Chicken or Egg?

February 3, 2025

Good morning! We did it — you and I! We survived January — and the Feast of Ground Hogs! Next big holy day:  George Washington’s birthday, but wait… is there another one between now and February 22?Get those cherries ready. Were you at DAVOS?  What did you learn?

• The same mistakes as always:
  • In our rush to access the technology associated with Generative Artificial Intelligence we risk forgetting about people.
  • And, what is our #1 failure, always?  We forget about our people — and their need for knowledge, information, connection, relevance, and the absence of fear.
  • People AHEAD of the curve, please, AHEAD of the curve.
• We are starting to learn the power of the press — and the freedom of the press — are not absolute.
  • They probably never were, but… it was — and still is — a bold idea.
• According to Morning Brew there is a 1.3% chance of a recently-discovered asteroid hitting Planet Earth in the year 2032.
  • Have you watched the movie, Don’t Look Up?  Might be time to watch it again… it’s pretty good.
  • This asteroid, by the way, is not as large as the one that decimated the dinosaurs, but it could do very significant damage.
  • How do you feel about 1.3% odds?
• Here is counterintuitive information, if it’s true.
  • Air quality in most places in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest is trending worse over the last decade,
  • whereas in the most highly-populated and polluted areas of the northeast and southwest, air quality is, on average, getting better.
  • Places like Fargo, Bismarck, Brainerd, Portland, and Seattle have 30%+ worse air quality than a decade ago.  (E.P.A.)
  • Of course, how could the worst get worse (it could) — and how could the pure air not be affected by the worst air sooner or later?!
• Watch it if you dare:  Beautiful Boy, 2018 — a full-length movie starring that Bob Dylan guy.
  • Trigger alert:  Danger, danger… if you have experiences or trauma related to the brutality of drug or alcohol addiction, use caution before deciding to watch.
  • Traumatizing, real, raw, tragic, sad, hopeless.
  • No, wait… there is always hope, gotta be.
• The newly-hired CEO of Starbucks (from burritos to coffee?!) is earning $96,000,000 his first year.
  • When you think of it, the company probably makes that and more from consumers in less than a day, do the math.
  • (Do one-third of us purchase a coffee each day?  Oooops, I’m forgetting worldwide.)
• The M.I.T. Sloan School is suggesting the following three attributes and characteristics as the Secrets to Success for leaders:
  • Fairness — Curiosity (long a favourite of Without A Vision!) — an appropriate and healthy sense of humor.
• Chicken or the egg?
  • Organizational culture is the set of shared values that guide how work gets done.
    • There used to be a debate about whether culture predicts high performance — or whether high performance results in a healthy culture.
    • Evidence now overwhelmingly supports the former.
    • But, for a business (organization; e.g., nonprofits, too!) to harness the power of culture, it needs mid level leaders across the organization —
    • the managers and team leaders — to go beyond believing they are responsible for culture to actively building it.
    • Research revealed mid level leaders often feel they need to endorse cultural norms rather than enrich them,
    • by which we mean supporting expressions of cultural norms and values as they arise in smaller teams.
    • We also identified key behaviours managers at any level of an organization can embrace to become culture builders.
    • Specifically it was found that the most successful mid level leaders find ways to link the culture of their organization —
    • its official set of values — with the culture that plays out in the narrower and vibrant daily patterns of interaction.  (Harrison, Rogers, Etc., et al.)
  • This is a good place to insert your best analogy: _______________________________.
• Here are some counterintuitive data — IMAO, at least.
  • New car sales/ registrations in Minnesota (the point of origin for these Musings) was relatively flat year-to-year at about 188,000.
  • People purchased 28% more Lexus cars than the year before (2024 vs. 2023), 19% more Volkswagens, and 11% more BMWs.  (Minnesota Automobile Dealers Ass’n.)
  • The key to these data, of course, is the word, “more”… so maybe Ford did OK, too, but just not dramatically “more” since it was already on top?
• They’re back and cuter than ever!  Panda
• “What is more important in a library than anything else — than everything else — is the fact that it exists.”  (MacLeish)