Mark Fidelman's  Instablog

What is it with billionaires these days? Buffett suggesting we need to tax him more? Stop coddling the super-rich he says.

In other words, he’s saying “I’ve done such a fine job with my money, now I want to give more to a government that hasn’t.”

Mr. Buffett, has someone changed your suppositions? It seems counter intuitive to your “invest in great management” philosophy. Shouldn’t you really be telling the government to cut costs? Just like you demanded of your Netjets, Clayton Homes, and Helzberg Diamond Shops executives.
 

In fact you said, “We have no alternative,” at your annual meeting in May 2009. Really? Why didn’t you just raise prices on your most profitable customers? Couldn’t they afford it? Stop coddling them Mr. Buffett.

Buffett writes, “I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.”

What they do Mr. Buffett is invest somewhere else. Like overseas. And guess what, they don’t bring that money back into the US because of our high tax rates. That’s an estimated $60 billion a year that could be used to pay down the $14 trillion dollar debt that the same government you want to give more money too, owes everyone else.
 

Since Mr. Buffett thinks the government can do a better job with his money than he can, then give it to them. We can sure use it. You’ve already given the government $7 million last year, what’s $50 million more? You can afford it. Stop talking about giving more and just do it.
 

Which begs the question, why hasn’t he already? Is it because he doesn’t trust the government to spend his money wisely? Doesn’t he like Washington’s management?
 

Haven’t you always said Mr. Buffett to invest in what you know? You seem to know a lot about taxes and Washington, so write the check. Go ahead and put your money where the sun doesn’t shine or as the rest of us non-billionaires call it, the Federal Deficit. 

We were able to assemble a powerful cast of experts to give the rest of us advice on becoming a Social Business. But we did it with one catch. We asked these 9 experts to do it in under 60 seconds.
 

Thank you Robert Lavigne for essentially doing all of the video, post production and graphics for these 9 videos. He’s a phenomenal person.
 

The Video is interactive. Meaning you can click on the profiles in the video in order to see their individual response. Alternatively, you can follow the video links of each of our experts below.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE


 

Sandy Carter is Vice President, Social Business and Collaboration Solutions Sales and Evangelism, where she is responsible for setting the direction for IBM’s Social Business initiative, working with companies who are becoming Social Businesses, and being the evangelist for the concept and best practices around Social Business.

He has been involved in the internet space for ten years as an entrepreneur, executive and investor, starting with PayPal in 1999. David was PayPal's Chief Operating Officer and product leader, taking the company from startup to IPO and eventual sale to eBay for $1.5 billion. Subsequently, he founded Geni.com, which is creating a family tree of the whole world, enabling millions of family members to connect, share, and preserve their lives. He also produced and financed the movie "Thank You For Smoking".

Sheila Jordan is Vice President of the Communication and Collaboration IT organization which encompasses Cisco.com, Enterprise Content Management, Communication and Collaboration solutions, CEC (Cisco’ s internal website), internal deployment of Cisco’ s TelePresence technology, and IT support for HR , Finance, Marketing and Emerging Technology deployment.

Co-author of the best-selling, "Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers," (Kaplan Publishing, 2005) and sought-after keynote speaker and workshop presenter at international conferences on inside/out branding, enterprise collaboration, customer experience transformation, the emerging workplace and organizational change management.

Bryan joined Acquia in 2008 to run product marketing. He came to Acquia from EMC, where he managed product and outbound marketing for Documentum’s knowledge worker business. Prior to EMC, Bryan worked in product marketing and product management in the social business and collaboration technology space, after brewing beer professionally for seven years. Bryan lives in the Boston area and is an ardent Red Sox fan.

Laurie Buczek is a Social Media Strategist within Intel Corporation’s Digital Marketing organization. Prior to joining Digital Marketing, Laurie spent over two years as the Social Computing Program Manager where she was responsible for the major enterprise wide strategy & implementation of social computing for employees to connect & collaborate internally. Laurie began her social media journey three years ago while blazing a new trail for online marketing efforts by helping to launch & manage the first external social media community for Intel. Laurie’s work has been published and showcased across the industry. She is also a member of the 2.0 Adoption Council and Social Media Business Council.

Laura Bassett is the Director of Marketing for Avaya’s Emerging Products and Technology group. The group delivers innovative business solutions from Avaya Research Labs and Advanced Software Development. In this role Laura oversees the groups go-to-market including business planning and strategy, market awareness, marketing, and sales enablement and engagement for next generation solutions. Additionally, Laura is a supporting author of Avaya’s Social Media in the Contact Center for Dummies.

Felicia Brych has been with Cisco since 1999 and has held a variety of positions in the Information Technology and Corporate Communications departments. As part of IT, she managed the architecture, development and operation of several global IT services including remote access, voice/web/video conferencing, desktop video, instant messaging and several voice services. In Corporate Communications, she worked closely with numerous Engineering organizations to define requirements, promote adoption, and facilitate integration of various collaboration products.

Ben Watson is a principal in the newly formed customer marketing team for the Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit at Adobe. Ben’s responsible for working across the Adobe organization to optimize the enterprise customer journey and provide customer input to help define Adobe’s industry leading customer experience solutions and CEM platform. Ben is a recognized thought leader and is directly engaged in many customer experience initiatives with Adobe’s leading customers.

When I worked for Autodesk from the mid to late 1990’s the company was routinely recognized as having one of the best corporate cultures.  Dogs allowed at work, unlimited free soft drinks, 6 week paid sabbaticals, flexible work hours, plenty of autonomy, mastery and purpose. 

But then something happened.  Thousands of DotCom companies started hiring the best people from the best companies.  Most of the established software companies were decimated. Autodesk lost 20%-30% of their workforce to start ups. 

Why would highly motivated, purpose driven professionals leave a com pany like Autodesk?  Primarily because of higher salaries and stock options. 

Money folks. 

Certainly Dan Pink’s Ted presentation on motivation is entertaining.  And some of makes sense.  Pink’s “Forget the carrots and sticks, they don’t always work” article is equally entertaining comparing today’s compensation methods to an anachronistic, pre-Copernicus sun revolves around the earth view. 

Instead, Pink proposes a motivational system that is based on three pillars:

 

Sounds great, but most of it is bullsh*t. I know I am being harsh.  But following his advice may lead to your company’s ruin.  I don’t want that to happen. 

Time that you can use to do what you want, start a new business or travel the world.  Most salespeople I have managed are driven by incentive compensation because it allows them to work harder and build up a “f#ck you” fund. 

No corporate culture, no purpose driven work, no autonomy controlled by a corporation is better than controlling the corporation of you and your family.  And that’s what money buys you. 

Sure a positive corporate culture with plenty of perks is great and I support Pink’s view wholeheartedly.  But it’s naïve to assume that the elimination of carrots and sticks and adding purpose driven work will create more motivated salespeople.  

In the book The Culture Code, author Rapaille studied the cultures of countries and companies and developed a code for which we live.  This code (or mind-set) is a powerful force that drives people to take predictable actions.

Rapaille found that money is the American scorecard.  That Americans find it impossible to feel successful if they feel underpaid.  Because of that, we see a very strong connection between money and work.  Money earned via hard work is admirable, proof that you are doing a good job. 

For most Americans, money only demonstrates our value in our jobs.  And for many European cultures, money is looked at differently. At a certain point, they shrug their shoulders and settle into a relaxed lifestyle, leaving the world of business behind. 

I believe most Americans want to work in an environment where they have a sense of purpose, feel motivated, and have autonomy.  But it will never override their money as scorecard and social proof code. 

That’s why Google had to offer a staff engineer $3.5 million to stay at Google and not leave for a competitor.  Moreover, Google had to increase EVERYONE’S pay by 10% in order to mitigate the risk of them leaving. 

If as Pink says carrots are not the answer, why not make Google employees’  jobs more meaningful, more full of purpose, more autonomous.  In fact Pink cites Google as one of these utopian companies that allow its employees to work freely and autonomously.  I guess he won’t be citing Google anymore.

Speaking of proof, Pink cites only two small companies (out of millions) that he claims have eliminated commissions and are seeing success.  To his credit, Pink does state in his closing paragraph that not all companies should eliminate commissions, but his parting shot is to challenge the supposed fixed laws of compensation. 

To that I say, that Pink is challenging the laws of human nature and an American culture code.  The former has been in place for millions of years, the latter for over 230.  Good luck Dan. 

To Pink’s examples from the MIT research and Federal Reserve Bank, I can say from personal experience that games and real life are different.  Compensation in a game is far different than compensation in real life with a real job.  Moreover, most cognitive games are short term in nature.  They don’t extend over long periods of time like work does in the real world. 

Therefore, the short term cognitive game can be influenced by how much fun your having and less by any perceived compensation.  But if that game were extended over time, the results would change dramatically.  Higher variable incentives would win out. 

Of the two companies Pink cited as having eliminated salesperson incentives and claiming the program has worked; I’d like to see how those same companies are performing against their competitors.  This metric is a far better measure of success than a subjective, internal view. 

I’d also like to see how those companies compete for salespeople in the marketplace.  How can they convince a salesperson to join their organization when that salesperson is making $300,000 a year and now is being asked to accept half as much money? By assuring them that they will feel more autonomous, have more purpose, or achieve sales mastery? 

No, not going to happen.  On second thought, possibly in Europe, I’ll give him that.

Please do provide a corporate environment where everyone feels motivated and full of purpose.  Do it because it’s the right thing to do.  Don’t do it to somehow convince your sales force to give up an incentive plan.  You’ll fail. 

In fact like Google, in the late 1990’s Autodesk had to increase salaries to stave off the exodus to the DotCom’s.  As an alternative they could have improved the corporate culture. But Autodesk knew that it would not have worked because the culture was already extraordinary (and markedly fulfilled Pink’s 3 pillars above).

As further proof, a recent Harvard study run by Roland Fryer Jr. paid kids for good grades and good behavior.  As you might of guessed, the program worked.  Worked extremely well.   Fryer concluded, “If incentives are designed wisely, it appears, payments can indeed boost kids' performance as much as or more than many other reforms you've heard about before — and for a fraction of the cost.” 

So just because someone as eloquent, good natured, and well meaning as Dan Pink says that the world has changed, doesn’t make it so.  I doubt he’s the 21st century Copernicus no matter how convincing he is to you and I. 

Instead, look at the billions of successful experiments occurring everyday in almost every for profit business.  Look at the millions of salespeople that have been paid for working that extra hour every day, making that extra call, taking the time to research her prospect to better understand their needs. 

They do it because the proper incentives are in place.