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Delivering a Custom Experience

I’m staying at my favourite hotel in Barbados, the Accra Beach Hotel. What makes it my solid first choice is the very warm welcome I receive after 30 visits, and the high level of service delivered relative to other Bajan hotels. The service is on par with a Jamaican hotel such as the Pegasus and a Trinidadian hotel like The Kapok.

On the other hand, it comes on the heels of my visit to the Marriott in Miami’s Dadeland area (my third or fourth overall).

There is just no comparison between the standards of the two hotels – the Marriot operates at a level that is clearly higher.

For example, I am sitting at my computer in my room at the Accra, and as I scan the room I can enumerate the service defects in my line of sight:

  • the balcony door has putty spots on it
  • there is a black mark on the wall
  • the light fixture needs to be painted
  • the light is blown
  • I had to move my desk to the other side of the room, where the hi-speed access Ethernet port is located
  • the baseboard is dirty
  • there are marks on the ceiling

The overall furnishings are clearly of much lesser quality than the Marriott (or even the Hilton here in Barbados for that matter).

But that is not what got my attention initially. As a runner, I often enter a hotel after a morning run by walking through the lobby, looking like someone who just ran 6 miles or so in 80 degree weather. As I entered the Marriott’s lobby yesterday, the bellman literally ran to his desk, and pulled out a bottle of water for me to drink. This is perhaps the third time he has done so.

In my 5 or so years of staying at the Accra Beach Hotel, that has never happened; nor has anything close to it happened.

I use this example to illustrate the example of a bellman who operates to extremely high standards, although his actions are typical of the staff at the hotel.

The question I have been asking myself is, “What would it take for the staff at The Accra to meet that kind of standard?”

Incidentally, I ask myself the same question. In my career, I have had the fortune to work with and for McKinsey & Co., which is seen by many as the premier management consulting firm in the world. Working alongside some of the brightest people in the world hired from the best schools in the world was an eye-opener.

What remains is a personal goal to operate my company at the standard I witnessed at that firm. This has proven to be challenging!

It seems that the first obstacle that The Accra would have to face is how to very quickly create the standard in the first place. The average Caribbean employee in the service industry is not surrounded by the high standards of service that their colleagues in the First World are privy to. There is no mass-market company in the region that is known for excellent, world-class service (except, perhaps, in their own minds). By mass-market, I mean companies that serve the general public, therefore excluding hotels like the Ritz Carlton or Sandy Lane.

Therefore, it is impossible to tell an employee of The Accra that the service they deliver should be “world-class” like Sandy Lane’s. The truth is that the average employee would have no idea what that experience is like.

Instead, The Accra would have to start by defining the precise experience they wanted customers to have, and allow employees to create it for themselves for the customers. In other words, instead of delivering “world-class service” they would have to deliver an experience equivalent to that delivered to “my best friend” or “my favourite teacher” or “my team-mate.”

Once the desired experience is defined, then the hotel could move on to defining standards of new behaviour that match the experience.

However, there is a limit to what standards can do. The bellman who runs to give me water after a long run is obviously not following a written standard.

Instead, it strikes me that there are two requirements for service to be delivered at this level.

The first requirement is that there must be an inner motivation to deliver the experience. The easiest way to ensure that the right staff is in place is to hire people with a predisposition to serve from the very beginning. For the majority of existing and operational hotels, this is not an option as the staff would be very difficult to change wholesale.

The Accra would have to find a way to directly address and transform the culture of the existing organization.

The second requirement is that the staff would have to be trained to recognize the customer’s experience, and how to produce the desired experience at will. These are tall orders, but they are required capacities that may take a significant investment to perfect.

Interventions to produce these capacities must be developed with an understanding of the region’s peculiar realities, both historical and sociological.

With these ingredients, The Accra could improve its standards, and maybe even deliver a distinct experience that the Marriott could not duplicate.

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Why EVERY Serious Business Should Blog

Now this is just an excellent article written by Robert Scoble on Tom Peter’s website that I think every business owner should read.

The only objection I can think of that a Caribbean executive might have to blogging is that relatively few people in our region are computer-literate. My response is, “if you build it, one day they will come.” In other words, it is only a matter of time until people become computer-literate, and start reading blogs, and by the time a company decides to jump in, the space will be too crowded to be heard.

Also, it is a good idea to create an online dialogue about your company, before someone who could very well be disgruntled, creates one about you… As the article explains, what blogging is doing is taking underground conversations and making them visible. It is a good idea to assume that whatever people are whispering about you behind closed doors, will one day turn up as part of an online conversation (better give up that mistress now!).

Plus, there is a tremendous learning curve to blogging. Only a year ago, I was still puzzled at what the term really meant. Beating the learning curve is just a good idea!

Let me know if you find the article useful, and if you are thinking of blogging also.

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Waiting and the Customer Experience

One of our recent clients is a financial institution serving Caribbean customers. Their interest is in boosting customer service levels, and hopefully gaining a competitive advantage that will result in greater market-share, margins and profits.

This shouldn’t be too hard.

The service rendered by the financial houses in the region is seen by most as mediocre at best, and no company stands out in either the research or in anecdotes in the level of service provided. Our job is to find clues that will assist the client in gaining all that it can to break out of the pack.

One clue that we have found has to do with waiting.

Waiting times, according to the research conducted by De Man, Vandaele and Gemmel of the University of Gent, can be seen to be made up of two parts that seem to be approximately equal in weight: the actual wait, as measured in minutes and hours, and the perceived wait as determined by the experience of the customer. It is becoming clear from the research that if a company is committed to providing better service in this area, then it must become skillful in reducing both kinds of waiting time simultaneously.

To put it simply, at the end of the day it is the customer’s experience that counts, and little else, in defining the level of service delivered.

As a formally trained Operations Researcher, I learned a multiplicity of of tools that can be used to tackle the problem of reducing measured waiting times, ranging from queuing theory to digital simulation, to stochastic modeling. Fortunately for me, I have completely forgotten how to use them!

These tools are helpful, but when used in isolation they are less than useful. Millions of dollars can be spent on process changes that end up making no difference to the customer’s perception.

On the other hand, a company that systematically addresses not just measured times but psychological waiting time is marching more in time to Einstein’s tune, in which time (and space) are relative phenomena. His theories were proven decades after he developed them when empirical evidence was gathered that showed that he was correct in his thinking.

The University of Gent researchers conducted the first empirical study to prove what many researcher have been saying since the early 1990’s — there are specific techniques that can be used to improve customer satisfaction. Some of the techniques include:

  • telling the customer how long a wait is likely to be
  • explaining why the wait will be as long as it will be
  • advising and updating the customer on the progress of the activities on which they are waiting
  • providing effective distractions for the customer that occupy their attention during the wait

Each of these techniques has been found to be useful in changing the customer’s perception of the length of the wait, and their overall perception of the quality of service being received.

Here in the Caribbean, banking is seen as one of those exceedingly time-wasting activities, moreso than many other activities that take less measured time. People carry books, radios and family members to their lines at financial institutions — anything to alter what for many is often a mind-numbing experience.

Most banks provide little more than an extremely sterile and secure environment, free of amenities such as bathrooms, and distractions of any kind. Many are quite proud of this fact. Some are even intent on making it hard for customers to stay in the establishment for too long a time, and are quick to usher them out the door, or encourage them to go elsewhere.

The first financial insitution in the region that is able to change this important aspect of the customer’s experience would win my business, and probably that of many others.

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He Who Writes, Defines

I just mentioned to my wife who is trying to catch up on some Carnival Monday night sleep how much someone like a blogger is able to define memories.

As I was writing a short blog about Carnival Monday in Tribe, struck me that if no-one on the planet chooses to write a public account of the event, then I will have, for all intents and purposes, defined it by blogging about it.

Whoaaaa.

It makes my blogging (which I’m convinced I’m mad to do, as hardly any comments are made to it) take on an additional dimension.

Also, ongoing blogging allows me to define myself (for better or worse) in the minds of whoever spends time reading this, and I’m becoming more and more aware of that, after being quite embarrassed to meet someone who has read what I’ve written. The fact that I met my wife on match.com has come up a few times, for example, to my …. amazement(?) I don’t think about it, and I think I mentioned it in passing.

So, it’s a little strange that for some people I am the “match.com guy” when that is something I hardly intended.

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CAP: Having a Powerful Dialogue

One of the results from the study that was not so surprising was data that we collected that showed that of the different elements of the acquisition communication plans, the most fruitful was the 2-way dialogue with employees. Interestingly, a similar international study done in mostly first world countries showed that this dialogue was much less important (some 25% less agreement as to its usefulness.)

In the absence of trusted information in these acquisitions, we observed that employees had a tremendous capacity to manufacture rumours that quickly became ““fact”” in the minds of a critical number of workers. The effectiveness of 2-way dialogues to correct rumours and address anxieties cannot be under-estimated, and at the same the risks are considerable.

The CEO of one of one firm’’s clients invited several small groups of employees to attend informal breakfasts, at which he invited them to “say anything”. People began to open up over time, until his irritation at their complaints began to grow, until one morning he retorted “Don’t you ever have anything good to say?” in response to one woman’s poignant observation. That was the final informal breakfast he conducted.

The risks of an authentic dialogue are considerable, which is why CEOs and other executives are notably reluctant to conduct them. They can get messy, and in an acquisition situation there is often considerable anxiety. This can get translated into feelings of anger and upset, and most CEO’’s are not well trained to deal with groups of people under these circumstances. This is especially true in acquisitions, when the acquiring executives are usually elated at their financial success in landing the deal, while the employees in the target company could not feel differently.

In the Caribbean, our observation has been that more often than not in public dialogues, CEOs devolve into a kind of parental role, while their employees display varying degrees of child-like behaviour. Dialogues can then become unproductive, looking more like monologues, as the CEO plays the role of someone who can remove the anxiety, when in fact he cannot –– it is inherent in the circumstances and in her people’’s reactions to it.

However, CEOs can be trained to conduct these dialogues effectively, through a combination of personal development (many have ego-issues that only become amplified in public settings) and video-based feedback.

At that point, the dialogues become transformational, and employees and CEOs become more connected than anyone thought possible. This can occur even when the CEO has no hard information to share, but is just able to face his/her employees concerns directly, listening carefully to what is being said and leaving his/her employees with an experience of “we’ve been heard.”

While these sessions can be conducted as Q&A’s, at some point a CEO can develop his skill to go further than just answer questions, which is the most basic level of public dialogue. He can actually take the role of leading difficult conversations that distinguish new principles that can be used to run the company at higher level. While there are very few CEOs that are this well trained, the few that I have worked with who are, consistently generate considerable loyalty and motivation by engaging openly and publicly with his/her employees.

In acquisitions, this skill is invaluable.


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CAP: Planning for a Culture

While it is clear that the Human Resource (HR) function was not used to help plan the acquisitions included in the study, the question still remains: what are some of the things HR would do, if asked?

One key action would be to lead the development of an “Acquisition Philosophy” by the deal team.

There are many approaches that can be taken to undertaking an acquisition. Usually, the company being taken over is at least an average performer, although the majority of the companies included in the study were either failing or had already failed.

Obviously, the acquiring company is making the investment or purchase with the belief that their ownership will make the critical difference in the performance of the company. If this belief were not true, then it is reasonable to assume that the acquisition would not take place. After all, even a successful company would not allow its shares to be taken over in an acquisition unless there was some premium paid. Acquisitions involve significant costs and risks, and no stock-holder in his right mind would undertake either unless he were being duly compensated.

Turning a mere stock-purchase into a successful acquisition, however, has much more to do with the way in which the culture of the acquisition is integrated than the price paid. Our research showed that within the companies we researched, there were widely differing views on the Acquisition Philosophy to be used.

The Acquisition Philosophy has to do with a decision as to what precise combination of vision, mission, values and leadership to bring to the new company to turn it into a financial success in the mid to long term. The Philosophy created has everything to do with a sound understanding of the culture that prevails in the target company, and what interventions need to be created to make it successful.

Different scenarios call for very different Philosophies.

For example:

Example 1: A company being acquired was a combination of entities that had formerly competed, and had all failed financially. The parent company decided to create a culture in the acquired company that was a modified version of the culture found in the parent’s company. The new firm was formed around the same values, vision and mission of the parent, with small changes to account for differences in national culture. The leadership came from the parent company.

Example 2: A very successful company was taken over to help expand the market share of the acquiring company. The Philosophy created was to keep the company intact, and to keep the ownership in the background as much as possible, hoping that the success would continue.

Example 3: A company did not know to create an Acquisition Philosophy, and did not address the new culture of the company and how it would effect integration, except to mention it in passing comments. The company fought fires as they came up in the form of strikes, poor results and a rotating door of successive of leaders, none of whom were groomed for the job.

In our research done in 2001-2, the companies studied came closer to Example 3 than any other. The lack of a coherent Philosophy left them vulnerable and without adequate plans for the many surprises that came once the acquisitions were completed. A complete Acquisition Philosophy may have included the following decisions:

  • Does the acquired company require a new culture, replete with new values, vision and mission that is new and distinct?
  • Or, should the new culture just be the same as the parent company?
  • Is there an intention to have local executive leadership? What will be done to develop it?
  • If a culture change is required, how will it be affected?
  • Will the new company be run by a local board or by the parent company? What are the lines of accountability?
  • Will profits be repatriated to the parent company / country?
  • Is the parent company willing to learn from the acquired company and change its culture accordingly?
  • What will be done (or not done) to send a message to the employees that the change is a positive one, and what is the plan for motivating them and communicating in a way that reduces rumour-driven anxiety?
  • What will be done to help the people in the acquired company bring closure to their past successes and failures?

While the above list may appear formidable, our experience in assisting companies in transforming their cultures tells us that it is more important that the company’s executives come to agreement. It is a fact that there will be surprises and unforeseen events that the executive team will need to react to, and their Acquisition Philosophy can be used to guide them in making the joint decisions that are required.

Doing a perfect job on all the above points is much less important, and cannot be done by anyone other than the players accountable for the acquisition being a success.

A set of Acquisition Values can be developed in conjunction with the deal team, and the implementation team to guide the way in which they acquisition activities are executed. For example, at one company the directors steadfastly denied rumours that an acquisition was being considered.

A week later, they announced that there was in fact an acquisition underway. Instantly, everyone knew that they had lied, yet the fact was never addressed openly. Of course, it was talked about quietly for years after the fact and used as evidence as to why the company’s leadership could not be trusted. A serious commitment to an Acquisition Value such as “transparency” may have guided the team to a different set of behaviours, or to at least a dialogue to resolve the public discrepancy.

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CAP: A Sense of Regret

One of the anomalies we found during the research was a sense of regret in each of the companies studied that the desired synergies did not transpire, in spite of their best attempts.

Synergies were seen as critically important. One of the ways in which this synergy would be measured would be through cost savings, and while there was an average of 83% agreement that cost savings were important, there was only 63% agreement that cost savings were actually accomplished. Most of those came from downsizing after the merger was complete, rather than any other method.

Meanwhile, the companies clearly saw the importance of the cultural fit, as shown by the following:

  • Cultural issues will affect synergies: 85% or 93% (the question was repeated)

Yet, the execution was done quite differently.

In response to the survey questions regarding the pre-deal phase, the following responses were received (with 0 indicating Disagree, and 100 representing Definitely Agree):

How much value did your company place on the following items in the pre-deal phase?

  • Identifying issues and preparing a rigorous plan for conducting the due diligence stage: 86%
  • Assessing the people. Organizational and cultural fit, and the related risks entailed in various combinations: 63%

They were unable to focus on the cultural aspects of due diligence. For different reasons, each of them found themselves working against the clock and focused solely on the short-term objective of being successful at the right price while raising the capital needed.

In some cases, the leadership of the new entity did not create an environment in which synergy was a priority. In some cases the new leadership of the company was more interested in establishing control over the new entity. In others, the leadership tried to protect what had been a winning formula when the difference in national and corporate culture turned out to significant. And in another, the new entity showed only a change in ownership, but no significant change in cost structure, company name, brand or leadership.

At the time of the study, there was no evidence of the kind of cooperation that results in real synergy either through shared talent, intellectual property, technical know-how or consolidation of important functions. There was a feeling expressed that not enough was understood or put in place with respect to the new national culture, corporate culture and kind of leadership required to accomplish this critical goal.

With respect to the issue of how the HR function could have been used, respondents were asked the following: To what degree was HR used to educate the “deal team” about potential people, organizational and cultural risks? The answer was a mere 40%. It seems that in retrospect, they either wish they had done so, or wished that they could have done so, by virtue of having the right expertise at their disposal.

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CAP: A Difference in Perspective

As mentioned in a prior post, the CAP survey results showed that executives desired specific HR-related expertise that they did not believe they had in-house.

At the same time, our surveys demonstrated that there was a significant discrepancy between the perspectives of HR professionals versus other executives involved in the acquisitions under study. Specifically, this difference showed up in response to the question: “What is the right role for HR?”

In analysing the results, we noticed that there was a difference between the two groups, in answers to the following questions. (NB: A 100 point scale was used ranging from 100 / Agree to 0/Disagree. )

What is the right role for HR?

  • Strategic Business Partner: The HR response was 20 points higher (than that of non-HR executives)
  • Advisor to Executive Management: The HR response was virtually the same
  • HR Functional Expert and Implementer: The HR response was virtually the same
  • Project Manager and Thought Leader: The HR response was 13 points higher
  • Steward of the HR Functions: The HR response was 33 points lower
  • Employee Champion/Advisor: The HR response was 21 points lower

While executives seemed to want the higher-level expertise that most would associate as being HR-related, they had a different opinion. They clearly wanted and needed the skills, but they had a hard time seeing it emanating from the HR function.

The widespread nature of the observation (backed up in the interviews) indicates that this is a challenge for the profession in the region, and is not a problem related to a small set of individual practitioners. The truth is, our observation was that HR professionals were not equipped to answer the questions that CEO’s might ask when it comes to M&A’s, such as:

  • how does our company’s culture compare against those across the region?
  • what is the difference between acquiring similar companies in Trinidad vs. Guyana?
  • what are the best practices in integrating two different corporate cultures in the region?
  • who are the HR professionals you know in Belize that could be candidates for an acquisition in that country?
  • how deep is our talent pool and is it sufficient to provide the executive leadership we require to undertake one acquisition per year for the next 6 years?

These are sample questions, but they together comprise the essence of the kinds of questions that Caribbean CEO’s leading M&A’s have that, at present, most HR executives are not equipped to answer.

This is not to cast blame on those HR executives who were in the study. The data and the studies from which HR executives would glean answers to these questions just have not been done, the books have not been published, the blogs have not been written and the discussions have not been had.

Hopefully, CAP might make a useful contribution and a difference.

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CAP: A Search for Expertise

The in-depth conversations that made up the bulk of the interviews conducted in the study were probably the richest part of the experience.

One of the strongest and most disturbing points was the need by executives to have particular distinct competencies at their disposal. Given that the study focused on distinguishing best practices in the implementation of acquisitions, the focus of these competencies are most likely to be found in the HR function.

One response stands out in connection with the following question:
What is the importance to accomplish M&A’’s….. in the area of:
Expertise with people/organization/culture integration? On a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 indicating disagreement, and 0 indicating full agreement, the score given was 94%.

When asked what the current level of capability was to accomplish M&A’s with their organization in the same area, the response fell to 62%.

Our research showed that while executives were looking for this particular expertise in “people/organization/culture integration”, they were steadfast in not looking to their current HR executives and managers for that support.

This dichotomy showed up all throughout the study: a refreshing sensitivity to cultural differences and the need to account for difference in corporate and national culture, coupled with a lack of faith in the HR expertise on staff to provide what they said was needed. We connected that with a variety of roots causes, all of which were mentioned in the interviews:

  • A historical bias to view HR as little more than “Personnel.” In this case the HR executive would have to take the lead in changing the popular perception.
  • An uneasiness with their HR department’s ability and competence to play a strategic role
  • The inability of the HR department to effectively get itself into the fast-moving waters of an acquisition process
  • A failure of the HR leader to clearly establish their knowledge and expertise in the area of M&A’s before the opportunity came up

A deeper investigation of the exact cause would be the subject of a different study.

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Critical Thinking vs. Faithful Following

One of the grim reminders of plantation slavery in the Caribbean is how well we were trained not to think.

To say it differently, it has to do with how well we were trained to follow without questioning. This tendency that I see widespread in our people across the region does not augur well for business, as critical thinking is a key competitive advantage in a world that is coming to rely more and more on knowledge workers, and less and less on manual labour. Recent studies, most notably in the work of Rich Florida’s “The Rise of the Creative Class” demonstrate that cities marked by lower wages and fewer knowledge workers are less successful by almost every key measure: prosperity, crime, unemployment, etc.

The truth is, the colonial powers in the Caribbean did a good job in subjugating large numbers of slaves with a combination of physical force and religious fear. In Jamaica, for example, news of the Haitian Revolution of 1791 in which former slaves set themselves free, while killing thousands of their former owners and master, caused a stir in Jamaica’s white planters class. They too were vastly outnumbered (by more than 10:1, I believe). They too were using brutal, physical methods to subjugate their slaves.

Upon emancipation, it was feared that when the Negroes took their revenge there would not be a single white person left standing. However, that did not happen, and it was not only because of the possibility of brutal repression.

Instead, the fear of God had been driven into the hearts of their former employees. Christianity was unknown to the Africans that were enslaved. Today, there is only the slimmest of evidence remaining in a handful of religions (obeah, vodun, etc.) that the slaves brought to the Caribbean had had any exposure to any other religion than mainstream Christianity.

The religious transformation was virtually complete. Millions of slave and their ancestors were transformed from being Muslims, Animists, Ancestor-worshipers and other religions into Christians.

In the mind of a brutal slave owner, I can only imagine that when a missionary asked a plantation owner for permission to “minister” to the slaves, the owner had no interest in teaching them the liberating power of the gospel and the equality of all people before God! Instead, I imagine that he was only interested in how deeply he could entrench his slaves in a thought-system based on fear that would further subjugate them.

This was not the religion of the ruling class in either Europe or the Caribbean. Nor was it the religion of the ordinary white people in either region.

Instead, it was a customized, weakened and twisted Christian philosophy that was more or less invented by whites were, above else, wanted to maintain control. This control was important in just staying alive, thereby avoiding the brutal fate of the slave-owners in Haiti, but it was also critical in making a good profit.

This determination to make a good profit was of course, paramount, and was the entire reason to have slaves to being with. The minds of the Africans being used to make that profit was seen as a potentially useful cog in the wheel.

But it was just not enough to get the slaves to believe a set of lies and half-truths backed up by scripture. After all, obvious lies can be mis-proven through direct experience by a thoughtful few. This fact is puzzling, as the religious fabric put together by the missionaries and plantation owners now seems so transparent and ridiculous in retrospect, and their motives so patently obvious. Couldn’t a slave have figured out what they were up to, and tell the others?

The final piece of the puzzle resonates even in today’s workplace.

Slaves were taught to follow faithfully. Serious questions, doubts and critical thinking were made evil. The reward for blindly believing was God’s blessing in the afterlife, while the punishment for the sin of doubting “God’s message” was hellfire and damnation.

As a slave-owner, getting this way of thinking into the minds of your slaves signified success of the higher order. It made the job of keeping control that much easier, and reduced the slaves to unthinking, but God-fearing brutes.

Which is what we have in today’s Caribbean workplace, in varying degrees. Not brutes, but workers. Not unthinking, but demotivated and disempowered.

From the book “Why Workers Won’t Work” by M.L. Carter” (a summary of which is available on the Framework Consulting website under Ideas) are the following findings:

  • 76% of workers in surveys have described themselves as “demotivated”
  • Over 51% of supervisors and 83% of rank-and-file workers considered their skills and education to be under-utilized.
  • Some 65% of the rank-and-file workers considered their jobs to be unimportant in relation to the objectives of their organization.
  • Some 66% of supervisors and 80% of rank-and-file workers reported that they are rarely, if ever, consulted about changes that affect their jobs.
  • Some 84% of workers disagreed with the following statement, “In general, the more workers produce, the more management earns, and the more workers will benefit in terms of higher wages and better fringe benefits”.

These are the results of a manager-worker relationship that was born in the slave-master relationship that formally ended in 1838, but has never been discontinued.

Today’s workforce has less and less of a need for manual labourers, and more and more of a need for knowledge workers, yet there is no evidence of a systematic approach to unravelling this historical evil. The results in the Caribbean are clear — the Blacker the country, the poorer it tends to be. In other words, the result of the slave-owners peculiar theology and means of control is poverty, unemployment and crime, and the countries that had more slaves with which to inflict this ideology are suffering the most.

It remains a dicey subject to this today, and it is difficult to see encouraging signs — although I am committed to finding them and writing about them. If the problem were seen plainly, I believe that the mental slavery that Bob Marley sings about could be reversed within a single generation.

Our schools would be focused on teaching our students that their own critical thinking is paramount, rather than the ability the repeat the thinking of others.

Our parents would encourage our children to think for themselves, rather than to just be obedient or else face physical punishment.

Our Christian churches (and mosques and temples) would teach the faithful to skillfully renew their own minds, rather than to merely believe what they are told, and that to do so represents the best path towards the liberation of future generations.

Teachers, parents and pastors have every reason to be frightened by all this, as it contradicts their experience and what they have been taught over the years: ” Don’t do it, or else you will lose control.”

Except that, that’s the voice of the plantation-owners, whispering to us from years past, and it is our duty to steadfastly ignore them.

P.S. The summary of Why Workers Won’t Work can also be downloaded by sending email to fwc-whyworkers@aweber.com