Where’s the Beef?

In 1984, the Wendy’s restaurant chain ran a smart commercial about an elderly lady who walked into a competitor’s hamburger restaurant, ordered their “Big Bun hamburger” and was greatly disappointed with what she was presented with.  As she looked over the sandwich that was all bun and no burger, she yelled out the famous phrase “Where’s the beef?”.

As a strategy guy looking over many of the challenges facing us today, the same question comes to mind.  Think of the challenges that are swirling around us these days and assurances from political, military and business leaders to “trust us” as the challenges continue to grow.

Lately as these and other assurances fall flat, I think of the old Wendy’s commercial and have to ask:

“Where’s the beef?”

Whenever anyone challenges the message of “Trust us” in these or other areas, we are met with a number of reasons (or excuses) why trust is all we have to go on.

Here are some of the ones we are given:

• National security – sharing what we know will compromise your safety.
• Confidentiality – sharing what we know will jeopardize corporate confidentiality.
• Complexity – the problems and solutions are simply too complicated to explain to everyone.
• Timing – we don’t have time to stop and explain this; we’re off to tackle the next “thing” of an urgent nature.  Other timing related excuses include things such as “if we delay execution too long, a corporation will suffer or a military opponent will gain the upper hand and you don’t want that on your hands, do you?”.
• Over-estimation of risk – we know there is less risk than you think there is, so there is no need to stop and engage in a pointless dialog about a problem that is not as bad as people think it is.
• Intelligence – we are experts at this, you are not, so whose opinion matters more?

What some of these leaders need to remember is that the electorate and people at large are a lot smarter than they realize.

Fortunately for these leaders, many people are crushed with the weight of keeping their families above water on a daily basis and so they can’t take the time to stop and say to today’s leaders:

“Where’s the beef?”

Some people who do ask the question are easily intimidated into silence using a variety of techniques.

I think if we could finally get many of these leaders to be totally accountable and transparent around their challenges and intentions, then we would truly see the real risks (or lack of) with many of the things that face us.

When we all have knowledge of the challenges before us, we tap into a much larger group of people who can contribute to solutions.

And then, maybe then, we will truly move closer to our phenomenal potential on this planet.

Have you asked a leader lately “Where’s the beef?”. 

If you have and you didn’t like the answer, keep asking.

If you haven’t asked the question, why haven’t you?

Regardless of how proactive each of us is in contributing to the world, we all reap the harvest, good and bad, together.

Let’s make it a bountiful, sustainable harvest.

We can choose to correct our behaviors or we can choose to do nothing and eventually, our behaviors will be corrected for us in a process that I refer to as the Great Correction.

I’d rather own the process than be owned by it.

How about you?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed blog “Where’s the Beef?”, please click here.

The Value of Results - Do We Care Anymore?

I was recently speaking to someone who has a position of influence within the Canadian Government and he was going on and on about how great Canada's influence is in the world.

“After all”, he said, “Canada was a driving force behind the land mine treaty of the 90s and the Kyoto Accord and we both know how fantastic both of those initiatives were”.

I reminded him that the players who own 97%+ of the landmines in the world never ratified the landmine deal and even Canada has never lived up to the measures outlined in the Kyoto Accord.

"It doesn't matter", he said proudly, "It's the principle behind it that counts.".

Is that true?  Do we really believe that results don't matter and that life has become filled with the mantra of "good intentions are good enough"?

As I look back over my professional career, I see some glaring examples that support this theory and so I am reaching out to the readers today to prove me wrong.

I want to be proven wrong for if this is an accurate assessment of where the world is going, then we have greater challenges before us that make our current challenges look pretty tame in comparison.

It seems in a world focused on hype and appearance, that it is possibly better to create images of unlimited potential, secure the funding to deliver it, not deliver it (or deliver a small subset of it), disguise the result and then celebrate it as exceeding our expectations.

Maybe that's ok when it comes to the small stuff in life - the important projects that don't really matter.

Of course for those projects, if they don't really matter, why are we wasting our time on them in the first place?

But if we do it on larger scale projects where health, safety, or fiscal, social or ecological responsibility are on the line, then we need to take a closer look at who is delivering one thing while describing the result as something else.  Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch comes to mind.  Click here if you want to see it (warning - there are some delicate words in it).

After all, If we accept a description of a result that is not accurate, it is not the fault of the person delivering the inaccurate message. 

It is ours.  They only gave us what we wanted to hear and not what we needed to hear.

Shame on us.

I understand all the reasons people give as to why this phenomena happens.

That’s all well and good.

However, let’s forget about the reasons and look at the results.

Results still matter …. I hope.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

To see my detailed musing on “The Value of Results – Do We Care Anymore”, please click here.

Accountability and Authenticity

As I dressed this morning, I donned a pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt and prepared to meet the day - nothing significant to report there.

However, to a small band of entrepreneurs in New York in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Tuesday was Yellow Shirt Day.

Every Tuesday, my team and I would all wear yellow shirts and would go for a walk during our lunch break and compliment other people who wore yellow shirts.  The reaction from strangers on the streets of New York covered a broad spectrum, ranging from humorous to angry.

The co-founder of Yellow Shirt Day, Narender Nath, was killed in the World Trade Center less than a year later during the horror of 9/11.

Narender came to mind this morning as I realized I was wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday and I thought about how he lived his life versus how the media tells us we should live.

The media encourages us to focus on the disaster all around us under the guise of informing us.

If only we could get some breathing room from all of this gloom and doom, we reason, then we could be more true to ourselves.

Narender looked at this challenge differently.

He knew that if he waited for the opportunity to be authentic with himself and with others, he would wait forever and would be incredibly frustrated as he waited.

Narender believed that our world is what we believe it to be.

The media wants us to believe it is all coming apart.

Narender believed it to be one of unlimited opportunity for living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy.

I know you believe this also.

As many experts say and as Narender practiced:

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yes, it is an overused statement.

But perhaps it is overused because we still haven’t learned the truth within it and so we need to keep hearing it.

How do you see the world today?  How badly would you like to see it in a different light?

Look around you – there are many people who are ready to collaborate with you to create that world.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS – A guy by the name of Mike walked into the coffee shop as I was writing this.  He was wearing a yellow shirt also and so I couldn’t resist introducing myself and telling him the story of Narender and Yellow Shirt Day.  As he left, he laughed and said “maybe we can start Yellow Shirt Day where I work”.  That would be cool, Mike!

It sometimes doesn’t take much to influence someone else in a positive way.

Simple actions touch hearts and in turn influence minds.  Whose heart are you touching today?

For more detailed musing about Accountability and Transparency, please click here.