Trump Indicted. Fate knocks on the door

Donald Trump has become the first American president facing criminal charges. My first thought was the ancient idea of fate and retribution. There’s no point trying to escape. You can attempt to cheat your fate, but one day fate knocks on the door.
Da da da dah!

The most famous telling is the myth of Oedipus, the moralist’s ultimate moral tale of fate and the cruelty of judgement day. Or as another gloomy Roman poet put it, those whom the Gods will destroy, they first drive mad. Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.

Another ancient version of the fable was related by Somerset Maugham in his account of The Appointment in Samarra.

The speaker is Death, presented as a woman.

“There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions. In a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said,
Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went on his way to Samarra,

Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?

That was not a threatening gesture [Fate told him], it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad … for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra”.

So, on to the story of Donald Trump. He is not one calmly to accept his downfall. There’s tragic heroism in his madness.

He tried to stay ahead of his fate by announcing it. The conspiracy against me continues, he cried. It’s all fake news. He is promising to make as public a spectacle of his arraignment as possible. This could be arranged away from the public gaze. Or, as fantasised by Donald Trump, there would be TV shots of him in handcuffs doing his perp walk, maybe in a prison suit from central casting.
Or maybe not …

It’s still a long ride to his appointment in Samarra.
Meanwhile, in the U.K. a similar story is developing over charges against Boris Johnson. But that deserves a blog of its own.

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Trump to renegotiate Paris climate change accord

President Trump returns from his eight-day humiliation tour of the Middle East and Europe to announce he would be pulling out of the Paris environmental treaty

“They won’t be laughing now” he said, arguing that earlier global arrangements had taken America as suckers.  Not laughing, maybe, but weeping in frustration.

Make the Planet Great Again, Justin Trudeau tweeted.

President Obama was able to overcome political opposition at home in signing up America for the Paris accord.  The two countries yet to sign are Syria and Nicaragua.

Donald Trump is sticking to his election pledge to create jobs in the rust-belt states. This may not create the kind of jobs the displaced coal miners voted for. Opponents argue that growth in jobs will come to workers able to retrain for new skills.

China and the EU are seen as moving more closely together on this issue. President Trump’s announcement was early justification of Chancellor Merkel’s claim this week that the EU could no longer take for granted shared interests with the USA and the UK on climate change.

Timing bad for Theresa May?

More locally, Theresa May, an early ally of President Trump, is regretting the timing of the announcement. She is a week away from a General Election she called, fighting on the basis her strong and stable leadership as she negotiates the UK’s departure from the EU. An earlier lead in the polls is shrinking. Attacks on labour leader Jeremy Corbyn seem to have failed to exacerbate his earlier woeful ratings as a future Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister’s non-show at a televised debate this week gave opponents the chance to weaken her case further, by describing her as weak and wobbly. Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green party, had a particularly positive impact on the audience.

The Prime Minister called the Trump decision disappointing.  She could have been referring to the effect it could have on the final election result.

Tweeted air-quotes, and our linguistic debt to Donald Trump

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Donald Trump says he invented the phrase pump-priming. Maybe he didn’t, but that pales into insignificance when compared with his magnificent contribution to our understanding of the “tweeted air-quote “

This week, in an interview with the Economist, President Trump said he recently came up with the term priming the pump as an economic concept. The interviewer politely suggested it had been in use before (by Maynard Keynes). No matter, when we reflect on the brilliant use of air quotes when tweeting.

Trump and Mental Health: An Alternative Truth?

 

The increasingly discussed matter of the mental health of President Trump brings to mind an extensive study into eccentrics and mental illness

 

The Guardian introduced the topic describing the President’s coping mechanisms for denying unpleasant news. [Trump denies presidency in state of chaos, Guardian, February 17]

Other reports report his refusal to confront media (purveyors of fake news), for example, and general repeated assertions of what is increasingly described as alternative truths.

Not ill, but in denial

One possibility is that the President is not mentally ill, (in the sense that such illness is a form of destructive self-harm). Rather, the delusions of Mr Trump are health-protective, avoiding the traumatic consequences of damage to self-image. It should be noted that socially, such individuals may well induce mental and physical ill-health on others, but that is another story.

Eccentric behaviours

This is where our understanding of people classified as eccentrics does enter the story. Some years ago, following analysis of over a thousand individuals, researchers concluded that eccentrics were less likely than the general public to require treatment for mental illnesses. Some subjects of the study were thoroughly delusional, which permitted them a life protected from the sufferings of many considered more normal.

A national study from Scotland captured remarkable lifestyles of self-defined eccentrics taking fascinating forms. (I have lost my notes on this study, and would welcome suggestions for retreiving it).

Being ill and causing illness

Ironically, in a another article the same day, the Guardian reported on the occupational hazards and proneness to mental illness, burn-out and stress, suffered by many cancer specialists around the world. Here, it is the carers as well as the victims, who suffer

As Polonius noted, though there be madness, yet there is method in it.

Follow up

I have left uncited the remarkable number of news items about this subject on the web. The debate is now touching on the Goldwater Rule (that ‘experts’ as well as lay-persons are expected not to comment on the mental state of the POTUS)

 

 

Don’t lose that deal over lunch

 

In this Trumpian era, it is important to understand deal-making. I pass on a hint to deal-makers.  Don’t lose the deal you almost won in the morning, by something you do over lunch.

I write, not as a great deal-maker, but as a student of those who claim to be. My case-example goes back some years to a time when executives would swap leadership stories in workshops encouraging the sharing of their experiences.

In one of the workshops, I came across the account of an international deal that had been moving to a satisfactory conclusion. The tale-teller came from a UK international organization. The deal was in a country with a very different culture. Negotiations were made with simultaneous translations on each side.

The technical details of the deal were surprisingly easy to wrap-up. Most had been agreed through professional teams working in advance of the meeting of the corporate leaders. Having reached the point at which a decision to go ahead seemed certain, the final morning meeting broke up for lunch. A celebratory mood prevailed.

The senior British figures were driven to a top dining place in the country for lunch. “They spoke in a few words of English,” the British manager told us “We had been briefed that it was vital to keep up with them in the drinks and the toasts. Unfortunately, the booze got to us more than it did to them. Worse, their broken English was a sham.  At least one understood every word we said about them, our real thoughts about them, not the censored versions they had been hearing before. You could say we won the contract in the morning, and lost it over lunch.”

Please take from my story what you will. As we are learning from events in America and around the world, this is a time when we all have to learn the art of the deal.

The case may also apply to those political figures setting out on Brexit negotiations.

Paul Chambers: The case of the malicious tweet

 

Paul Chambers, a frustrated air traveller, tweeted in exasperation at the delays to his flight. The tweet was to change his life, and not for the better

Our story starts in January 2010.  Snow was adding to travellers problems’ including those at Nottingham’s Robin Hood airport

A young accountant was in danger of damaging his planned romantic meeting. In heavily ironic tones he tweeted

that unless service improved, he would be back in a week to blow up the airport.

Pause for reader reaction

The cautious me suggests that if security learned of the tweet, it might prompt the mildest of low-cost checking to see if the tweet was intended as. Joke (say 99% probability) or a bizarre early warning of terrorism intentions (say 1% probability).

What happened next

According to the report of the court case, Mr Chambers was en route to Belfast to consummate a twitter romance in real life. Failing to make his flight, the thwarted suiter returned to work when the local police arrived, and hauled him off into custody.

Legal proceedings followed, which resulted in a fine for which the appeal was originally turned down.

Eventually his high court challenge was successful, as The Guardian reported

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/27/twitter-joke-trial-high-court

 

Paul Chambers, who was found guilty of sending a menacing tweet, has won his high court challenge against his conviction. Outside the court, he said he felt “relieved and vindicated”, adding: “It’s ridiculous it ever got so far.”

He had tweeted in frustration when he discovered that Robin Hood airport in South Yorkshire was closed because of snow. Eager to see his girlfriend, he sent out a tweet on the publicly accessible site declaring: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

He has always maintained that he did not believe anyone would take his “silly joke” seriously.

The lord chief justice, Lord Judge, sitting with Mr Justice Owen and Mr Justice Griffith Williams, said:

“We have concluded that, on an objective assessment, the decision of the crown court that this ‘tweet’ constituted or included a message of a menacing character was not open to it. On this basis, the appeal against conviction must be allowed.”

Twitter to the rescue

As the mills of justice had ground on, twitter had sprung to the rescue. Celebrity twitter comedians such as Stephen Fry offered moral support, the spotlight of publicity, and some bankrolling of legal charges.

Not the only case

The tweeter appeared on Radio Five Live today [February 3rd, 2017]. He seemed a remarkably sanguine victim of wrongful arrest and of the loss of his job. His new wife too has given him moral support. (I’m not sure yet if she was the object of his snow-abandoned flight in 2010.)

I added this case to my collection of stories about twitter going viral over injustices visited on tweeters. Airline passengers have appeared quite frequently in the stories. [See Dilemmas of Leadership .]

Lessons learned

Twitter is a good friend but can be your worse enemy. A lesson there for Donald Trump perhaps?

Roger, Rafa, Serena, Venus. Form is temporary, class is permanent

The Australian Open singles finals became the sporting event of the year when four of the greatest tennis players of their generation faced off for the titles

January 2017: Melbourne Australia. Four great tennis players have battled to reach the finals. None had started the tournament as top seed. The tennis tensions are palpable.

All four have shown astonishing resilience against younger and arguably fitter opponents. It was all the more unusual because all four had been written off before the tournament on grounds of injury, Ill-health, and advancing years.

Andy and Novak battle for top seed

In the men’s game, for nearly a year Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic had been fighting for top dog (or top seed, as they prefer to say in tennis.) Roger and Rafa were left behind.

Roger, after a career of injury-free successes had succumbed to the perils of fatherhood, namely prepared his twins for their bath, and severely damaging his back when turning the tap on. (I couldn’t have written that in a fictional account).

Rafa after an equally-illustrious career but one blighted with injuries was recovering from his latest injury time-out. His appearances now reveal residual damage to knees, legs, fingers (ugh, particularly unpleasant looking.)

Recently they met to share medical reports, dreaming of one day when they might be both fit enough to limp on to court for one last public match.

Serena versus Venus

In the women’s game, the Williams systers had already become medical phenomena with debilitating conditions which has not prevented them from collecting multiple titles individually and just for fun as a devastating doubles partnership.

The younger sister Serena became by far the strongest and most talented and winningest woman player of her generation. Venus, by comparison Spiderwoman to Serena’s Superwoman, would also hold more singles titles (but fewer doubles, probably) if her sister had not been around.

A year ago, Serena reached the pinnacle of her career in the Senena Slam in New York, widely touted as the tournament in which she would be crowned as winner of all four slams in a calander year. Partly through nerves she slipped up. Since then she has won out only on  injury bragging-rights.

However, earlier in the tournament she summoned up her remarkable depths of bouncebackability to sweep past the new British hope Joannah Konta. She is installed as favorite once again.

Age shall nor weary them

Age shall nor weary them. This weekend, the tennis world watches with huge anticipation the battle of the four thirty-something’s. At clubs around the world, the four golden-oldies will be celebrated by millions of mere mortals, some still swinging as the decades slip by.

A tweet from Donald?

Donald Trump used the US Open to launch his political career. He may just find time for a phone-call to Australia or maybe a tweet today.

To be continued

Gina Miller and Theresa May are contenders for leader of the month

Gina Miller and Theresa May are contenders for Leaders We Deserve award of the month. Each has supporters and vehement distractors

Two political figures have emerged in the UK as leaders of the month. The stories of Gina Miller and Theresa May intersect, and also relate to Donald Trump’s first tumultuous week as President of the United States (POTUS). As I write, [27 January 2017], Theresa May is embarking on her first visit to meet Mr Trump.

Gina Miller’s campaign

Gina Miller launched a campaign which clarified an important constitutional issue at our Supreme Court of Justice.  The success of her action forced the Government led by Theresa May to back off from efforts to bypass parliamentary scrutiny of their plan for exiting the EU.

A torrent of abuse

Gina Miller’s intervention in the courts threatened a delay in the March deadline for triggering the start of Brexit. This week saw the High Court ruling in her favour. Cue to frantic efforts of damage limitation to the government’s plans to trigger the Brexit button, aka Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty .

Her campaign has brought with it a torrent of abuse. Coincidentally, it took place as women around the world were matching in protest at their treatment, and at the appointment of Donald Trump, seen as epitomising bullying treatment against women. And the week when Theresa May was urged to raise such matters with Trump at their up-coming meeting. [See? I said these stories were inter-related]

Miller’s back story is a fascinating one, yet typical of many high-achievers who overcome early life set-backs which strengthen their resolve.

 

Her sense of injustice stems from childhood experiences of being bullied and left to fend for herself after her parents ran out of money for boarding school. Born into an influential family in Guyana, at the age of 10 she was sent to boarding school in Britain.

She recalls how her mother had given her a bottle of her favourite perfume Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps to take with her so she wouldn’t feel homesick, but the first weekend in school, girls emptied it out and filled it with water.

At 14, her parents’ financial circumstances had changed and she was forced to become a day pupil, living alone with her 16-year-old brother in a flat in Eastbourne, supplementing her allowance with a stint as a chambermaid. [The Guardian 25 January 2017The Guardian 25 January 2017]

 

Theresa backs down skillfully

May had repeatedly insisted that to make details public would reveal too much to European political leaders in negotiations about the UK’s ‘bottom line’. The wisdom or naivety of her point is open for discussion. It is unlikely to be an effective approach for nuclear negotiations where  the ‘finger on the button’ does not want to conceal the intentions of the owner of the potentially Armageddon-triggering digit.

The week, Prime Minister May broke her self-imposed restraint with a prepared statement helped clarify her previously concealed exit (Brexit) strategy. Then at Prime Ministers Question time, she announced the miraculous birth of a white paper, fully formed, and to be presented to the House. [Wednesday 25 January, 2017]

Out means out. Out of the Economic Union. Out of the shared tariff zone arrangements. Out, out damn plots robbing us of controls of our borders.

Deal or no deal

So what’s up for negotiation? Anything which deprives the UK of getting ‘the best deal possible deal’ Err, not quite so clear. The statement did indicate a ‘deal or no deal’ possibility involving the UK from ‘walking away’ from the negotiating table (note please, it’s another metaphor, although a not-unknown gesture of defeated participants in high and low political practices). The no-deal option which secures ‘the best deal for Britain’ has been dubbed by opponents of the Government as heading the country for a bargain-basement low-wage tax-haven society.

A footnote to history?

 

The years 2016-18 may turn out to be of particular interest to students of leadership. The sweep of events touch on humanitarian crises, environmental decay, to political shocks to the system. Donald Trump is likely to grab headlines as the most unexpected political story of the decade and beyond. from his change of job title as an entertainment host to the most powerful leader in the world.

Both May and Trump are untried in the fog of international negotiations. Each utter words or reassurance to their respective supporters. This week they share headlines with Gina Miller. Theresa May will have more chances to demonstrate her leadership qualities. Perhaps Gina Miller will as well. In any event, she has been guaranteed a footnote in contemporary political history this week.

She is my nominated leader of the month.

To be continued

You won’t believe this special offer and where Donald Trump comes into it

The pun in the title of my book, Tennis Tensions, has done me no favours. It has attracted attention mainly from people interested in the important but unintended issue of the tension in tennis racquets not in tennis players

Now the mighty Amazon organization has helped me clear up the confusions. Click here for more information.

Starting today, [12 January, 2017] a clarification is offered for purchasers of the e-book version. There seems to have been interest from business and sports professionals and teachers.

To encourage would-be customers, the message comes with special offers over the next week, after which the price returns to at least the price of a cookie and latte at your favourite computer cafe.

To explain in my own words:

Tennis Tensions is a case study of forty critical matches played in the course of the US Open in September 2015. It examines the tensions revealed, in order to understand the factors influencing a drop off in performance.

This is the tournament in which Serena William is competing to achieve what became known as The Serena Slam, winning all four Gram Slams in a Calendar year. The pressures to succeed are even more intense than usual.

In the Men’s tournaments, other stories develop. The top seed and favourite for the Singles title is Novak Djokovic. He becomes the prime target for a crop of emerging young talents seeking to beat the top gun. The great Bryan Brothers are suffering a dip in form, and are in danger of failing to win any of the doubles trophies in the four Grand Slam events of the year.

How do players cope with the tensions of the moment and deal with performance anxiety?

And Donald . . .?

Ah, yes. Donald Trump. In a light-hearted passage, I speculate on the motives of a political hopeful who had unexpectedly turned up at the tournament. What happened next? You’ll have to read the book.

There you have it. If you are interested in tensions influencing the outcome of sporting contests, act now to save yourself the cost of a coffee. Oh, and tell your friends.

Creative Leadership: From Manchester to Moscow in the new Trump era

A scheduled lecture from Manchester to students in Moscow took place in the week of Donald Trump’s victory in the election campaign. Here’s the content of the Skype arrangement

With some trepidation, I accepted an invitation to address an international course on the topic of creativity from my home base in England. The inevitable teething troubles with technology were solved in a somewhat tense day prior to the first of two lecture sessions, which took place [Monday 6 November 2016] a few days before the conclusion of the American Presidential election.

Professor Gershman developed the course ‘Managing Creativity and Innovation’ for the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) within the Higher School of Economics, Moscow.

ISSEK is a well-known research and analytical centre in Russia, specializing in science, technology and innovation studies. ISSEK is collaborating closely with the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research  (Prof. Ian Miles is the head of ISSEK’s Laboratory of Economics of Innovation, and Prof. Luke Georghiou is a member of ISSEK Advisory Board).

Here are the outline notes I had propped up in front of me, and also visible to the students

Introductory Remarks

What is creativity: Many theories.

My background: A scientist, chemist, studied worked in UK and New York

The Creative act that had me fired for insolence

Definitions: ‘contingent not universal’.

Consensus around creativity as a process generating new, relevant, useful outcomes.

Policy and creativity:

Policy is not my strong area: My research more at level of individual, team

Educational policy in USA after ‘Sputnik’: the creative initiative 1957, Dawn of space age.

Guilford’s earlier speech to The American Psychological Association: Was said to have drawn attention to the potential in studies of creativity for educational advances (pedagogy)

Torrance tests, were later sent into space with other artefacts

Education policy in Venezuala: via Minister of Education to stimulate creativity through De Bono’s models (lateral thinking) Information processing (Cognitive) model. Escape from fixation via contradictions, randomness, fantasy. His work supported by recent neurological studies.

Creativity theories: support Kahnman’s biases in economic theory.

The technology hotspots model: Richard Florida’s controversial creative city model. Three factors of Talent, Technology, Tolerance, resulting in economic hot spots

The USA election: Say it may be worthwhile taking a look at the election for the next session, after the result is known.

Questions:

Creativity ‘past present and future’ [PowerPoint]

Psychological approaches to creativity in Heath service [PowerPoint]

Questions:

To be continued