I figure I’ll have a better shot at living up to my resolutions if I made them achievable:

• Go to work every day I’m expected to and none that I am not.

• Drink no more than three drinks a day, and never before 6 PM, and never alone unless I don’t have anybody with me.

• Eat no more than 3000 calories a day. Anything over that should be very well prepared.

• Have dinner in no restaurant whose entrees do not cover at least 45 percent of the plate.

• Pick up all checks I absolutely have to.

• Invest in nothing that is not insured by some reputable underwriter, if any still exist.

• Never use “impact” as a verb or “impactful” as an adjective, and refrain as much as possible from utilizing military or sports metaphors in business conversation, unless we’re field stripping the ordnance and pushing through the red zone.

• Fall asleep in as few meetings as possible, and only in those that deserve it.

• Never get a bluetooth earpiece unless its surgical implantation becomes mandatory by the corporation.

• Retain my Executive Platinum status.

• Get at least three hours of sleep a night.

• Not answer my cell phone or work my BlackBerry while dining, even if my companion is doing so.

• Never apologize in public for any private gaffes.

• Accept all bonuses that are offered to me.

• Only yell at people who truly deserve it.

• Keep my electronics charged.

• Shave.

Let’s have a good year, everybody.

Dear Santa,

I know you’re busy with everybody else in the world, but here’s my list. I’ve been good, by the way. In fact, compared with prior years, my goodness quotient is up triple digits. So cough it up, please.

• Ford Flex
• Apple 13″ Powerbook
• Small, vintage Marshall amplifier
• Continuing amusement from AIG bonus situation
• Coal in the stockings of security analysts who undervalued our stock, hedge fund managers who shorted it, and everybody else who pissed me off on Wall Street this year. Actually, forget the coal. Have you got any dead fish around?
• Cheese/Beef log (for discussion purposes only)
• Nikon D3x digital camera
• A new husband for my ex-wife
• Peace on earth
• Goodwill toward everybody
• Everybody off Tiger Woods’ back for a while.

Merry non-denominational, deracinated holiday of your choice, everybody.

“DEAR BLOGGER: I am very old and live at the North Pole. All of my little friends up here say that there is no Virginia any more. Mrs. Claus says that if I see it on the your website, it’s so. Please tell me the truth: Is there a Virginia? Signed, Chris (Santa) Claus, 115 Workshop Way, North Pole.

CHRIS, your little friends are wrong. They have been consuming too much media, and have been infected by the material that gains the most attention there. They do not believe that which doesn’t rise to the top of the search stack or get the highest ratings 18-49. They think that nothing exists but that which is measured by hits, twitters and chatter, or makes its way by other means to the top of our collective mind.

You see, Chris, in this world of ours, all attention spans, be they those of children or of adults, are very tiny, very short, and very, very fragile. As we make our way through the vast cloud of information, entertainment, opinion, music, random noise and other forms of auditory, visual, and intellectual stimulation, each human being is a minuscule atom, a quark within the boundless physical and virtual universe that surrounds us. None of us can grasp the total picture.

Yes, SANTA CLAUS, there is a Virginia. She still exists as certainly as love and hope and childhood exist inside every person, as you know they do, shining unaided within each of us and lighting our way to true peace and joy that transcends this time and place.

Good Lord! How gray the world would be if there were no Virginia. It would be as gray as if there were no Santa Claus! There would be no song, no poetry, no rhythm to our existence beyond that which we can do and see and want and buy.  The eternal childhood that makes our lives have meaning would be extinguished. Not believe in Virginia! You might as well not believe in quantum physics!

Can you find her? Perhaps not by looking with your eyes. You might get your elves to scour the brick-and-mortar malls and online destinations, chat rooms and Facebook pages from one end of the world to the other on Christmas Eve to catch her, but even if they did not see her hanging out in one random location or another, what would that prove? Nobody sees Virginia, but that doesn’t mean she’s not out there.

Did you ever see an aura? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have one. Or karma? Can it be measured? Certainly not. But still it shapes the length and color of our days. How about the Higgs boson? Talk to 1,000 scientists from here to CERN and not one will disbelieve in it, and yet nobody can find a single one, even with a trillion dollar accelerator.

There is a firewall between us and the unseen world. Only love, kindness, understanding, and simplicity can lift that veil. And in the end, amid all the noise and haste, what lies beyond is really all that matters, all that has ever mattered. No Virginia? Thank God, she lives, Santa, and she always will. Ten thousand years from now, when we have evolved into strange, unrecognizable amalgams of organic material and cybernetic wetware, she will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

When I was a boy, I used to worry if I didn’t get enough sleep. I would go to bed thinking, “Boy, I hope I’m not too tired to function tomorrow morning.” I would get up at whatever hour was required of me, and if I hadn’t logged my seven or eight hours, I would say to myself, “Wow, I’d better get a nap in later or I’m going to fall asleep at the afternoon meeting.” And sometimes I even did.

That assumption — that I’m ever going to get enough sleep — seems like a luxury to me now, a fond dream, albeit a waking one.  I work in two time zones, for one thing. I learned pretty quickly that the only way you function, moving from New York to LA, is to pretend that there is no such thing as a time zone. Midnight is midnight. Noon is noon. So when I wake in New York at 6 AM after a week in Los Angeles, I don’t even register any more that it’s really 3 AM in my head. It’s 6 AM. It’s time to get up. Yeah, there’s a kind of cottony softness to everything for an hour or so, but so what? Shake it off. On the other side of the continent, when I wake up at 3 AM LA time as bright and frisky as a wounded beaver, I simply hop online and get the day started a tad early. If I thought about the whole thing too much, I guess I’d be horrified. Instead, I’m just a little dragged out now and then and perhaps a tad more cranky. Who isn’t these days?

One major lesson I’ve learned, and it’s not a good one, probably, is that I can actually function on three or four hours, not just now and then, but consistently. Some days I need to close my door and faint for a couple of minutes to set things right, a habit I’ve been pursuing since I was new to the corporation. I used to sleep on the floor with my head right next to the closed door, so that if anybody opened it I would be slammed in the head and wake. Sounds stupid, I know, but it worked. “What are you doing down there?” they would say, and I would reply, “Looking for a cuff link. What’s up.” And life would go on.

Today I just put my feet up on my desk and faint completely. The state is something that can’t really be called sleep per se. It’s more like death. Total systemic shut-down. It’s possible I drool. When the phone rings, I awake in a much better place, ready for whatever the next couple of hours has to hold. At night, when others are contemplating slumber, I often find myself most alert, weirdly. So it begins all over again.

I may be wrong here, but I think most of senior management, in corporations and governments alike, function on something like this very same sleep schedule. Work all day. Stay up late. Get up early. I wonder what it does to our decision-making processes. Actually, I don’t have to wonder. I know what it does. It makes people a little bit grouchy, more impatient, more solution-oriented, with shorter attention spans and a greater need for visual, auditory and sensory stimulation. We are never tired. We are always tired. And if we stop moving forward, we sink in the water, like sharks. They don’t sleep much either, do they. Maybe that’s why they’re one of the few species to survive while so many others have fallen to the wayside. And why they pretty much run any corner of the ocean they choose to inhabit, come to think of it.

Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the bank,
Four thousand mortgages were still in the tank
Then spoke Sanjiv Das (with very good diction):
“For one month, we’ll have no foreclosure or eviction!”

But seriously. It’s kind of a nice thing that CitiMortgage announced today. It only lasts for 30 days, which as one crabby blogger pointed out will simply put more people on the street in a much colder month. But it’s something, isn’t it? And yes, it helps the company close out the year without more foreclosures on its books, but still, that can’t be the only reason they’re doing it, right? And okay, companies do these kinds of things to get a good PR pop out of the action, but so what? They deserve a few hours of good PR! The result is that 4000 mortgage-holders will have another month to figure out what they can do to save their homes. That can’t be bad, right?

My point is, that sometimes Big Business does do good things simply because it’s made up of people just like you and me. The landscape abounds with companies that in this season of love and giving and doing something nice. I’m trying to think of some other examples…

Let’s see…

Hmmm….

Okay! Well, there’s my friend Morton’s corporation that promised it wouldn’t fire any more people until January… perhaps we can do better…

There’s the stores that have generously extended Black Friday in perpetuity, except that for some it now takes place on a Saturday… but really, that’s just a sales ploy, isn’t it.

Give me some time. We’ll get there…

How about this: My flight attendant on American Airlines gave me an extra banana at breakfast during my flight this morning… does that count? I mean, it was nice of her. But it doesn’t really represent an institutional act of kindness, does it…

I’ve got it! How about all those nice financial institutions that are going to pay back their TARP money by the end of the year? That’s a lot of money that the Federal Government will have that it thought might have just been washed down the drain in the big flood of ‘08. There are a lot of things that we can do with that money, and I think it’s great that the banks and insurance companies are giving it back. Of course, it is possible that in doing so they make themselves eligible for ‘09 bonuses that are under less scrutiny by Obama’s pay czar, but that can’t be the only reason. I know somebody at one of the TARP companies said, “Hey, guys, this is the season of giving, so let’s give it back!” Could have happened that way, right?

What else? I’m coming up short here. Perhaps you can help.

I certainly rail against the boneheads on the Internet who don’t check their facts carefully enough, so it’s kind of embarrassing that here I am one of them today. As many of you noticed in your comments, I was completely messed up when I said that the Arthur Anderson that was involved with Enron was the same as Accenture. It isn’t. The following explanation comes from Jim McAvoy of Accenture, which I will print in its entirety:

Accenture was not involved in the Enron scandal. Accenture is a management consulting and technology services company.  Accenture does not now, and has never, engaged in the practice of public accounting.  
 
From its establishment in 1989 until its incorporation in 2001, Accenture, then known as Andersen Consulting, was a separate legal entity from Arthur Andersen and operated independently from that company.
 
In 1990, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission recognized that Accenture’s predecessor, Andersen Consulting, was a legal entity distinct from Arthur Andersen.  After 1989, Arthur Andersen formed its own consulting practice, which was distinct and separate from Accenture’s business.
 
In 2000, in an International Chamber of Commerce arbitration decision, the ICC also recognized that the partnership then named Andersen Consulting was a legally separate entity from Andersen Worldwide and the Arthur Andersen firms.  The arbitrator agreed that Andersen Consulting was not a subsidiary or division of Arthur Andersen or Andersen Worldwide.  The decision confirmed that Andersen Consulting was not owned by Arthur Andersen, so there was no spin-off or break-off, and no parental link.

Under the terms of the ICC ruling, Andersen Consulting was given until December 31, 2000 to adopt a new name. Accenture began operating under its new brand on January 1, 2001.  Accenture then went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2001.  The Enron scandal, and Arthur Andersen’s role in it, did not become public until the fall of 2001 — ten months after we began operating under the name Accenture.

Finally, On November 7, 2003, the federal court in Houston approved the settlement of the class actions on behalf of shareholders and employees of Enron. Accenture was not a party to the settlement agreement, and under the terms of the final settlement with the class plaintiffs, Accenture was released from all claims that were brought by these plaintiff groups. This was final and conclusive proof that there was no connection between Accenture and either Arthur Andersen or Enron.
 
I think you will agree, these facts disprove  your allegations that Accenture was Arthur Anderson.

Yes, it does, Jim, and I’m sorry about the mix-up. Hope this post sets things right, so I can go back tomorrow making fun of people who make the same kind of mistakes.

The House of Representatives, that hotbed of liberalism, is now working on legislation that would make sure the depredations of the 00’s would never happen again. I consider this a very good thing, as long as none of the regulations apply to me personally.

For instance, I’m all for the idea of a consumer protection agency mandated to oversee credit cards and mortgages. It’s clear that excesses in those arenas led to the virtual collapse of our economy, and that changes in the area are not only necessary, but wouldn’t have a negative impact on me at all. I might even benefit from it in some remote way. So that sounds pretty good.

I also applaud the effort to use TARP money to help protect the unemployed from foreclosures. There is no reason why those big dollops of cash should be used exclusively to help financial institutions and their managers. Everyday Americans in trouble should have access to them too. Also, a solid real estate market can only benefit people who own their own homes, like me. Once again, way to go, House.

I’m a little more dubious about the idea of rewarding whistle blowers who rat on their own executives, even if the latter are engaging in securities fraud. As a concept, it sounds good. But too many whistle blowers are loose cannons. I’m a corporate executive. I hate loose cannons. I only like cannons that are securely tied down. So I’m not against supporting whistle blowers, really. It just makes me a little nervous.

As for the notion of giving shareholders an advisory vote on executive pay… no, I don’t think I like that one at all. Who does the House think it is? What is this? Russia? Thank God we have the Senate around to protect my interests, or else I’d be really worried.

Next week marks the publication of my new paperback – How To Relax Without Getting The Axe. It’s a thorough rethinking and repositioning of my seminal work on executive life, Executricks, or How To Retire While You’re Still Working, published about six seconds before the recession hit over a year or so ago. The premise of that book was that he or she who perfects an executive lifestyle can emulate the existence of an affluent retiree. The basic concept of that book, and the suite of executive strategies contained therein, stands tall to this day, and those who acquired the work in hard cover have nothing to complain about. It was clear, however, when I contemplated the publication of the paperback this fall, that nobody at this juncture is thinking about retirement, affluent or otherwise. We’re all thinking about how to hang on to what we’ve got and protect our flanks from competitors, ambitious peers and colleagues and vicious McKinseyites now running down our hallways with silver hatchets.

So as much as I hate actual work, I sat down and rewrote the book for the somewhat despicable times in which we live. I believe it is very important that we all continue to live and work with distinction as true executives do, even if we are not executives, even if many executives now labor in somewhat reduced circumstances. The basic tools of executive life remain as solid and staunch as  they were in better times. People still delegate. They continue to operate from remote and inaccessible locations. They use/abuse the perks of their jobs. They work on the things they choose, for intense, brief bursts. They define their jobs more than you or I can do. They have more fun. And as we see from today’s news from the world of banking, they continue to live without shame and suck up huge bonuses if they can get them.

There is no reason why people like you and I cannot study these executricks, modifying them for the world we now live in, and soldier through the muck and mire to, as much as possible, relax without getting the axe. Others are doing it. We can, too. With, of course, the right guide at hand. It’s now available on Amazon both in print and in a Kindle edition for you e-readers. I discuss the book at some length today on Reuters, if you are interested.

And by the way. If in the next month or so you go to an airport bookstore and they do not have my book, please let me know about it. I’m not in a perfectly sanguine mood these days and there are some butts I’d like to kick if I get the slightest provocation. That’s a well-known executive skill too, you know.

To follow Stanley Bing on Twitter, go to twitter.com/thebingblog.

Those who wonder why the President took a hectoring tone last night with the guys on Wall Street who run the banks that run the banks that manipulate the markets that shape the economy need look no further, I think, than the story sent in by Laura Cosino in Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s an inspiring tale — if you’re an accountant. It demonstrates just how creative and innovative that profession can be, particularly when its practitioners work for a big institution that makes its own rules. Laura writes:

“I actually let my bank know how much I appreciate Over-draft protection! I got a letter in the mail stating that I was $374 over-drawn and they would like me to do something immediately. I was confused by this because I didn’t remember making any purchases. It turned out that I had overdrafted my account by $1.36 through a subtraction error I had made in my checkbook. I called the bank to tell them there was a mistake! I had only overdrafted one time, but yet they had charged me 7 overdraft fees. I told them that I had gone through my check register multiple times and no matter how I did it, I was only short on one transaction. They informed me that they don’t do their accounting the same way as I do, they don’t deduct the transaction the same day that it is made. The bank likes to put everything in “pending” deduct it from my balance, then pick the largest transactions and let them clear first (they thought larger transactions may be more important-paying a credit card bill) and after they do that…they leave all of your other small transactions for the end. They then pay those transactions, and charge you a fee for every single one. I was totally confused by this, I don’t remember my high school accounting class teaching to balance your check book this way. Needless to say, they don’t refund any charges no matter the reason…and according to the rep on the phone, there is no one higher at Fifth Third Bank than him.”

Too bad, Laura! You’re out of luck. We all are, actually, if the audience at that fund-raiser gets its secret druthers. They might have paid $30,000 to attend their public flogging, but I would venture to say that not one person in that room is willing to submit to the lesson that was articulated. And when Finance is allowed to implement its own ideas of regulation and control we can all look forward to being caught in the overdraft.

During the latter years of the century just past, there were many interesting things going on in the various incarnations of my office, and when I say “office,” I mean a work spaces that stretched through the top floors of a number of imposing towers:

• The vice president of new business development was sleeping with the vice president of Marketing’s assistant;
• The vice president of Marketing was sleeping with the vice president of new business development’s assistant;
• The top guy in our law department was having daily assignations with a junior sales rep in an empty office on the executive floor;
• There were many boondoggles every year at romantic locations where people got hammered and slipped into hot tubs with each other. Nothing happened at most of these occasions except that relatively unattractive people got naked. What happened AFTER they left the hot tubs was never documented;
• Departmental staff meetings would often begin on Monday morning with ribald accounts of everybody’s weekend activities;
• The president of Sales routinely utilized the big table in the Board Room for purposes other than those for which it was intended;
• The senior vice president of Public Affairs had a big telescope in his office through which he observed the showering activities of the residents of the residential apartment building across the airshaft;
• One of the senior officers travelled frequently to locations that enabled him to pursue his alternative sexual preference;
• Many Quality conferences concluded with field trips to strip joints;
• Assorted local hotels had standing accounts for midday sojourns;
• A significant percentage of the female support staff all possessed the exact same pair of earrings, which had been given to them for service in the line of duty by the senior officer of the company.

And that’s just what I remember. On a personal note, I want to assure you that while all this amused and amazed me, I never got any action, even though it occasionally occurred to me, I won’t lie to you. And it never once occurred to me that any of this, as long as it was consensual, was in any way inconsistent with business life.

Now things are much more evolved, of course. We never take a meeting with a member of another gender with a closed door, and I know of no relations of any kind that do not conclude with a pristine trip down the aisle. I’m sure that’s how it is everywhere, right? Everything on the up-and-up where you work?

I’m sorry if I’m a little late today. I was in an all-morning meeting talking about how the economy is improving. But I didn’t want to let today go without bringing to your notice, if you haven’t seen them already, two of the most contrasting quotes I have ever seen appear in public on the same issue. One displays the righteous indignation of the public about the depredations of bonus-happy Finance, the other comes from the other side of that great divide.

Quote #1: ““The S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger… and the Bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators.” Judge Jed S. Rakoff, rejecting the SEC-BOA settlement on Merrill Lynch bonuses, which he said, “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality.”

Quote #2: “I’m having a difficult time understanding who was harmed here. Why is this company being put into court over a series of events that benefited the nation, its economy, its financial system, the shareholders of Bank of America and the bank itself.” Richard X. Bove, a banking analyst with Rochdale Securities, as quoted in the New York Times.

So it’s either a moral question that goes to the heart of our justice and financial systems… or it’s nothing at all. What do you think?

1. Watch a cat dancing with a hamster.

2. Find that recipe for whole wheat pancakes that doesn’t taste like shirt cardboard.

3. Check how many times Elizabeth Taylor has been married.

4. Peruse the contents of the memo to all staff that Armbruster sent as an attachment to a cover note, because the zoom feature on my new BlackBerry doesn’t really zoom, it sort of peers into things at a very great distance.

5. Download the director’s cut of Watchmen.  

6. Purchase the Camden 69″ sofa from Crate and Barrel for Tuesday delivery.

7. Play Warhammer online.

8. Cruise for fascinating and informative updates on CNNMONEY.com or lesser financial websites.

9.  Investigate unsourced quasi-news on a variety of highly opinionated aggregators.

10. Publish and reply to my comments to this blog.  

Sorry. I was moving from one apartment to another yesterday and the cable guy didn’t show up. I don’t really care about the TV part, or the phone, either. But to live without internet is like being on Devil’s Island in the 19th Century, the only difference being that the bugs you have to eat are in your shareware, not your underwear.

I was kind of shocked by the reaction to my support of Tim Geithner’s bad temper, not so much by the anti-Administration people whose mood is almost as bad as Timmy’s, but by the number of you who never swear and never yell at people when they frustrate you, even on the job.

I’ll go on the record and say this: I don’t approve of yelling philosophically and I certainly don’t like bullies one bit. But I have never spent time around anybody in a position of Authority that didn’t yell at some time, and that includes my first boss, my father and many, many bosses thereafter. I’m not saying I always enjoyed being on the receiving end, and as a boss I myself try to avoid it as much as possible, but the truth is, it’s not always possible. Like, a few years ago I had an assistant who shoved all my business expenses in a drawer and forgot about them. By the time I found out about it, my phone, BlackBerry and corporate plastic had been shut off. I’m sorry. I found yelling at her to be the only rational solution to the problem. I didn’t fire her, mind you. I just yelled my head off. And I’m glad I did. She deserved it. It took months to straighten things out. She left well before that time, by the way. I gave her a good recommendation, too, but stipulated that any new position she obtained should probably not involve math.

The fact is, I don’t trust bosses who don’t express some form of anger now and then. In my experience, they’re weasels. I believe Gandhi was grouchy a good amount of the time, and I’m not too sure that Mother Theresa was a bag of sunshine every morning, either.  A leader who excises temper from his game isn’t really playing with a full deck.

As for cursing, I agree that the general linguistic state of play is very low these days. You can’t walk down a street without hearing bad things about somebody’s mother. It would be great if everybody cleaned up their act in this regard. But overuse of a tool doesn’t invalidate its use altogether. People drive too much but we still need cars. People eat too much but we still require food. People drink too much but life would be dingy indeed without the occasional pop from Mr. Walker or his patriotic friend Mr. Sam Adams. Proper use of profanity very often adds a certain spice to interpersonal communications without which our culture would be flatter, smoother and more boring. Chaucer used it. So did Churchill and Harold Geneen. I’m not even invoking George Carlin, Lenny Bruce or Joan Rivers.

Finally, in the context of business, I simply don’t know where a lot of you have been living. I have been with a big corporation since before many of you knew half the words to which you righteously object. I have attended meetings in every major city in the United States. And in every one of them, when the spirit moves them, people yell, people wag their fingers and, yes, people occasionally curse. It’s the ones who don’t who have scared me the most.

I’d like to thank Mr. Tim Geithner for providing much food for thought. And I’d like to wish him and his colleagues well in their attempts to remake our financial regulatory system. There’s a lot at stake, so I understand why he and Bernanke and the others who are charged with this massive responsibility might lose their patience now and then. I would advise them to try to keep it together for the most part, however. Nobody will benefit if the guys in charge pop a collective aneurism, and the benefits of ill temper diminish over time.

President Obamawent to Russia and did a lot of interesting things, none of which was covered by the Russian media. No TV. No Radio. No Obama for the Russkies.

The top company in the world is an oil company, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B). Also the #2 company. Also the #4 company. Also the #5 company. Wal-Mart (WMT) somehow managed to sandwich itself in there as #3, but it’s only a matter of time before all the top companies in the world are selling a product that will one day disappear. One analyst blithely tied the slightly decreasing price of oil to the uptick in unemployment, tacitly verifying my long-held belief that our entire economy is tied to a string whose other end is somewhere far away and very hot and sandy, and I’m not talking about Texas.

The market is very nervous because it feels like all the green shoots have fallen off and the whole fruit seems a little bumpier and less tender than it should. Just as it convinced itself that everything was getting better a month or two ago, it has now scared its little self into a tremblicious state and is now in the process of sticking its tiny head back into its shell until it can’t see it’s own shadow anymore.

Michael Jackson’s mother doesn’t like the fact that the estate is in the hands of two lawyers, neither of which are her. One of them is the guy who helped Michael squirrel away the Beatle’s music library from Paul McCartney. The problem for Mrs. Jackson is that there is reportedly a clause in the will that says if she challenges the document and loses, she must forfeit her bequest, which comes to 40% of whatever is left after the promoters, relatives, banks, agents and assorted advisors, doctors, parasites and other friends of Michael make their claim. There seems to be a fight brewing between those who want the Michael Jackson museum to be at Neverland (the corporation that owns half of it and recently tried to auction off his memorabilia) and the more convenient site for tourists of Las Vegas (the promotion company that mounted the 50-event London concert tour that arguably drove him to his death). On the bright side, as long as this nonsense goes on a significant chunk of the world population doesn’t have to think about what Wall Street is doing for minutes at a time.

The moguls are in Sun Valley again. It’s a little bit reduced in circumstances right now, because the debt and equity people are walking around in adult diapers should an actual deal materialize.

Google (GOOG) is going to launch an operating system next year to compete with Windows, following Microsoft’s (MSFT) majestic launch of Bing the Search Engine, which goes after Google. Competition in the software business! What next?

Seventy-one percent of all young people plan to look for a new job when the downturn is over. Let’s hope they’re not out of the demo by then.

And that seems to be that, unless you want to start talking about Afghanistan. This L-Shaped recovery is kind of a bore, don’tcha think?

1. Don’t do too much.

2. Take it a little easy at first.

3. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

4. Don’t worry. Be happy.

5. Stay hydrated.

6. Only see people you don’t have to.

7. Put off for tomorrow what you should do today.

8. Have a nice piece of fruit.

9. Knock off early.

10.

As you may have guessed from yesterday’s post, I am at this very moment trying to tear myself away from life as I know it and suspend operations for a while. 

True, the world will not stop while I do. Ned and Ted and Len and Edna and Clarissa and Elizabeth and Otto will still need things immediately. The Flute Reamer Division will still have those transition issues. Bob may need a speech or two. The IR department will still worry about its upcoming presentation in Bophutswana. But all that will have to go on without me, I most dearly hope. 

Yes, I will have my BlackBerry. I will do my best to look at it only twice a day. The rest of the time it will be in a drawer. I find this better than imagining the thousands of idiotic e-mails and perhaps 10 important ones that will be piling up during the interregnum.

And yes, a few people will know where I am, my assistant Beverly being the most important. It will be up to her to figure out what’s worth bothering me for. She is aware of Bing’s Law, which, as you may remember, states that every minute of work on a vacation requires one full hour for the re-establishment of proper mental equilibrium. Thus, a ten minute conference call demands a full 10 hours of recovery time. Longer than that? You do the math.

I will, of course, have my little laptop with me, so who knows. Maybe I’ll drop you a line now and then. In any event, I’ll see you all after the 4th. Don’t work too hard while I’m away, okay?

1. Send a memo to Bob, asking him if it’s okay for you to take two whole weeks together, and informing him of the date and perhaps asking whether it fits with his vacation plans. This will not only serve the function of informing him of your potential non-presence and coordinating it with his own, but also remind him that he, too, will be taking some time off and that others might be entitled to some also. 

2. Inform your colleagues and, if you are a manager of some sort, your reportees that you will be away, telling them when, and making sure that your functions are covered during your absence. If any important subordinates were planning to take the same time, and it would destroy your peace of mind while you are away if they did so, simply tell them that they’re out of luck. Establishing a bona fide vacation is a war. There are going to be casualties, one of which should not be your vacation. 

3. Make sure you have your passport up to date, if you are traveling abroad. Once you ascertain that all is in order, make sure to drop the fact that you have done so to Bob, employing a breezy and informative style that let’s him know that your vacation is proceeding according to plan and that you’re happy about it and hope he shares that happiness, seeing how he’s so tuned in to other people’s feelings and all. 

4. Make sure that your electronics work at the location to which you are going. Cell phones are not as important as BlackBerrys. This is not because you will be doing e-mails all the time or that you wish to be reachable 24-7, but because by doing half an hour of messaging first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, you will be avoiding the nightmare of returning to 8,756 e-mails in your inbox, some of which were marked URGENT! even though you put up an away message. After you have done this, by the way, you may observe to Bob in an offhand way how incredible it is that BlackBerrys work in the mountains of Wyoming. 

5. Get any shots that you require if you are going to places like Belize, which has bugs as big as footballs, and jungles that sport diseases that haven’t been invented in humans yet. Don’t forget to complain that those inoculations hurt within earshot of Bob. 

6. One week before your vacation, take a look at your schedule. People will have stuffed it with things to do for the two weeks you are planning to be away. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. “What’s this meeting with Beanie and Cecil doing on my calendar?” you may ask the person who put it there. “I’m going to be away, as I told you sixteen times already.” To which they will reply, “You’re going away? Really?” In all cases, set about clearing your time and delegating the important stuff to other people. 

7. If you are a manager, a few days before your departure call in each of your key people and once again inquire what they are planning to do during your absence. At least one will mention that he or she was planning to be away, in spite of the fact that you have ensured that nobody was going to be doing so. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. Be kind to this person, because they are likely to be a future boss and you have to be careful how you treat people when they’re on the way up, because they may be the ones who are treating you on the way down. But do make sure that your ducks are in order for your time away, which means that they are all present and accounted for. Don’t forget to complain to Bob about how hard it is to do this. 

8.  Wednesday before your last Friday, Bob will inform you of an important meeting/project that will have to be done “next week.” This is a critical moment. Fools and wimps will in a trembling voice remind Bob of their vacation plans, but promise to be “reachable” when necessary. Do not do this. Executive amnesia is a form of authoritarian terrorism that must be fought. “Bob,” you may say as calmly and inoffensively as possible, “As I told you several times, I’m out next week and the week after.” Bob will look confused and hurt. He may even lightly question your loyalty or dedication. That’s all right. A display of spine is seldom out of place in what we do. Of course, if the corporation is being sold, or you are about to be named to a big new position, all bets may be off. Organizations can spoil the best of plans and often do. But 99.99% of the time, the ability to disregard other people’s needs is pure executive brain flatulence. Manage it. 

9. On Friday morning, as you begin the process of packing up to leave, a host, a myriad, a phalanx of problems, challenges and effluvia will fly up and hit you in the face. In some cases, this will be just bad luck and you will have to work your head off to get rid of them. Sometimes it will be other people’s anxieties surfacing in the knowledge that you are actually not going to be there, a notion that is making them freak out. You may soothe them by telling them quietly that you will be on BlackBerry now and then, but that if they bother you with little stuff you will rip off their noses when you return. Make sure your desk is clear. Leave an away message on your e-mail. Say goodbye to your colleagues and thank them for covering your butt while you’re away. Then wait for the inevitable phone call. 

10. At 5:45 in the evening of the day you are leaving the office for the last time in the next couple of weeks, Bob will call. It will be about nothing. You will laugh and scratch for a while. He will mention that he’s looking forward to the weekend. You will say NOTHING about your vacation, but allow how you can’t wait to get out of the office either. Then, as you are wrapping up this pleasant conversation, Bob will say, “So, I’ll see you Monday, then.” Breathe. Let the silence grow between you on the phone line. “Bob,” you may then say, but that is all. Nine times out of ten, that will be enough. “Oh, right,” Bob will reply after some time, very sad, very hurt, a tiny puppy being abandoned by its owner, “You’re flaking out for a couple of weeks.” To which you may say, “Right.” He will then wish you bon voyage, and probably tell you all about his vacation plans. The one time out of ten that he gives you a hard time? What can I say. Do what you have to do. The guy’s a madman. But even madmen need limits, maybe more than other people, even. 

Now… breaking your desire to stay in touch while you’re away? That’s another story.

My Friday post about the digital transition seems to have flushed a bunch of anti-TV folks out of their weedy, book-lined dens. This has stimulated my urge to defend perhaps the oldest friend I have in the world. This isn’t the first time. I live in a community where people at parties talk about how much they like that new program that’s on the air now: Friends. “Did you see Friends the other night?” they will inquire. To which I reply, “No, I’ve been awake for the last couple of years.” Equally daunting is the type who admits shamefacedly, “I do catch an episode of Antique Road Show now and then. Can’t help it. Guilty pleasure.” Worst of all, in my opinion, are the people who strip their children of social awareness and all chance of popularity by denying them the American right to watch the programming of their choice. “We do allow little Tiffany the occasional Sesame Street. But only when I’m hyperstressed,” one mother told me not long ago. 

Did you know that in spite of the Internet, in spite of Hulu, in spite of YouTube and ITunes and all that jazz, the average time spent watching television in this nation is slightly on the rise? Horrors?! No way. Television is our common language, our history, our heritage. Of course most of it stinks. It always has. You think that when the common groundling went to the theater in Shakespeare’s day all that was on the stage was Shakespeare? Do most books remind you of Hemmingway or Sedaris? How about music? Lots of Mozarts and Mathers around? A medium can’t be defined by its worst examples. You have to look to the best. And during my lifetime, the great unifying cultural events have always taken place inand around the television set. Let’s look at them briefly. I’m afraid it has to be brief, because the TV has destroyed my attention span. What were we talking about again? Oh, yes. Shows that have rocked my world. You may remember some or none:  

• Wonderama: A variety show featuring Terrytoons, early cartoons that may now be found on YouTube. They’re terrible. We all loved them. 
• Winky Dink: An early atrocity in which children were encouraged to draw with crayons on the television set. 
• Soupy Sales: A very funny schtick meister who played with puppets. He came to ruin, at least for a while, when he instructed his audience to go to their parents’ wallets, remove the pictures of either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, I can’t remember, and mail them in. Kids did so. Parents were upset. 
• The Rifleman: Not as popular as Gunsmoke, the story of a single dad who set things right with a really cool gun. 
• Have Gun Will Travel: A vigilante in black. Used to watch it with my dad. 
• 77 Sunset Strip: The coolest show of its day; three private eyes in slick, Sinatra-era LA. A character named Cookie had a lot of hair, that he combed into a modified ducktail. So did we. 
• Mannix: One of the many Quinn Martin productions that neatly divided themselves into acts, usually with an epilogue. Usually about a detective or other law-enforcement type. After a lot of talk and sneaking around, always ended with a very brief action sequence in an underground parking lot. 
• MTM: As hard as it may be to believe, America used to gather — all generations — on Saturday night, to watch the CBS lineup that included The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Newhart, some other stuff I can’t recall. We weren’t always sober, but we thought it was pretty funny stuff. 
• Masterpiece Theater: I particularly liked the one about Henry the Eighth, who is now disporting himself once again on Showtime. Also terrific was the grand guignol excess of I, Claudius. Derek Jacobi made a stammer and a limp look like the trappings of power. 
• Fawlty Towers: The ultimate extension of the Monty Python spirit that for a brief time graced us. 
• Seinfeld: Still crazy after all these years in syndication. 
• CSI: I watch a lot of procedurals. Everybody underestimates not only the intricate plotting over huge story arcs, but also the differences between examples of the genre, which may be our most potent one at this point in time, including the great Law & Order franchise and a host of others. 

That’s just a very short list. These days I catch most of the shows I’ve liked whenever I can. I also love House, which is one of the best television programs not only of our day but of any other, and do admit to catching the reality make-over program, What Not To Wear, whenever I fly on JetBlue. I don’t watch Gossip Girl, of course, which is only an indication of how out of it I’m starting to get. And I will always decline to give a flying photon about Jon & Kate, even if he did cheat on her on her birthday. 

I also read books, by the way, and do a number of non-digital activities. Personally, I think blogs rot your brain a whole lot worse than anything else, except perhaps for aggregators.

A lot of you were pretty tough on Ryan, the trader who will probably work like a galley slave until either retires at the age of 40 or keels over at 50. I may have even jumped to some conclusions myself. It’s amazing, on the other hand, what a little knowledge about the reality of a situation can do to moderate the whole judgmental thing. This most wise and tough-minded comment on the subject comes from Cliff Tan of Sarasota, Florida. “I can’t speak for “Ryan” because I have never been a trader,” he writes, “but I’ve worked around enough of them that perhaps this post will reduce some of the heat and shed a little more light.”

“Ryan’s” workday is not really a matter of individual choice for him, as many respondents seem to think. As a trader he simply must be at his desk early enough to prepare for the trading day ahead and will finish whenever the market finishes. He sounds like he’s on the mortgage desk so maybe the first deals in New York get started around 7am and is really going by 8am. Getting there by 6:30am might actually be cutting it close. In other markets (e.g., foreign exchange) I knew traders who were at their desk by the time “Ryan” boarded his train.

And you need to get a couple of hours’ jump on the markets because there’s a lot to read. All the overnight news/events that might affect trading that day, of course. But also – if you’re part of a global book that gets passed into your timezone – you need to know any special events that occurred as part of overnight trading. Your salespeople might have some special deals that need to be done that day, and you need to think about how to execute that. Your investment bankers might have a new structure for which you are expected to provide trading support, and you need to have a razor-sharp idea of how much this stuff they’re peddling is really worth.

And once the trading day really gets started, how are you going to leave? Because usually except for lunch you are on the “dealer” (interactive chat) with your counterparts at other banks, your salespeople call over with new stuff they need to do for their clients (either they’re told or they’ve cajoled somebody to trade an existing position for some reason), you’re on the phone with some of the bigger clients talking about the markets and giving them your thoughts about what they want to do, you need to read the news and events that occur during your day, you might be talking to the “quants” who maintain the pricing models which help determine the right values (you think) of the various credit tranches you’re trading, you might even have a model or two of your own you need to tweak, occasionally you will read some research coming out of your own credit research team or from another bank which someone has forwarded to you. Oh, and you need to make sure you pass the right information to the middle and back offices so your trades are recorded correctly (which determines your P/L, profit/loss, which determines your year-end bonus), and that you pass your book onto the next timezone accurately…

I’m with Bing in that there seems to be quite a bit of Jerry-Springer like quality in some of the posts here. I’m reasonably certain work-life balance has come up before in the “Ryan” household and while I can certainly understand how some fathers throw away their families in the name of work, I think the ethos and common sense of an earlier generation – that you don’t snap to judgment about how another man is raising his children, e.g. – might be far more appropriate.

Good stuff, huh? Thanks, Cliff. Although it’s pretty depressing, frankly. Thank goodness that there’s a ton of work going on in the Human Resources profession on what’s called work life initiatives. If you Bing! (or of course Google (GOOG)) the phrase “work life initiatives,” all kinds of gooey stuff about workshops and seminars and white papers pops up, exploring the upside of, say, a mandatory four day work week, or how a person can be at their post for twelve or fourteen hours a day and, you know, still have a family, friends, and non work-related bad habits. How? By establishing a proper work life balance, of course.

For executives, this can be a godsend, as is made clear by a really funny post from Tim, who is in Tokyo, which is only fitting. Japan invented this problem. Perhaps they’ll be on the cutting edge of solving it, at least for the very top salarymen. Tim writes: 

I used to work for Merrill (MER) in Tokyo and they had the fabled work life balance initiative, which means that us grunts got to continue working weekends and sometimes 24 hours straight, while the managers flew around to run marathons or take care of their soccer clubs or other pursuits like taking university courses. Overall there was work life balance but somewhat skewed, we worked like dogs and the mangers had a nice life. No wonder the place self destructed.

Personally, I kind of like that balance. As a manager, I mean. You work. I have a life. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s clear I’m in the wrong business. With everything else that’s going on in the world, any stroll past a magazine stand will tell you that the majority of public interest continues to focus on Jon & Kate. Why to any of bother to focus on anything else? That’s where the money is, clearly.

Yet one day, as impossible as it may seem, the fascinating situation surrounding two of television’s hottest reality stars will be over. Jon & Kate will have exploded into a ball of flaming chicken fat. Their kids will, I am sure, all be tabloid material of their own. And the great, suppurating maw of popular entertainment will be in need of new heros willing to let it all hang out for Mother.

I mean to get into the action next time around. So I’ve studied the situation, both as a professional and as a consumer of anything that will engage my dwindling attention span. And having looked deeply into the landscape, I believe I have come up with the quintessential next steps in the march of time. Two programs I think could really make it and push the envelope until it squeals. I’m looking for investors. Tell me which one you want to get in on.

1. Married Until We Got To Them picks up where  Jon & Kate leaves off, takes what was wildly popular about that program and jettisons the rest. Gone are the kids. Gone is everything but the weekly update on how two people are going about the business of tearing their marriage apart with infidelity, betrayal, violence, drunkeness and, if it’s on cable, as much nudity as possible, all financed by the willing couple’s weekly stipend from the production company. In later weeks, an added element could be introduced — other miscreant pairs prepared to strip themselves bare (sometimes literally) for the notoriety and money. Couples could compete for a prize awarded to the one that can fall apart fastest. Or possibly even engage in interesting new configurations, depending on the daypart in which the program airs.

To date, all reality programs have provided a framework for the display of human frailty, a plot contrivance of some sort. This program completely dispenses with that and simply cuts to the chase. Cheap to produce. Almost writes itself. Hard to see how it could fail.

Second, and possibly even more interesting, is a show I’m calling So You’re Too Fat To Dance? A mix of several genres, this one puts it all together for pure, guilty pleasure. Contestants join the show when still very adipose,  pleasant people who really can’t dance very well at all. They try, but they for the most part fail to accomplish the complicated choreography outlined for them by the show’s panel of showbiz sadists. Over the 16 weeks, contestants are put through a grueling regime of diet and exercise in which they lose tons of weight very quickly, putting their health at risk while at the same time making themselves far more flexible, pliant and capable of graceful dives, sweeps and fancy footwork.  By the end of the series, we have a few people who punished themselves enough to make the grade and dance off with the prize, and probably a lot more who fell by the wayside, panting. Part make-over, part weight loss, part exercise in pure humiliation, I think this show will have it all.

That’s only the first two that I’m currently working on, although a third is taking shape in my mind, something about a worldwide hunt for the money stolen by Bernie Madoff, kind of a cross between The Amazing Race and Treasure Hunt with Stubby Kaye.

Clearly, however, the upside here is huge. With the ascension of a couple who has nothing to offer but their misery, a new barrier has apparently been broken down. When a new door like that opens, it doesn’t take a genius to know that opportunity may well lie on the other side of the transom. Those interested in an investment that’s certainly as solid as any other may drop me a line.