Phil Robertson and shameful religion

It was released last night that A&E was going to reinstate Phil on his own show.  First let me tell you that I have nothing against Phil, the fact that he says ridiculous things is the only reason I know he exists in the first place.  The idea that A&E hired and pays him $6,000,000 per episode to be exactly who he is and then gets upset about it is a bit like the frog and the scorpion.

Now on to the shameful religious right.  In a statement released and cited in an article here, a group known as the Faith Driven Consumer stated (speaking of A&E) "Do they also now embrace the Biblically based values and world view held by the Robertson Family and the millions of Faith Driven Consumers?"

Are you really asking if the world embraces the views of Jesus, the guy they beat, spit on, drove nails through his hands and feet and then impaled on a spear after he was dead?  Secondly, what are faith driven consumers?  When I read the book of Acts, they seem to be giving a lot more then they are consuming.  My faith doesn't need any worldly possessions to drive it, I'm not sure about the millions of others out there.

Which is more angering, the ignorance of a Bible believe group or their greed.  To ever equate faith with consumption is a slap in the face to Christians throughout the ages.  Do you think a believer living underground in China, terrified that they will be imprisoned for their faith is excluded from the "millions of others out there" that are part of the faith driven consumers?  Do you think the homeless, possession less Jesus would be included in their ranks?

A&E is hypocritical and ignorant, but that is what they do.  They are a faithless, profiteering corporation, don't be angry at the scorpion for being a scorpion.  The Faith Driven Consumer group however, who knows what they hell they are which is a lot scarier.

Wives and Girlfriends

Most people treat their jobs like wives and their wives like girlfriends.

Why are we so concerned about quitting a job when it sucks the life out of us?  Why do we attach so much of our identity to our jobs?  Why do we selflessly pour ourselves into jobs with extra hours, the best of our efforts and try to never show up looking like a bum?

Why don't we get concerned when our relationship with our spouse is having the life sucked out of it?  Why don't we attach more of our identity to becoming "one" with our wife?  Why do we peel off the suite, put on the sweatpants and bum around our homes?

Maybe it's perfectly backwards.  Maybe your life will be fine if you leave your job and be ruined if you leave your wife.  Maybe.

Sleep around with jobs, break up with them and go for a hotter one.  When you get bored leave.  Try not to get abused by it or abuse it, but certainly use it.  Get a little selfish and get what you need out of it. Maybe.

Blast Emails 2.0

Seth talked about the downfalls of blast emails today, you can read it here.  It is a great read about how we market ourselves to large lists..

Seth's point on email blasts is if you don't have 15 seconds to personalize an email then why would I have 15 seconds to read it.  Great point.  But let me add a side note to it.

Corporate emails.

Corporate emails break every rule on Seth's list.  Imagine if you were in charge of corporate emails at a fortune 500 company and you had a very simple rule.  One email per day, and one extra "put out that fire" email per week.  That's it, six emails a week.  Imagine what that would do to the quality of emails going out.

The guys over at 37signals.com say to build a company like a museum, you don't get paid for what you put in but rather what you leave out.  Maybe we should apply that philosophy to more than building companies.  May the art of being a curator is an art worth pursuing in all of life.

Leadership trap

The collective we of writers and pundits discuss leadership so often you would think the whole country would be filled astonishingly good leadership (You can judge how many great leaders we have).  Many of us strive to be good leaders and eat up this vein of self help writing. But alas, this post is not about how to make great leaders or attributes you "must" have to be a great leader.

This post is because some of you are already good leaders.  And 100% of you great leaders are all going to do the same thing at some point: die.

Maybe you die as CEO of your company or maybe you get hit by a bus and actually die, not really the point.  The point is there is roughly a 100% mortality rate among great leaders which means that there is 100% succession to a new leader at some point.

There are clearly 3 types of leaders when it comes to succession:

1)  Salt the earth leaders.  The ones who only care about what they do and don't care about who will take over next.  To the extreme, they don't want to die a moment too soon so they will go out of their way to kill off any perspective new leaders.

2) Best intent leaders.  These leaders are a lot like parents, they want the best for the next leader and the best they can imagine is themselves but better.  Life is a graph, and the curve must continuously slope upwards.

3) Lastly there are leaders who bread leaders, not upgraded clones. Think Joshua and Moses.  Joshua was not Moses 2.0.  Think Joe Montana into Steve Young.  They breed the next leader, or more aptly, they help the next leader simply become who they already are.

So what kind of a leader are you?  Do different kinds of leaders work better in different situations or should every leader strive to be a level three leader?

The Long Con

Do you know what con man is, literally?  The con is short for confidence, a confidence man.  It was brought around in 1849 for somebody who builds your confidence and then uses it to defraud you of something.  There are a lot of different kinds of confidences used to rip people off, but one stands above the rest.

The long con.

The long con is intricate and complex.  It takes patience and perseverance.  We are all participating in a long con right now, it is quite literally our life.

Everybody in life wants to a confidence man: your business partners, your president and your pastor, your family.  Most don't know that they are con men.  Most don't even know what role they are playing in the confidence building or what/whom the payoff is for.  But they are players in the con and so am I.

Every time you tell somebody to go to college, to investment money, to get smart debt, to work smarter at their job, to work on their business not in their business, it's all confidence building that they are doing the right thing.  And yet so often, people are not doing the right thing.  So rarely are people just crushing it at life.

So when you are speaking to somebody, what are you building confidence in?  Because it is a thin line between being a confidant and being a con.