Critical Millennial Thinking

This will be the first in a series of articles on leadership, the Millennial generation, and how it relates to business.

I have been spending quite a bit of time recently reading HR articles. Not that I ever haven't, ever since before participating in the National Urban Fellows program, and especially after successfully obtaining the PMP, I read across the curriculum so to speak in order to get a taste of how potential opportunities might view my particular batch of skills. I read a recent one from The Ladders President Marc Cendella about ageism and the American business community, a few things struck me. To begin, Cendella's article stressed strategies to prove the viability of the more seasoned,
more senior employee's mindset in the face of a fanaticism for hiring youth. To quote "it’s important for you to realize that youth is the symptom, not the cause, of age discrimination."

This is faulty in my view for a variety of reasons. While it is true that the business community hires youth more frequently in the current paradigm than seasoned professionals, it is not solely representative of an underlying, hidden mentality in the plans for an increased profit margin of each organization that employs an age gap in it hiring practices. It is inherently flawed because it has been the experience of more seasoned workers that youth carries with it the entitlement of pre-eminence in the office. Indeed, the generation presents a belief that Snapchats inserted into Prezis, the Uberization of everything, and happiness engineering will answer previously unaswered questions. Additionally, there is a steadfast credence in the idea that they will solve problems better simply because it is the new technology.

This too is faulty because for all of the technological literacy that the Millennial generation carries at its fingertips in the latest and greatest Samsung Edge 7 or iPhone 7 or pick your favorite model...none of that literacy represents actual creativity, but rather the current year's reiteration of processes that already existed. Creative optimization of business processes, innovation of future engineering methodologies, and even communication methodologies or pathways are concepts that have to be trained and experienced before they can be evolved. Moreover, in order to properly create some sort of advanced evolution of the process or pathway, a defined period of critical thinking has to be undertaken. The critical thinking deficiency has been the most salient complaint of employers, post-secondary educators, and large swaths of society coming into direct contact with Millennials far and wide, as evidenced by the quotes below:

"A 2012 report on the metro St. Louis workforce cited a Boeing official as saying, "New hires and younger workers certainly have a positive work ethic; however they often have an immature or impatient approach toward career development/progression. They have an expectation that their career development will somehow be on the fast track, without a full understanding of the commitment it takes beyond the 9-to-5 world. At times they seem to lack an understanding that you need to work until the work is done.""(1)

But the fallacy of being able to create a wholesale correction of the entirety of an organization's problems simply by throwing new technology at it was born out in evidence and scientific measurement presented in Jim Collins' seminal work From Good to Great. Those very same sentiments are echoed in a late 2015 'Entrepeneur' article:

"...in a digital-first world, where millennials obtain all their answers to problems at the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, the reliance on technology to solve every question confuses people's perception of their own knowledge and intelligence. And that reliance may well lead to overconfidence and poor decision-making."(2)

Effectively, if your answer to social, procedural, human resources, time management, document control, or loss prevention issues (to name a few) is the introduction of technology to which the organization is largely unaccustomed and untrained without the root cause analysis of why the problems exist in the first place, the problems will persist, they will just persist in the digital space. This is not a problem resolution methodology. It is also not creativity. Creative solutions to problems happen because creativity has to be taught. Raw talent only accounts for so much until verifiable, accountable technique is required.

Technology, especially technology employed by a generation untrained and inexperienced in critical thinking exercises is not a poultice, or a cure all, or a silver bullet (there are no silver bullets.) It is, to use a forward thinking, visioning exercise, benefits mindset analysis - a strategy guaranteeing business non-continuity. American business has to begin understanding the value of paying for training and/or trained individuals. In a head-to-head matchup, the more highly trained, analytical, experienced problem solver [those with the initials PMP or MPA after their name, for example] is the one who will inevitably carry the strategy and benefit of each and every organization farther forward towards greater results or profitability (while figuring out where to most effectively deploy tech-savvy newcomers.) All three sectors are focused implicitly on benefits realization, and recognizing and monetizing opportunity. These are not intrinsic, genetically inherited traits, they are studied and learned capabilities that are the result of hard won knowledge skills.

In the end, Cendella's claim: "...it appears to me that age discrimination is mindset discrimination first
and foremost..." is indeed true. But if what the American business community seeks is an Agile mindest, there is training, dare I say - a certification for that.

1.) What millennials don't know about the job market, Kelley Holland, 2 May 2014, http://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/02/nials-dont-know-about-the-job-market.html

2.) Why Technology Is Affecting Critical Thought in the Workplace and How to Fix It, Rony Zarom, September 21, 2015 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248925

Je suis sick of it.

"'Liberte, egalite, fraternite' worked in a country 
with a cultural unity, but with cultural diversity, 
is this triangle still effective?" - Lucy Williamson
(Photo by Getty Images)

Horror, terror, carnage, loss of life, nonsensical. These are adjectives too frequently emblazoned in stark lettering across headlines throughout the plethora of written language media outlets in the plurality of the planet's languages. Long have we wondered aloud have to follow that age old adage: "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," in relation to a multiplicity of violence inducing themes. France, reeling from a series of bloody attacks: Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan, and now Nice during one of their most cherished holidays, wondered collectively if the Enlightenment Era social experiment of "Liberte, egalite, fraternite" was still a culturally identifiable belief system, or if the country had wandered so far from its Revolutionary principles as to be unrecognizable to the phrase framers' ideals.

But this problem is not unique to France, and encompasses a wide range of cultures and societies whose populations traversed the global empirical expansionism, enlightenment, and industrial/post-industrial mechanization, especially of war and its instruments. Where we have arrive is a notable undeniable regression to a period of bellicose tribalism wherein each major archetypical clan battles each other for financial, military and political dominance. This terrifying finality was engineered a priori by practice and golden fleeced country reconstructionists taking cues from some of history's most ill-reputed social architects.

The resounding questions incessantly repeated is: how do stop this now that it has started? The research thesis itself is erroneous because it's very precept is false. False because the premise whereby our current globally overmilitarized, surveillance saturated, brother-turning-in-brother thought matrix was originated in falsehood. A regime that utilized an inordinate amount of manipulative chicanery to fix and election forced the wholesale invasion of of an entire geographic region based on falsified, inaccurate evidence with no cohesive attack strategy, no exit strategy, and no appropriate estimation of the consequences.

The appropriate thesis for the time, is not how do we prevent a certain ethnicity, or nationality, or religion, or sect from creating large scale slaughter and mayhem. The question is not how do we recognize mentally ill individuals who are more prone to perpetrating unconscionable acts against fellow citizens? The question we must be asking as a collective is what is so endemic to our collective societies that creates radicalization within our associated populations? Given the armed insurgency that has recently erupted throughout the United States, ought not we reassess our preference for hyperbole and the proliferation of small arms?

In the United States right now, the leading box office movie features a roving band of criminal psychotics released from prison and employed by the government to resolve a dispute between the country and a larger enemy. At the same time as the Dallas police massacre was occurring, preview posters for the upcoming release of the purported last installment of the Bourne Identity: Matt Damon's head roughly matching the size of the automatic pistol pointing out to the crowd, blanketed New York City declaring "You know his name." An insinuation that a secretly trained super-weapon to counteract terrorism that evolved into its own terrorist element: an anti-heroic, former sin-eating, now terror inspiring ghost assassin could be a career objective for the young and yet impressionable has psychological consequences.

In the same way that the American Psychological Association irrevocably linked violent video games to violent behavior, so too does our everyday speech: hard-lining against terrorist states, xenophobia, homophobia, economic disparity, racism, sexism, lack of treatment for the mentally ill - all of it funnels down to build a mentality prone to perpetrate abhorrent acts. Therefore we find ourselves at a crossroads: we can continue to grow our arsenals, to become increasingly polarized, to ignore damages to our environment in lieu of 'security', and deepen our fright. We can absolutely abdicate all manner of democratic viability to egregious militarization. Or, as the, video says, if you believe "that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives..." then we ought to start immediately to make alternative choices. For the cause of all this carnage, 'you need only look into a mirror.'

Call of Duty

Marketing from Call of Duty:
Advanced Warfare. Art imitates life?
Or the other way around? And if these
games train our youth's minds, for what,
precisely, are they being trained?

Four o'clock in the afternoon is normally a lull in the work day. It's an hour or two before most folks normally walk out of their offices, depending on the organization for which you work, productivity has slowed, and there are minor side bar conversations around happy hours and after work activities.

Yesterday, however, turned all of that on its head.

Three lives in rapid succession have been determined of lesser value than those of uniformed 'law enforcement'. Decisions surrounding the cases of Trayvon Martin, Akai Gurley, Michael Brown, and now Eric Garner are to say the least atrocities, if not something more offensive. The wholesale devaluation of one particular race in our country is one of those frequently untreated conditions of democratic dementia deemed unnecessary to treat. Spin doctors have seen it as a kind of nuisance cough: leave it alone and it will go away.

But this isn't going away. In fact, the metastasis of the invading cancer has so completely infiltrated every corner of our society as to make the host system indistinguishable from the infected one. Selma, The Watts Riots, the original March on Washington, the LA Riots, the recent 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Ferguson, last night in New York City and the nation... this is not going away.

Oppression does seem inherent to the human condition. Jews in the ancient world/during the ReConquest/the Holocaust, Christians in the Roman era, non-Christians during the Crusades and Inquisition, Natives during the period of Exploration, Slavery... the subjugation and obviation of entire races of people is a continual characteristic in human history. It would be impossible to make a case that war is not already being perpetrated. Community members die in the streets every day, collateral damage is a marginal cost in the accounting process, and manipulation is so rampant we can no longer be called a Democracy, nor can we any longer call New York City the last bastion of liberalism. We have inarguably and unequivocally registered our discontent, we have assembled peacefully and it has brought us neither relief, nor a redress of grievances, and inexorably, the body count ticks up.

"Unite for Justice" From the
Ferguson Decision rally
11-28-2014. Photo Credit:
 David A. Brezler 

Where, then, is Spartacus? Where is that sorely needed paladin who will unite the clans of the oppressed and lead them forward to shake the very foundations of the oppressor state? History is rife with examples of whole systems that evolved only as a result of the collective, a unity of groups who previously might have been - to say the least - uneasy towards each other banding together to throw off the yokes of oppression. Marching in the streets, chanting inciteful slogans, and waving standard bearing banners is not unimportant. However, it is temporary, and the powerful are not apt to decide for change as long as they can count on paid  security and continue to change the channel.

We must create a much stronger movement, a much more strategic answer, something infinitely stronger than just ‘sea change’. The power structure from bottom to top must be entirely disrupted, and disbanded, from how funding is controlled to how politics is controlled, to how housing, food, and health is controlled. The often quoted "a system cannot protect those it was never designed to serve" could not be more true than at this very moment. Any system that presupposes as a base part of its structure inequities, impoverishment, and the devaluation of human life is not a system built on lasting precepts. We know this from studying the last several times empirical enterprises attempted global control. In fact, we should be asking if these are qualities intrinsic to the economic and political structures we have in place. Just how much of an ideal is this Enlightenment Era experiment before we go exporting it about the globe? 

ALL lives matter. More than simply a new political party to languish by the wayside and eventually be co-opted into the current status quo, we need an entirely new system. We require a system where elitism is not bread as an inherited trait into our culture. That ethos reigns whether the elitism expresses itself in Sports, Wall St., Education, or Community Organizing. Shut it down, shut it all down. Those fanaticisms that transform normally thinking, critical individuals into perpetuators of disparateness and exclusivity cannot persist.

Our only way forward is as a singular, cogent, incisive unit with the survival of Humanity as our central, unifying cause. Let us not be so caught up in the demonstration of our discontent that we forget to forge fruitful new pathways, and become the tomorrow we were meant to see.

Fight the power.

Today I am thankful.

Photo by Daniel Schaefer

Thankful that my brothers and sisters are still with me. Thankful that during the past years, we have engaged in - admittedly at times, - heated debate, but mostly thoughtful discussion, ardent advocacy, and lifelong learning. Thankful that we have found each other in this journey, and managed to stay connected.

Today I am thankful they were not taken from me by a rogue with government authority and a gun, a rookie, or a racist. When George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, the danger of a non-indictment is ‘...not more Trayvon Martins, but more George Zimmermans'. The day after the Ferguson Decision, the same sentence pattern emerged in social media; ‘the danger of a non-indictment is not more Mike Browns, but more Darren Wilsons.’

After the decision of Ferguson’s Grand Jury not to indict, analysis of the documents and the long reaching implications erupted across the internet. Statements and nationwide actions continue in direct conjunction with heartfelt pleas for non-violence.  However, shooting deaths, economic segregation, educational manipulation, brutality against the community, and prisoners of the state...is not war already happening?

There are a number of periods in human history when oppressors were able to act this way towards an entire race. The Crusades, Colonization, Slavery, the Westward Expansion, Genocide, killing of Civil Rights Leaders, killing of Black Community Leaders, killing of young Black men...this seems a repetitive pattern.

Tearing apart cities, however, will prove nothing. Flashes of anger are to be expected, but it is not a means to the necessary end. Only a very generalized reaction in an extremely directed and organized fashion will break the pattern. Black Out Black Friday is a great opening to the 'national dialogue' for which our great thinkers have begun to call. But oppression is systemic and systematic, overt and inter-generational. Descendants of the era of the Conquistadors have been having 'a national dialogue' for more than 500 years. Once the border crossed them it became an international dialogue.

Ask an immigrant from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere that lies South of the political borders of the United States how that dialogue is going. Ask the Native Americans.

Ask Mike Brown's parents. Or Trayvon's, or Kimani's, or Akai's, or Sean's, or Amadou's, or Ramarley's.

Now is an actionable moment and we are, in fact, perfectly positioned as a collective of communities, Black, Latino, Asian, all of us. We manage large swaths of the business sector that are cornerstones of the (inter)national economy. We are professors, we are military, we are elected officials and the staff of elected officials, we are workers, we are men and women, and we matter. We are even in the police force - not in the necessary amounts, but there nonetheless. We need an African American parallel to Univision or Telemundo, with news shows that discuss themes with gravitas and objectivity by educated, well spoken individuals from the community. We have the power and resources to furnish, staff and fund our own candidates, and ensure that sufficient votes carry them into office. We have to take our anger with us through to 2016 and usher in that new wave. Politics is not a spectator sport.

We are no longer the minority. We are the majority, and it is high time we started acting like it. As long as there is unity between our communities, and we have a well codified plan for success we will reach that goal. Amongst the requirements: a newly formed national political party banner under which to march is crucial. Yes, more than a rallying cry to the side of an unresponsive party, but an entirely unique party, not subject to the hegemony of dynastic families and politics as usual traditions. A party that is inclusive, and that will stand primarily to stop the killing and imprisonment of our young people. We have had multiple watershed moments, we have had our Tianamen Square moment. Now we must throw off the colonized mentality, and move boldly forward.

Turn out for what?

Photo by Rock The Vote, via Addicting Info

Two weeks after the election cycle we have seen a tremendous amount of public shaming of Democratic loyalists' scapegoats. Candidates hewed too far from the president, campaigners didn't focus enough on the ground game, we were outspent...Perhaps at some point, when more time has passed for closer inspection instead of rank, reactionary, response that can all get sorted out.

There is one particularly super-salient strategy remaining, however, that seems ripe for discussion; that is the party's heavy reliance on the Millenial generation to turn out and overwhelm whatever outsized influence dark money could have bought with sheer force of numbers.

Hashtags and memes flourished, Little Jon parodied himself, and OFA deployed its resources across the US of A with the express purpose of attracting the new key demographic. All for naught, though, since, as with the 2010 midterms, this key demographic's lion's share stayed home, knowing full well that these were equally, and arguably more important than the presidential.

In this sense, Democrats appear identical to dieters: in the early 21st Century, Latinos were the crucial, key demographic to engage (we still are). Before us it was the African American community (just as important now if not more so). After this century's first decade passed, the Millenials became the Democratic darling demographic. Looking at all of this, the Blue Team has the appearance of a multiple identity in crisis.

Meanwhile, each of the key demographics that became a respective elections cycle's cause celebre decisively distanced themselves from this debacle. Turnout overall was anemic at best, and was prematurely touted as 'a referendum', 'a condemnation of a broken system'. The American electorate, clearly, forgets how the system came to be broken in the first place.

Exercise science and weight loss studies tell us in no uncertain terms that fad diets quite simply don't work. This year's has already failed us spectacularly twice in a row. If you want to reach your overall fitness goals, a singular focus of mind, and dedication to the process is imperative. So too in this arena. The Blue Team never stayed on message: clean air-drinkable water, economic repair and recovery, expiration of Bush era tax cuts, energy alternatives, storm recovery, stay on message. Also, stay on target; don't pull us into another conflict in the Middle East. Follow New York's example and prosecute the bankers that crashed the economy, divestiture from fossil fuels, marriage equality, healthcare... THAT is what attracted all stripes and persuasions of voters to Obama, and those are the concepts that create brand loyalty. Now is the time to return to the hedgehog concept.

So, allow me to recapitulate: we no longer want to be entertained. We want our platform to be spoken about with gravitas. Overpopulating media streams with young hip faces who speak directly to and in the same modalities with the last fad diet that failed us twice does not inspire the voting bloc. If fitness is your goal, you know what you need to do: stop eating so much sugar and bread. Get in the gym and train train train! Train, fund, and resource your candidates, and don't hand out leadership positions to those lacking in experience that outsource their memory and logic skills to the latest iPhone. Leadership demands life experience, it demands years of training and exercise, and it demands laser-like focus and adherence to ideals.

Leadership demands maturity.

Two years Democrats! 2016 is already knocking on our door. Put down the donuts, time to get back in the gym. Otherwise, for what will they turn out?

People's Climate March Occupies New York City Streets.

Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez,
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman,
& State Senator Liz Kruger at Sunday's
People's Climate March.
Photo Credit: Office of the AG

Today's multinational People's Climate March was, by all accounts, a raging success. Well attended by both state and local legislators, the crowd was estimated at roughly 400,000. Spurred on by the environmental/climate change organizing nonprofit 350.org, anticipatory signage had been widely visible for weeks in advance in subway cars, on bust stops, and the only place where one of the stylized displays likely belonged but never made it was onto one of the stories tall jumbo screens in Times Square, right along the parade path.

What is uniquely interesting regarding this year's march is the fact that big business, in stark contrast to previous years, seems to be getting directly on board the bandwagon. Indeed, they have funded some of their own weighty brass instruments playing in all their oom-pa-pa glory directly in the face of every single climate science denier - legislative, religious, think tank, or Koch Associate.

Multilingual signage from
The People's Climate March.
Copyright 350.org 2014 

The collective of Keurig, Coca-Cola, and Heinz (along with others) respectively released major statements this year indicating in no uncertain terms that climate change threatens their respective bottom lines. Price Waterhouse Coopers, LLP - the globally known accounting firm - in an historic move released the estimate in its 'Low Carbon Economy Index' report that we are 20 years away from total system collapse. Not to be solely the harbingers of the current power structure's paradigmatic, perfunctory passage into the past, they also laid out clear pathways to a sustainable energy future. All possibilities are entirely functional and market ready now.

It turns out that, in the end, all of the dilettantes and dismissed detectives of the day of our denouement were correct: Viewing the Amazon, the Canadian Boreal Forest, or any other old growth forest as "overburden" to be removed in search of limited resource fuel that is itself a pollutant will inevitably overburden us with unimaginable lasting effects. Not even the entirety of the world's billionaires combined can afford a second planet. Likewise, we ought to have done this conversion long ago.

  The face of the matter is this: we have designs, strategic plans, available funds, space, popular support and acceptance, intellectual capacity, and either readily available or constructible infrastructure to create new world-wide power supplies. What we ought to be doing between now and 2016 is using every tool at our disposal, citizen collectives, micro-grids, vehicle upgrades, alternative fuels, public transportation...to signal market shifts - wholesale - away from fossil fuels. Vote with your dollars and respond with 'the fierce urgency of now.' Even Mayor De Blasio, in a recognition of the imperative of defining survivability in the 21st Century, ordered energy efficiency targets for buildings across the city. We finally arrived at the point where the 'future generations' for whom the resolution of such issues has been deferred is now us. We are the ones for whom we have been waiting, let us not be found wanting.

A static, in country force

A static, in country force can have a variety of missions: reinforce, rebuild, protect, retrain...the moral quandaries arise when decisions are made whom and how exactly to retrain.

In the hazy, unprecedented, post-9/11 era, fear became our reigning philosophy. Fear still manages to override the collective of other emotional varietals all too frequently within the policy arena. Few things are as addicting and powerful. But fear had been the weapon of control for countries with far less sophisticated forms of governance than ours, or so we thought. The trend of instilling in a populace blind distrust and abject horror towards an entire other race had previously been the grounds upon which to stand our moral superiority argument (see also the Kurds, Ethnic Serbs, or the Hutu and Tse Tse clash).

We had never done this (in fact untrue) we celebrated our melting pot culture (though truly we didnt). Institutionalized racism and marginalization are hallmarks of this nation since it's earliest times as a republic. From slavery through suffrage, tenement houses to internment camps, to separate but not so equal, to the AIDS epidemic and LGBTQ rights to (the return of) union busting, and now the "War on terror". War in and of itself is a terror. And while we're at it, let's check in on how the "War on drugs" and the "War on poverty" are going.

By only one measure have these wars done phenomenally well and that is to compensate the already well compensated. Obviation of cultural groups is required for this to happen: noone can be at the top unless someone first is at the bottom. But in its current iteration, those at the bottom are consequentially blamed for all of society's ills (be they at fault or no.) Along the arc of human history, this has happened repeatedly, and to satisfy ourselves with the whimsical platitude that the very same arc shall inevitably trend towards justice is a likely fallacy.

Whenever an economically empowered class, weaponizes a militarily empowered class, and these become judge, jury, and executioner of the underclass without the due process of law, that is known as oppression. Ferguson happened. Eric Gardner happened. Kimani Gray happened. Sean Bell happened. Amadou Diallou happened. Rodney King happened. The pattern continues.

This is a watershed moment. We can maintain this culture of fear,  or we can exchange the current cohort of undesirables for people that look, feel, and speak like the fabric of America. We can perpetuate a system of rulership that is predicated on objectifying subjugation, or we can seek to design and implement new systems. But we cannot hope to obtain system-wide remedies from archetypes who refute the facts of system-wide dilemmas.

The issue remains that the system itself is purposefully designed for segregation, submission, and subservience. Democracy is not democracy if it is only democratic for the few. Consequentially, as has been asked many times in Congress, a careful review of our founding document - specifically the part where it clearly states that if our system of government fails, it should be dismantled and reconstructed - is plainly in order. The situation in Ferguson is a symptom of a lingering, untreated, much more nefarious societal sickness. One against which inoculation is no longer possible as it has become a defining characteristic of American society. Before this latest issue falls by the wayside like so many other acts of senseless violence, let us now awaken the sleeping dragon of intercultural might to lead us through to a truer societal evolution. Now is the time for us to envision, embody, and encarnate an entirely new Great Society.