Some of the stories and interviews are in and of themselves shocking, but the general theme probably doesn’t feel like anything new or surprising: money powers political considerations, political considerations determine who has money.  For me, the compelling parts were the simple narratives and examples of just how much time and energy the people who ostensibly represent U.S. citizens spend thinking about and raising money, and what distasteful things they have to do as a part of that.

I also appreciated the reminder that for the most part, this system is able to continue because voters can’t be bothered to hold their representatives accountable to a higher standard.  However hard we might try to pretend lawmakers are trying to do the right thing or that our systems of government are only incrementally worsening, it really is a wonder that the country isn’t perpetually in flames.  (See how cheery I am after listening, don’t you want to join me?)

Thanks to Andrea Seabrook (Earlham College class of 1996) and Alex Blumberg for some really absorbing, eye-opening, depressing stuff.  We ignore it at our own peril.

Most of the strife centers around the firing of RP&L General Manager Steve Saum; the short version is that the Board of Directors unexpectedly removed Saum from his position after a negative performance review, and Saum along with others are concerned that he wasn’t given due process.  After the story hit the media, there’s been additional concern about the way the RP&L Board has (or has not) communicated the reasoning behind their decision and what it means for the future of the utility.  There’s a story in today’s Palladium-Item with some new revelations about the proceedings.

Few are in any good position to pass judgment on these matters.  In my limited interactions with Steve Saum I’ve always found him to be a person of good intent and competence in his leadership.  I also know most of members of the RP&L Board well enough to say they are people of good intent and great care for the future of RP&L and the City.  (Full disclosure: I ran unsuccessfully for election to the RP&L Board last year.)  And no matter what you think of any of their actions or decisions, it’s just a painful and messy thing when matters of someone’s employment and livelihood (or managerial methods) become a topic of public conversation.

But even with the limited facts available about this series of events, it seems there are some missed opportunities to reflect on moving forward:

First, if an employer thinks an employee is performing poorly, the annual performance review is not when they should find out about it. That this apparently happened in this case is the sign of a broken review process.  If indeed Mr. Saum had gone from performing “commendably” as his last review indicated to “unsatisfactory” and not serving the needs of RP&L, or even if he was just rubbing members of the RP&L Board the wrong way, as his supervisors they had an ongoing responsibility to communicate that clearly at the first sign of a problem that might even remotely lead to his termination. “Here’s our concern, here’s why this is a problem, here’s what we want you to do about it, here’s when we’ll check in again.”  If the board members were getting employee calls about Mr. Saum’s managerial decisions, they had a responsibility to include him in a constructive conversation about how to address those employee concerns well before they were used as evidence of his own poor performance.   Yes, there are some kinds of incompetence or insubordination that might necessitate fast, decisive action, but there’s been no indication by any of the RP&L Board members that Mr. Saum’s failings were so serious as to immediately endanger the future of the utility.

Second, in any given employment conversation, if the boss or supervisor is an elected official, the rules of the game change.  The same is true if the employee is in a leadership position of some prominence or public scrutiny, such as the head of a public utility.  Put those two together in the context of any kind of disagreement, and you have a recipe for an uncomfortable situation at the very best.  We should wonder whether it makes sense for elected members of the RP&L Board to be conducting performance reviews of the RP&L GM.  Are they in the best position to know how well the GM has performed?  Is there too much of a power imbalance for it to be a collegial, respectful conversation when disagreement occurs?  Or will the pressures of public scrutiny always mean that these review conversations are a power struggle instead of an opportunity for true professional development?

Third, an employer has a unique burden to bear if they’re going to give someone a negative performance review without firing them on the spot.  If you’ve just told someone they aren’t doing well enough at their job and then asked them to get back to work, this can put them in a pretty difficult position for figuring out what to do next.  It’s important to provide some clear next steps, especially when what happens next affects a lot of other employees, not to mention RP&L’s in-progress projects and customers.  That someone is frustrated about a negative performance review is not in itself a cause for their termination.  That they ask hard questions about the processes and information used to create that review is not a cause for termination.  Of course someone is going to be defensive if you’ve just told them they suck at their job. Of course someone might want to take some drastic actions to try to get on a more solid footing.  But if a supervisor and employee can’t have an honest  and open – even if tense – conversation about their different perspectives on how that employee is performing with a focus on how best to move forward, then the review process itself is probably a waste of time.

Why does any of this really matter to the rest of us?  Isn’t this just between RP&L and Steve Saum?

If there was some sense that this was an exceptional case of miscommunication or poor HR practices, I might not bother to blog about it.  But I hear too many stories in our community of employers and employees missing opportunities for more humane and constructive conversations around areas of conflict or disagreement.  The Really Cool Foods closing in November represents some of the worst of this: having employees show up to work only to be blocked at the gate as their employer announces going out of business that day.

The RP&L Board’s treatment of Mr. Saum is different, but no less a setback in any efforts to find a model of “doing business” that honors complexity of differing interests and needs, human dignity and effective conflict resolution. I don’t claim to be any expert at this, and as an employer myself who’s had to struggle with these issues, I know I still have much to learn.  As with every such case, it seems worthwhile to try to learn some lessons that will help us know how to do it better the next time around.

In the meantime, let us hope for some kind of clarity and closure for Mr. Saum and for members of the RP&L Board.

If you’ve followed this blog you know that I am a consistent advocate for transparency in government leadership, and the topic was raised a number of times during last year’s election season.  I appreciate the paper bringing focus to this issue, and look forward to the conversations that result.

Here’s the full text of my editorial submitted for today’s edition:

Most people don’t like to have their judgment questioned or their mis-steps revealed, less so in front of other people. It’s human nature to want to be well regarded and to avoid embarrassment. So we can empathize with elected officials and other community leaders who don’t like the “burning sensation” that can come when their decisions or deliberations are exposed to the bright light of the public view.

But does the potential sting of that exposure mean we should shy away from the pursuit of transparency in those matters? Or do the potential dangers of power abused for personal gain, fraudulent use of taxpayer resources or other wrongs trump the temporary personal discomfort of those who have asked to be representatives of each of us in matters that affect all of us?

Maybe we can’t imagine a modern “Watergate” happening at the local or state level, and we know that most public servants are trying to do the right thing most of the time. But we also know that regardless of political party affiliation or the best of intentions, human beings are complex and historically subject to the temptations of influence and authority. We also know that in difficult economic times, there is no room for even the trivial mis-use of tax dollars.

So let our community leaders strive not just to meet the basic legal requirements of disclosure and transparency, but to proactively offer the documents, reports, data and on-the-record conversations that will make members of the public their collaborators in government efficiency, instead of their adversaries in a struggle for power and information. Let those who have volunteered to be stewards of our hard-earned dollars be completely accountable to our questions, our concerns, our challenges to their judgment…even when it’s uncomfortable, and even when it might lead to embarrassment. And when an elected official struggles with the burdens of disclosure or the challenges of transparency, let the rest of us affirm with our words and our votes that we will always reward those who favor sunshine over secrecy.

And outside my comfort zone it was, but also incredibly enjoyable.

The instructor Kevin (a professional actor and playwright in his own regard) has a background that includes the Second City improv comedy theater in Chicago, and so he made heavy use of Viola Spolin’s techniques for teaching improv.  There were lots of exercises and games designed to train us how to create an environment with only our bodies and maybe the occasional folding chair, how to show a character’s age, social status, mood, origin, destination and other qualities by showing instead of telling, and how to build simple objects or circumstances into a full-fledged scene.  We didn’t really start using dialog until the last few classes; building the foundation of movement and environment had to come first.

Beyond the parts that seemed a challenge for most people in the class (“stand in the center of the group and start boldly singing something until someone relieves you” or “create a character with a happy left leg”), I found myself acutely aware of the stiffness I need to shake off when it comes to graceful physical expression.  It’s one thing for this here introvert to be able to think of something funny or to make a funny face or motion in the caring presence of friends or loved ones, but it’s another matter entirely to think of funny things to say to an acting partner I don’t know very well, living fully and vulnerably into the quirky physicality of a character invented only seconds ago while also not losing track of where I set down the invisible beer mug I was just drinking out of.  Wow!

But I really enjoyed those challenges, and have new appreciation for what any actor – and especially improv actors – have to juggle in their work.  And the rule that successful improv is about always confidently saying “yes” to the situation and then building on it seems to have application well beyond the realm of acting – what would it mean for your business meetings, relationship conversations or exchanges with strangers if you were always forced to respond to your discussion parter by saying “yes, and…” instead of “no…” or “but…”?

I can’t claim that this learning experience made me an actor or even a better comedy improviser, but it did help me learn some things about myself and how I relate to others in the physical world that I know will be valuable to me.  I also met some funny, talented people and had a great time doing something very different (thanks Kelly).  And if anyone needs help visualizing how a man with springs for legs acts in a fitness center while talking to another man who weighs 500 pounds, I’m your guy.

I won’t be able to attend, but as an employer of some younger professionals who gets to hear some of their concerns and struggles “engaging” in life in Richmond, and as someone who has spent my own young professional life in Richmond, I want to offer a few initial ideas about how to help connect and mobilize that demographic.  (This is in addition to the ideas already being submitted and discussed at RichmondBrainstorm.com.)  My hope is that others will add to the list over time:

1. Expand the traditional definition of a young professional.
   Sometimes efforts to engage young professionals are focused on people who work in offices and stare at computers or paperwork all day (e.g. people like me).  What about professional artists, professional carpenters, professional mechanics – how can we engage them too?  I think that by including others with different backgrounds, skills and experiences of the professional world, we bring diversity and creativity that will benefit the larger goals of a YP group.
2. Don’t tie community involvement to the ability to the attend specific events.
   Some young professionals have time to attend networking events, outings, and community service days, but some don’t.  In addition to scheduling specific events, create flexible opportunities for engagement that can be done at any time of the day.
3. Welcome newly interested YPs in a special way.
   It can be intimidating for someone to show up at “the monthly young professionals event” if you’re not sure what to expect, who you’ll know, etc.  When someone expresses interest in getting involved, issue a personal invitation to them and a few others for a smaller gathering – lunch, coffee, drinks – and get to know their interests and background.  Then it will be much easier to introduce them to other YPs who they can connect with, and will make their experience of their first larger gathering more personal.
4. Promote “unknown” YPs to serve on community boards.
   Often the boards of directors for local organizations are interested in incorporating perspectives of YPs, but are only really aware of YPs who have made a name for themselves by being well-connected, long-time residents or unusually active.  This is the safe approach, but what about asking relatively “unknown” YPs to join boards or at least serve on committees, so that organizations are benefiting from fresh perspectives and new skill sets in addition to folks who are already a core part of the community?
5. Create social gatherings that don’t require everyone to be “on.”
   Young professionals may be good at networking, but that doesn’t mean they want to be in professional networking mode all the time.  Opportunities to visit with other YPs and build some shared social/cultural experiences (watching the game, bowling, hiking, canoeing, visiting the museum, etc.) without the pressure of presenting your best professional self can sometimes yield more meaningful and engaging encounters than events designed around traditional professional contact.
6. Let advocacy and involvement be initiated by YPs, not organizations who want to benefit from YPs.
   Once there’s a critical mass of young professionals engaged and getting together, organizations around town will start to notice and say to themselves, “hey, we should include The YP Group on X” or “we should ask The YPs to help us with Y.”  Saying yes to this can be good, but it means that the issues and activities YPs engage in are driven externally instead of internally.  Poll the YP group regularly to see what kinds of issues and activities they want to participate in and spend time on, and then make contact with organizations that could help make that happen.
7. Promote dense population centers with walkable, bike-able opportunities for entertainment.
   Cities with thriving YP populations tend to have thriving cultural centers too, where someone can either live in the heart of it or easily make their way there, surrounding themselves with other people and plenty of opportunities to wander in and out of retail stores, restaurants and entertainment venues.  By discouraging sprawl while focusing on the Center City and Depot District areas for residential and commercial use alike, we have a better chance of creating areas where YPs can feel at home.

Those are some of my ideas for helping young professionals engage in Richmond, Indiana.  What’s on your list?

Today, I’m happy to publicly invite others in Richmond and Wayne County to join in this effort to raise the level of public discourse in our area.  Whether it’s commentary on the local arts scene, restaurant reviews, political news analysis, your experiences with religion and spirituality, technology tools, sustainability tips or perspectives on education, we welcome contributions from those who feel they can provide a local connection and provoke conversation that might help move the community forward in some form.

What’s more, you can make a little money while you do it.  We want to encourage compelling writing while valuing the time of our contributors, and so we’re also offering a small amount of compensation as an incentive, currently US$20 for each contribution accepted for publication on the site.

You can learn more about what it means to become a contributor to ProgressiveWayneCounty.org, and I hope you’ll help spread the word about this opportunity to encourage new kinds of dialog in our community.

Putting aside the substance of the legislation for a moment, the whole debate has been a fascinating exercise in political framing:

Using “Right to Work” as a label is a clever and strategic way to frame what the legislation is about.  If you are “for people having jobs,” how could you dare be against their “right to work”? Any critic of “right to work” laws has to try to find some other meaningful label to use for themselves that isn’t derived from the original name, but in doing so they lose some of the attention of voters.  (From what I can tell, the phrase “right to work” was introduced when a group of business owners in the southern U.S. formed the National Right to Work Committee in the 1970s to try to work against union efforts.)

The “Big Labor” bashing that happened last year across the Midwest set the stage for the “Union” label itself to be tainted to some degree in the minds of many voters (“Wait, are those unionized teachers really just trying to squeeze out every last taxpayer dollar while they sit around in luxury doing nothing? Golly!”), and so at least in part because of this association, I don’t think unions have succeeded in being the rallying point for those who oppose these proposals.

A related frame that gets invoked all the time around this legislation is “creating a pro-business climate.”  If you are for “right to work” then you are for creating an atmosphere where businesses can thrive.  If you are against “right to work,” you must hate commerce, capitalism, business and the American Dream.  Of course we know that “pro-business” doesn’t have any particular meaning; someone who traffics in human slaves can say they are “pro-business” but that doesn’t mean they’re operating in the interests of most people.  But again, critics haven’t succeeded in presenting a suitable alternative theme – being “pro-worker” or “pro-living-wage” – and so the debate is framed around whether you are for or against business, period.

Another frame that’s emerged in Indiana is the idea of Democratic state representatives who have used procedural moves to prevent a quorum for voting on this legislation as “cowards” who are “shirking” their duties and who don’t have the courage to just come and vote.  Democrats have argued back that they are trying to stand up for the interests of their constituents, but it’s so effective for Republicans to use the image of “we showed up to do the business of the people and guess who didn’t?” to beat up on Democrats as insolent children, and so they’ve used it every chance they get.

In a culture that generally celebrates “fighting back when you’re being bullied” instead of “call out the bully for the chaos and disrespect they bring,” Democrats haven’t been very effective at calling those fouls.  The closest they’ve come (as seen in e-mails I get from my state rep) is talking about how the legislation was “rushed” and “rammed through” and then about how “disappointed” they are in this “massive mistake.”  By only being against what their Republican colleagues are perpetrating and lacking a frame that everyone can be for, they end up mostly looking like sore losers.

I won’t even get into the “class warfare” against “job creators” being waged by “job killers.”  You get the point: In Indiana and elsewhere, conservative Republicans are dominating the frame game.

If we put aside the frames and labels that polarize this debate, we could see more clearly what’s happening in the statehouse.  We could see a broken system of legislating perpetuated by vindictive, reactive and politically driven agendas that don’t necessarily represent the interests or priorities of voters.  We could see politicians manipulating the fears and relative ignorance of their constituents to go for the quick win in that day’s news cycle, instead of thinking about what’s actually good for those same constituents in the long run.

Even if it passes, the “right to work” legislation has been a failure and an embarrassment for Democrats and Republicans alike.

As a resident and employer here I can say that I think the intent of the bill is unhelpful for Indiana workers and a waste of taxpayer time and dollars to pursue given other more pressing needs.  But more significant and important for me is what the process and framing being used signals about the dishonorable intentions of lawmakers and the foundering condition of governance in the Hoosier State.

The story of Google that matters for most people is how it affects their daily lives (searching, web browsing, mobile phones, mapping/navigation, email, calendaring, YouTube, news, etc.) but I appreciate that Levy’s book focuses on the personalities and processes driving the evolution of what is arguably one of the most transformative corporate and technological entities of our time.

It can be easy to forget that behind some of the game-changing products and services produced by the company, there were real people thinking through issues of privacy, dealing with cross-cultural considerations and navigating interpersonal dynamics all while trying to make a living and find a sustainable business model.  They had/have desks, meetings, slide shows to give, families to care for, water-cooler conversations to have, and Levy does a great job capturing and re-telling those stories from the days of “two guys in a garage” all the way through the present days of life as an international corporation.  This is not always done with the most critical eye – those with concerns about Google’s operations or policies may be put off by the extent to which this book is an homage – but on the whole I think Levy is fair in calling out the moments when individual Google employees or the company as a whole screws up, and placing those in the context of Google’s good intentions.

A few themes in what Levy’s book revealed about “the Google way”:

1. “Ready, fire, aim” – Google does the bold, innovative or creative thing first, then (for better or worse) readjusts, re-calibrates, rethinks it later
2. When it comes to figuring out “what works,” studying data and using a scientific approach is more important than intuition or speculation.  Despite their many successes with this strategy, Google experienced failures when a data set wasn’t complete, e.g. when it doesn’t include the preferences, fears, doubts and hopes that are trapped in people’s heads or hearts.
3. Especially in its startup years, Google tried to only hire “A” people; engineers, researchers and thinkers who were either the best in a field of study (or headed that direction), who were driven by the excitement of discovery instead of money, and who could internalize the big picture goals of a project and then go make it a reality.  In their hiring they screened for intelligence, applicable knowledge, experience and adaptability, and as a result, they operate more like a research university than a traditional corporation.  Bureaucracy, office politics and administrative overhead seemingly emerged only with reluctant concessions to what was absolutely necessary to function at a larger scale.
4. If you want innovation in your organization, it’s important to create an environment where challenging accepted ways of doing things is not only permissible, but normal at all levels of authority and leadership.
5. It’s good to introduce questions of morality into the day-to-day operations of your organization.  At the same time, the more people you have, the harder it is to maintain integrity around living out a given set of moral values.

Google’s history is particularly of interest to me in that the company was started within a year or so of the company I co-founded, Summersault.  We were in a dorm room instead of a garage, and our goal was making great websites, not letting others search them more effectively.  There are not just a few differences between Summersault and Google today – billions and billions of dollars more in annual revenue, tens of thousands more employees, a private jet here, a self-driving car there, etc. – but I don’t think its too conceited to say that we started our company in the same spirit Google did, trying to help people make the most of the web…they just did it on a much bigger scale.

I was recruited by Google several years ago, to be a part of the team that keeps the company’s software application infrastructure up and running.  I really enjoyed my conversations with their staff about what it would mean to work there, and it was exciting to think about being a part of something so technically interesting and so global in scope.  In the end I knew that my passion and focus remained with what I’d started here in Richmond and so I declined to continue in the interview process, but In The Plex only reinforces what a great adventure that alternate path through life could have been.

It seems safe to say that most people underestimate the significance of what Google is and does.  Steven Levy’s book is a great read, and a great insight into how this one company has transformed the Internet age.

You might open a newspaper soon to see an ad like the one at right which appeared in my local paper a few days ago.  It encourages you to “Stand With Main Street” to protest “special treatment” of Amazon.com that allows them to forgo the collection of sales tax on online purchases, resulting in an unfair advantage over “every Hoosier brick and mortar retailer.”  I don’t usually see full-page ads related to Internet commerce in a market this size, so I thought I’d investigate the issues at stake.

The question of taxing e-commerce transactions is a bit complicated to be sure.  If you have a strong and concisely-worded position on it, you’re probably running for national political office, or a Libertarian, or both.

On one hand we can see the clear financial and psychological advantage that an online retailer has with customers who are weighing a purchase from a local store that charges tax against an online store that doesn’t, and maybe offers the item at a slightly lower price too. At the same time, that online retailer may be benefitting from the infrastructure that sales taxes others are collecting help pay for (setting up warehouses, trucking goods around state roads, etc.).

On the other hand, we know that laws around state sales taxation were created prior to the age of the Internet and that the models of online business and affiliate sales have completely changed the way the world does business, and current attempts to rewrite them in order to create short-term bandaids on ailing state economies are probably not in the best interest of business innovation, especially when they favor large retailers (online and off) and send small businesses and people who make a living as Amazon.com or eBay affiliates into a quagmire of tax collection bureaucracy.

(In my company’s work building online stores for our clients, we’ve experienced this firsthand; helping a small business calculate the city, county and state tax rates that affect what they’re selling customers and then keeping that information current can take up a lot of their time.  Services like taxcloud.net are helping make it easier.)

Some states are moving toward “origin-based sourcing” for taxation, where the tax rate is based on the county/state where the vendor selling the goods is located.  This keeps the taxation process simple (the retailer has to know their local rate and doesn’t have to worry about where the buyer lives or what the rates are there) and encourages governments to keep their tax rates competitive for businesses that might locate there.

Indiana is still a “destination” state, where the tax rate is based on where the goods are being sent.  Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, not generally known for advocating taxation, is supporting the move to make Amazon.com and others pay sales tax so that the government isn’t “picking winners and losers.”  But as others point out, the playing field of retail taxation is already off-kilter in favor of big businesses, which get tax credits, exclusions and special pricing that make it very hard for mom-and-pop shops to compete with them.

Back and forth, back and forth.

I don’t have a strong feeling about what direction we should go (hence disqualifying me from running for office), other than that all of this highlights how complex and outdated the modern system of taxation is, for online commerce and pretty much everything else.  When small businesses or people selling used exercise equipment from their basements have to hire tax law professionals just to sell online and be fully compliant, we’re doing something wrong.  I’m not sure the “Stand With Main Street” ad advances the conversation any, but it hopefully encourages more awareness about what’s at stake.

1. Build stuff people want, offer products and services people want to buy
2. Attract and retain quality talent
3. Raise capital to get fledgling ideas to the point of sustainability, create a density of “investors”
4. Create a world class culture that encourages people to stick around even when times get tough

These may not be comprehensive factors, but they could be useful metrics to view your city with.

If I had to rate my own city of Richmond, Indiana, I’d say we have plenty of room to grow in each area:

1. We have a lot of great infrastructure and a variety of desirable products/services but we’re pretty scattered on how to sell them in the global marketplace
2. We think we know a lot about what kind of talent we’re looking for, but there’s often a disconnect between that knowledge and our level of investment in actual attraction efforts
3. We don’t always make efficient use of the limited capital that’s available to us, but we have a lot of generous and heavily invested people living here
4. We’re often short-sighted when it comes to building an attractive culture, but there are pockets of people who see the big picture and are working for change

How does your city do when you look at it as a start-up company?

Perhaps the most striking point for me in Bischke’s piece is the question of leadership.  He says we need more than just strong or experienced leaders, we need people who can think like entrepreneurs:

As we roll into an election year, many cities are in a state of crisis. Budgets are a mess and job growth has been minimal for a good swath of the country. Cities in need don’t just need strong leadership, they require transformational leadership. It’s no easy feat but it’s likely that the more that mayors view their cities through an entrepreneurial lens, the better they will be able to adapt to a rapidly-changing world.

Almost any city across the country could adopt the slogan “Adapt or Die” and it wouldn’t be an understatement of the predicament they’re in and the approach needed to get out of it.  Many traditional businesses are in the same boat.  The businesses/cities that will not only just survive but flourish are the ones willing to use non-traditional methods to make ground-shaking changes in the way they operate.