Turns out that running a political campaign on a vague, all-inclusive slogan like “Hope” can be a dangerous game. For the idealistic among us, Obama’s call for us to unleash our hope meant unleashing that latent desire for a new kind of politics. For the needy, hope could mean emergency help right now, on the line.

“Hope for me is I’ll finally get a good job.”

“I’ll be able to get my teeth fixed.”

“I’ll be able to pay for my wife’s cancer therapy.”

Hope was intrinsically too big a promise to run on. Hope unleashes dreams of the beautiful, while politics by its nature can only deliver the truly ugly and barely functioning compromise. For anyone who dared, even for a moment, to let go of a sceptical frame of mind and give flight to hope, disappointment is inevitable. Reality can never catch up with all the dreams that hope unleashes. If any of those things that were once imagined arrive, they will certainly be bent out of shape, maybe beyond recognition.

How do you like your end of war, high speed rail, Wall Street reform so far? Read more…

If you read the N.Y.Times in its coverage of the disruption of the Kindle, you might think that publishers are losing a fortune from the sudden rise in Kindle sales.

Actually, the opposite is true. Amazon is buying Kindle rights from publishers at the same price they’re paying for physical books. And Amazon is sticking with its policy to sell Kindle books at no more than $9.99. So take your average $20 list price hardcover book (if I were a shameless self-promoter, I would use my book The Genius Machine as an example, since it also has a list price of $20. But I will resist the temptation.) The publisher sells it to Amazon for 50% off, or $10. Amazon could sell my the book for $20, but they discount it down to $13.57, and make a profit of $3.57, or maybe a little less if Amazon is paying for shipping.

Now take the same book sold as a Kindle. Amazon pays $10 for those rights, too. And Amazon sells the download for $9.99, thereby earning a gross profit of 1¢ on each copy. On books that wholesale for more than $9.99, Amazon seems to be locked into a loss with every sale. Read more…

huj8fxt54w

Eleven-thirty Saturday morning in Tiburon, California. The radios are on throughout the house. We’re listening to a live broadcast from London of Beethoven’s Fidelio, the 50th Proms concert of the season, with 26 left to go. The world’s largest music festival — thousands of performers, many world premieres, many of the world’s great orchestras. Of all the glories the Internet has given us, for me, this is the one I would part with last.

Cultural hegemony is a two-way street. American culture, particularly through our dominance of news, television shows, and Hollywood film, tend to suffocate local culture. In many parts of the world our cultural intrusions are resented. But we can’t help it. We hardly notice the local flora and fauna that disappears under our tread. Read more…

The current civic war over health care restructuring that’s raging in Congress and across America is instructive to anyone who is interested in improving things anywhere. I often wonder why, 48 years after the establishment of the Peace Corp, or 90 years after the creation of the League of Nations (that held among its goals ending malaria, yellow fever, and preventing typhus epidemics) that progress, as measured by world health and poverty, seems so slow.

One thing we can see clearly in the midst of all the fog surrounding health care change in the United States is that a significant portion of the populace is terrified of change, so much so that even the thought of discussing change frightens them. Instead of attending town meetings and listening and asking, they would prefer that these town meetings not take place at all. For these millions of people, it is clear that they would prefer to hold on to the status quo. Read more…

Isn’t it great that our kids are stuck with us for a fairly lengthy period of time? If we screw up and say something that perhaps wasn’t the best possible parenting expression, they’re going to be around tomorrow, too. We’re going to get another chance to do better.

This is extremely important in the realm of parenting. Most of us have absorbed the wisdom that our kids will perceive negative comments about themselves so powerfully that it will take from 10 to 20 times the number of positive remarks to create a perception of balance. That’s why we need to hesitate when we tell our kid that maybe they could have tried a little harder on that quiz. Have we already told them on 10 different occasions how great they’ve done something?

I’m feeling the same way about customer service at the moment. Take great care of me (basically just do a good job) and I’ll keep using you. But screw up, especially if it makes me look bad, and it will take a long, long time before I trust you again. Read more…

We all know that the world treats you better if you’re good-looking. Tall is helpful, too. Tall men make more money than short men. They are more likely to become CEOs. They are seen as not only more powerful, but more intelligent.

Do you care if people see you as intelligent? If you do, then you might want to practice a few simple things that can make it more likely that people will grock you as smart. Let’s start with posture. If you occupy your clothes as if they’re still on a hanger, you’ll look as if you’re tired. And if you look tired, people will think you’re generally sleepy-headed. When you’re sitting either at a table or at your desk, you’ll want to practice being compact in your body, legs and arms neatly arranged. Sprawl means disorganized, and unless you’re already certified as a genius, sprawl means you can’t find what you need when you need it, either on your desk or in your head. Read more…

A few weeks ago I posted an open letter to GM CEO Fritz Henderson on the first day of GM’s entering into bankruptcy protection, offering my concern that Mr. Henderson’s reliance on great GM design to save the company might be a problem since GM had put so much ugly tin on America’s roads. I also noted that GM’s culture needed to change, and this was their last chance to get it right. I didn’t mention that most experts on corporate change say it requires 3 — 5 years to accomplish, if you know what you’re doing.

In an amazing display of exactly what I was talking about, Mr. Henderson tossed my article over the fence and assigned the response to Global VP for all design, Ed Welburn, who wrote a public letter back to “Gerald Sindell of the Huffington Post,” which contained an impassioned defense of GM design, and the thousands of artists and modelers at work around the clock around the world creating beautiful new GM cars. Mr. Welburn invited me to visit GM dealerships, look at and drive the new Chevys, Buicks and Cadillacs. I was also invited to visit to global design headquarters in Detroit and see for myself. Read more…

Great framing can change the way we see a piece of art. Great framing can do the same for you and your ideas. If your book’s first edition is from a major publisher, has a handsome cover and comes with blurbs from a full pantheon of quality endorsers, your reader will be nicely teed up to seriously consider the merits of your ideas. In contrast, if you self-publish in a paperback edition, have your art major child design the cover and send an email blast out urging all your friends to buy the book in the hope it will go to #1 on Amazon for ten minutes on Thursday, you may experience a bit more difficulty getting the respect your ideas might deserve.

The title of your book is also part of the framing. Either the title or the subtitle of the book must tell the prospective book buyer what the value offering is for the book. The right title and subtitle will in effect say, “Yes, I’m talking to you!” A typical non-fiction book buyer will take a look at that value offering, and if it’s appealing, open the book and fan through it to see the scope of the book. The chapter titles that appear along the top of the book as it’s being fanned are the next frame. They are saying: These are the topics that the author says are necessary to understand my ideas. The style of the chapter headings — are they funny, do they hang together as a family of ideas — will frame the experience of learning for the reader. Read more…

The Genius Machine has gotten more than its fair share of great reviews. I don’t post them since they can be found easily. But one came in today, written by Wayne Hurlbert, that is the very model of conciseness.

“This book is about a third kind of thinking, one that is directed toward improving an existing idea, thinking through a complete issue, or creating something new,” writes Thought Leaders International founder Gerald Sindell, in his powerful guide to creative thinking and idea development The Genius Machine: The 11 Steps That Turn Raw Ideas into Brilliance. The author presents a brilliant eleven step system that creates, develops, and completes the idea building process with simplicity and elegance.

Read more…