a trained chimp could do, decided to cut jobs--starting with his most senior, most experienced (read: most expensive) workers, leaving the stores to be operated by demoralized, dispirited, underpaid workers who were waiting for the next axe to fall (they didn't have to wait all that long).
Dumb. No, shortsighted and dumb.
The market's immediate response to the 3,400 employee restructuring? Customer defections due to poor customer service (that was me) with falling earnings for dessert. Here's my question: while Schoonover was making HR policy willy-nilly, where the sweet hell was his Chief HR Officer? This from the Circuit City website:
Mr. Jonas joined the company in 1998 as director of associate relations. He was promoted to assistant vice president of corporate human resources services in 2000, was elected vice president in 2003 and was elected senior vice president in 2004. Prior to joining the company, he was employed by Toys "R" Us, a worldwide retailer of toys, baby products and children's apparel, from 1985 until 1998, including serving in the position of director of human resources for the Babies "R" Us division from 1996 to 1998.
The financial bailout of the financial markets, a Hail Mary play to be sure, may cost US taxpayers in excess of $700 billion. That's about $2,500 McDonald's apple pies per American as one late night funster commented. It's also about 220 Rolexes or 175 Prada bags (I need to go shopping).
Already organized labor is positioning itself. Instead of wanting a piece of the $700 billion pie, it wants Congress to add money to the pot to protect employee pensions.
Jimmy Hoffa, Jr's Teamsters Union, which boasts over 200,000 retirees, fired off a missive to Congress this week asking for money to bail out union pension funds which were negatively impacted by losses in the investments that backed those pension funds. If one considers that most pension funds for large-scale employers rake in about 7% from their investments, the fact that these funds have been getting spanked in the markets is a terrifying thought to retirees, let alone active employees. What the Teamsters and other union want is for the government to skip the penalties they would normally impose on employers whose pension fund management decisions preclude their pensions from paying out as promised. Instead, they ask the Feds to give thees employers extra time to make up the shortfall cause by their tanked investments.
Teamsters and other unions also support limits on executive pay. But that's another post.
I was recently asked to weigh in on the topic of "women having it all."
What, of course, is triggering the increased interest we're seeing on the topic of "work-life balance" (don't get me started) is Sarah Palin's entry into the political race and her purposeful political branding as a "hockey mom" with five kidlings, a hubster and a full-time job.
I have to admit: I had to corral my gag reflex.
I'm often asked, as a speaker, to address this issue. So here's a little of the less "cleaned-up" version of my thinking on the topic.
We are--men and women both--on a treadmill in the workplace, trying to jam more into the average day than our forebears crammed into the average week. We’re information glutted with more raw data in the Sunday New York Times than was accessible in the entire lifetime of a person living just a hundred years ago. On the home front, the advances in technology that were supposed to shave significant time off our weekly chores have us now doing more housework than our great (and sometimes great-great) grandmothers. Voicemail, PDA’s, email and the like have allows work to leave a greater and greater footprint on our personal time.
And things--important things--are dropping out.
I heard from one friend--a man with a demanding job (really, a job he allowed to become demanding) answered his email on his PDA that one last time and his lady love...a truly spectacular and gentle human being, spiked the offending tech. Two points! She'd had enough of being a WINO ("wife in name only"). He was Missing in Action.
How We Got Here
In the late 18th and throughout the 19th, the aim of industrialization was to shift the largely agrarian workforce into wage laborers. Expanding on the need to produce which stemmed, in part from the Protestant work ethic (combined with the notion of Salvation by Works), this great project combined fear of God with fear of want. Wages were kept purposely low to ensure that workers returned the next day.
A class of Willing Slaves was created.
During the next several decades, workers began to revolt over long hours, dangerous working conditions and child labor. Days shrank to 10 hours and then 8, children as young as six were prohibited from work, locked doors (to prevent those slacking workers from hieing-off) were unlocked. Trade unions were formed to negotiate for better pay, benefits and working conditions and employment laws were passed to eliminate—at least in the sphere of public policy—the codified ill-treatment of workers.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, a non-agrarian, family was able to live relatively well on one salary and it became easier to acquire a house and car. These children of the Traditionalists (people born between 1925 and 1945) were the leading edge of the working Baby Boomers and, because of the post-war boom, were in high demand.
Fast forward to the 1970’s and it starts getting very unpleasant. Inflation mushroomed, gas prices exploded and so did the work week. Between 1977 and 1997, the workweek expanded by over 8% (43.6 hours to 47.1 hours a week on average). A 70 hour work week became de rigueur.
At the same time, anti-discrimination laws began to address gender and pregnancy discrimination. Good thing. Because of inflation, the single worker salary was just not enough to cover expenses or sock away a little extra for education or retirement.
In the mid-1980’s the term “work-life balance” emerged to describe the separation (or lack thereof) between work and home. This generation was dubbed the “Me Generation,” called “yuppies” or “yummies” (young, upwardly mobile professionals), “buppies” (Black upwardly-mobile professionals), or members of the “Age of Isolation.” Latchkey and shuttle cock kids were found to have increased attention deficits (over-stimulated and exhausted) and poorer diets. Our kids are getting fatter and (can I say it plainly) dumber.
And a new industry was born.
What concerns me in the discussion of work-life balance is that there seems to be little concern with whether the work we’re trying to balance is important. Sure, moving things from one side of the desk to the other in a particular workday and schlepping the kidlets to soccer/swim/tap/tai-kwon-jitsu seems laudable, but it that what’s really important? Oh, yeah, and can we make all of that work without factoring out personal happiness and satisfaction.
Talking with a group of women, I heard many explain that they had to sacrifice for their children. Why then, I asked, was it only women that are heard having that conversation? There are a few home truths to consider here:
What Does it Take to Have it All
“Having it all,” as defined by others, takes a whole lot of support.
What I don’t think we’re focusing on is whether people are doing work that matters or that’s workable. As the workday gets filled with ass-covering email tracking, cryptic voicemail deciphering, endless meetings (to “report in” to micromanaging bosses who are poorly deployed), we find ourselves doing less “real work”—work that fulfills strategic intentions and desired outcomes.
When asked “can you really get your two kids to all those events,” I’ve never heard a woman who has been able to say a clean “no—it’s not feasible” or ‘no, that’s too much for a school night” even though that’s their persistent complaint.
Leaders must be selected, placed and trained to better plan, support and counsel, becoming champions of their workers, committed to blasting barriers and garnering needed resources. They must be challenged to be better workload planners, using their prowess to determine how to best use people to fulfill on business strategy—rather than becoming experts at moving piles around. At the same time, in our families, we have to be more focused in the “bigger game” managing our overarching aims: a happy, satisfying family life; personal satisfaction and personal growth and health, well-developed children who can function well in society without becoming time, energy or emotional vampires.
I've got 11 days left on this Master's Degree. So, to start the final crunch, here's some old school, punk style.
"Ant Music" -- an all-time fave.
This week isn't starting off well. First, it was Bernie Mac and now we find that we've lost Isaac Hayes. He died Sunday afteroon after collapsing in his home.
Mr. Hayes was known for his sulty baritone, smoking orchestration and driving beats on such tunes as "The Theme from Shaft."
Here's a sample of what made him great.
Travel safely home, Black Moses. We'll see you on the other side.
Several months ago, I tapped out an article on change that mentioned the concept of neuroplasticity: that an injured brain can repair itself or re-map itself to regain or enhance thinking and brain function. Long the bailiwick of neuroscientists, this ability of the brain to generate surprising shifts in learning, thinking and acting, is now the province of business leaders and those who support them. A couple of books, The Brain That Changes Itself and The Mind and the Brain, both written by experts in the brain function/behavior game, discuss leaps in human capacity that are setting the world of brain science on its ear--blind children in India who are learning to see, deaf children and adults who are regaining capacities to hear that are challenging the notion of congenital deafness, people with hemispheric lobectomies (half their brains removed due to disease or injury) who are operating with minimal deficiencies in physical or mental ability.
Our "hardwiring" is more malleable than once thought.
Why this is an important consideration in business is that we've been taught that diminished brain function is a "given" as we age, that older generations are more "set in their ways" and that there's little we can do about any of it...that we're wired to resist change.
Perhaps not.
In business, I see people slavishly doing what they did before, producing diminished results over time. One maxim I operate under (rather than the mistaken belief that people who can't change simply don't want to) which tends to be a "truism" is that an early, long-standing history of success is the greatest predictor of failure in an instance requiring change. Starbucks kept doing what used to work, long after there was clear evidence that the wheels were falling off. We continued to buy and operate larger, less efficient cars long after it was clear that the price of a gallon of gas was never going to see a buck again. Why? Because it used to work so brilliantly. There was a dictinct payoff.
Harvard professor of psychology, Ellen Langer, in her book Mindfulness, laid it out pretty simply: mindfulness--good...mindless--bad. Looking through the prism of business: Operating on "autopilot" in our businesses and our lives can prevent us from seeing opportunities to shift before our mindless behavior leads us deeper into the weeds (where the crocodiles lurk). Her book, like the other two I mentioned earlier in thi blog post, can be dense reads, but are worth it to begin to understand that we're not in a battle just with our competitors: We're at war with ourselves.
We've all heard this sorry chorus (and if we put on our Big Boy/Big Girl duds, we can admit that we've even said things like this):
Responsibility begins with the willingness to be cause in the matter of one's life. Ultimately, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what's so, and your stand. Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the view of life that you are the generator of what you do, what you have and what you are. That is not the truth. It is a place to stand. No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace you give yourself - an empowering context that leaves you with a say in the matter of life.Claim no responsibility? You're a victim and have admitted that there's nothing that can be done.
-Werner Erhard
