The Corrupt Society by Robert Payne published by Praeger Publishers, NY 1975. The strength of cultures, and their weakness cannot be measured exactly by any known measuring rods. We simply do not know how much residual strength lies in a culture when it is confronted by a powerful enemy determined to destroy it.

The five faces of corruption are old age, conquest, tyranny, treachery and subversion, and clash of cultures. Before describing the faces, there are many weapons that can be used to prevent the corruption of societies. The most powerful are vigilance and knowledge. Some of this will be through the press but it is important there is a free flow of information (the internet helps) for in the words of Tomas Paine: Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.  The least corrupt societies are those that are the most open, where the responsibility is shared among all the people, where there is no privileged class and there no vast differences in wealth. Corruption enters as soon as the government is managed on behalf of special interests against the interests of the people. Once corrupt it is very hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

1. Corruption by Old Age

Society lives on past glories, celebrates its ancient arts, but the words spoken are the same as the past hundreds of years. If you are living on past glories, you are not looking at the new. What could be? Opening the window for air to breathe and the life of the people worth living again. If the people are not looking towards the future, the society may continue to function but one day someone will change it.

2. Corruption by Conquest

In many countries, a strong ruler was in place and did good, however he (it tended to be a male) left no natural rulers or the country is both weak and divided against itself. The normal pattern the country breaks up. A political structure can tolerate and absorb an almost limitless amount of petty corruption. It cannot tolerate and absorb the corruption of the spirit that comes about when the conquerors assume the role of masters and conquered accept the role of the servants. What tends to happen is the masters begin to believe they are the masters; the servants know if they can retain their sense of identity they can outlast the masters.

3. Corruption by Tyranny

When a country has either surrender to a tyrant or been tricked into granting him full powers, the process of corruption begins. The tyrant ruling by decree, sooner or later finds out his decrees are based on a small amount of information available to reflect the situation. The people around him know even less and misinformation is the norm because the leader is a tyrant. The concentration of power in a single man chokes the off the best energies of the nation; all must be subservient to him and the power he seized is used to maintain him in power. If money corrupts, vast sums of money corrupts vastly.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as shareholders we elect Boards of Directors who elect Presidents to run the company. How well they are open to process, how the President runs the company is important. We must be willing to ensure the company beside making money has a reasonably open process.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In our everyday lives, most of us go through life with the opportunities and challenges it faces us, it helps a great deal if our incomes allow us to live a reasonable life. As we look around the world and include our own countries we can easily see greater income disparities. Those who have investments in dividend paying companies, wonder if those companies are stable and secure enough for little to happen to it. If you work for a company, it has a culture in it, hopefully it has done good as defined by the standards set out for it both economically and its impact to the communities it serves. but all is never perfect, by the very nature of things cultures are fragile. They can be easily destroyed, however they can also continue to survive. Cultures can be deformed and defaced by conquerors and tyrants and yet survive as long as there are a few people determined to make them survive. These words were written in the book The Corrupt Society by Robert Payne published by Praeger Publishers, NY 1975. The strength of cultures, and their weakness cannot be measured exactly by any known measuring rods. We simply do not know how much residual strength lies in a culture when it is confronted by a powerful enemy determined to destroy it.

What we can do is isolate some of the factors that allow culture to endure: courage, willpower, vigor, a sense of common traditions that bind people together, and their determination to preserve a way of life that satisfies and enriches them. If the arts are flourishing, if the people have a common purpose, if their natural spontaneity is encouraged, we can be sure that the essential core of a nation is healthy; if the opposite it is unhealthy. From a culture point of view the artists are usually the indicators of the strength of a culture.

Confucius said that if you want to know the spirit of the people, you only have to listen to their songs. A modern observer only has to study the arts of a country to know whether it is healthy or corrupt. Paintings, literature and music tell us more than presidential speeches. A presidential speech should flow or it should have live in it.

How does one recognize a corrupt society? People go through the motions of living. The forces of death are stronger than the forces of life, where hope has vanished, where the essential structure is in a state of dissolution and nothing has evolved. Human hopes revolve around the family, and the disintegration of family life also provides a measure of corruption.

A corrupt society has its own language, a corrupted form of an otherwise healthy language, and its own laws, which are the natural laws turned upside down. The basic law is a single word: Obey. The basic aim is conformity. The basic weapons are the well-tried weapons of military force, threats of arrest and deceit. No one should estimate the power of deceit to keep a terrified people in subjection.

Healthy societies are always different, corrupt societies are all alike.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as buyers of stocks for a longer time period, often we buy because of very good past results and we expect them to continue. All companies go in cycles, business cycles, management cycles, as a shareholder you want to recognize when the company goes into decay so you can buy something else.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

The last number of posts were from a book called The Impact Equation written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published by Portfolio Books/Penguin, NY, 2012 will help the social media releases create impact with the formula Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  or CREATE. The letters stand for Contrast, Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust and Echo. In thinking about this book, it relates very well to the Apple Watch. If you have seen the ads, which seem wonderful, the Apple Watch size means you are not going to a great deal of reading but you will catch the headlines or reminders. The author has a watch which has a clock and a date on it, but is not made by Apple however it is near the same size. In the advertisements for the new watch, you will be connected to the web but the writing will be hard to see or it maybe difficult to read a great deal of material. This translates to the information you want is essentially the headlines which means those short sentences have to be impactful to make a difference.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the new products such as Apple Watch begins to change the way we continually use information and how we receive it. It will not affect everyone right away but as you look to the future you need to ask how do the companies you invest in react to innovations such as the Apple Watch. Apple did an excellent method to launch the product – it announced the Watch was coming; it highlighted the company as a leading innovation company; it gave a date; it delivered on time and beat expectations of the market. Learning from Apple is a good thing.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In today’s business world using social media is part of the strategy but similar to other aspects of life, some with be good and others not so. The book The Impact Equation written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published by Portfolio Books/Penguin, NY, 2012 will help the social media releases create impact with the formula Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  or CREATE. The letters stand for Contrast, Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust and Echo.

Trust think of the word Why? why are you doing this?

Trust is about confidence and reliability. We tend to know if we can trust someone or not. How can we tell if someone trust us?

One definition is C*R*I/S = Trust where C is Creditability; R = Reliability; I = Intimacy and S = Self-Interest

Credibility is what you say that can actually be backed up by your credentials

Reliability is what happens when you do what you say you will do.

Intimacy is all levels of closeness between individuals, often for personal reasons other than business

Self-interest is knowing how to listen.

The trick is to be human.

Echo

Echo is about finding common experiences and using them to help people realize that you have some understanding of their lives.

1. Use their language

2. Find common ground

3. Share your feelings

When you do the above prove it and connect to people on a daily basis.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the companies that you own, besides being profitable and paying you a dividend why do you own them. Hopefully you believe they are also good corporate citizens that prove to their customers on a daily basis. If they do that then the rules are easily followed. If not, look for blips in the stock prices as they react to things they do not do well.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In today’s business world using social media is part of the strategy but similar to other aspects of life, some with be good and others not so. The book The Impact Equation written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published by Portfolio Books/Penguin, NY, 2012 will help the social media releases create impact with the formula Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  or CREATE. The letters stand for Contrast, Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust and Echo.

Reach is the platform which is the combination of tools you use to reach others and communicate ideas. The tools run from the internet to mainstream media outlets. Reach is almost never built quickly, it takes practice which means learning from your many mistakes. Reach can take lots of money to seed to people to share it and sometimes it can be done with very little money. Reach is not about fair.

Echo is about keeping the message fresh so it feels pertinent to newcomers.

Articulation means keeping the message and brief size.

Advertising means borrowing audience attention and diverting it toward what you are trying to sell.

Platform is different – its purpose is to audience build. Reaching people does nothing unless you provide them enough value to make them stop what they are doing  and participate in your media.

Value can mean money but does not have to mean money. The new value market often means give away as much as you can for free and only charge for the difficult parts. The important aspect is connect with people to serve them first.

Launching Products

1. Do not focus on your audience; focus on other audiences. Your audience is already sold on you, work on collecting allies.

2. Always ask beforehand, not the day of the launch.

3. Create real incentive and/or scarcity.

4. The quality of the work must be consistently excellent.

Exposure

Is your content seen as hype or does it really matter?

1. Your material is something someone would be delighted to come across.

2. You, your department or your clients look forward to what you send them.

3. You content is like a TV show – no advertisements.

Exposure is the art of hitting people, again and again, until they finally decide to take some kind of action.

The ideal time to post your blog is anytime as long as people can use and relate to the information or it is information that will prompt them to maintain some kind of relationship with you.

For long-term exposure follow these guidelines:

1. Start with like-minded people.

2. Tell stories that relate to people who do not share your cause.

3. Tell stories that make the buyer the hero.

4. Help others first. – earn the attention.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the exposure and value have things you are not supposed to do all the time. If your company is breaking those rules with you – selling all the time, pretending they have no competition; what do you think the reaction is towards a non sold person?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In today’s business world using social media is part of the strategy but similar to other aspects of life, some with be good and others not so. The book The Impact Equation written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published by Portfolio Books/Penguin, NY, 2012 will help the social media releases create impact with the formula Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  or CREATE. The letters stand for Contrast, Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust and Echo.

Articulation is to seed ideas in anyone’s mind without creating unnecessary barriers. One method is to tell your story like the person is 6 years old. To do this, use small words which will allow people to connect to the idea and learn to make them their own. To have impact especially one that contrasts against people’s expectations is better. Try an exercise using small words

Describe what you do for work. Describe what your company does.

Describe the movie the Matrix.

If you won $ 5 million, what would you do with it?

What do you want most in a new hire or colleague?

Now that you can use small words, the trick is learning which words to choose. Which words can you lose to pare down the idea? What aspect do you need to write a few more words to explain what your idea is. The process is called the synthesis or narrowing down the information to what really matters to help connect the dots for the reader.

There are many ideas, hopefully too many for you to act on all on them, how do your narrow them down to the do list?

Business Ideas

1. Does this idea fit our mission and goals for the year and beyond?

2. Is the new idea revenue generating (or cost cutting)?

3. What would it take (money/time/resources) to get the idea launched?

4. Who would champion this idea and do they have the time?

5. Does it meet our Internal Rate of Return expectation?

6. How much money can we make and is it worth it?

Creative Ideas

1. Does this idea connect with any of the themes of my work?

2. Does this idea stretch me as an artist?

3. Can I use my skills to execute this idea?

4. How much time and other materials are involved in this idea?

5. Do I care whether this idea is salable or not?

Making a point is easier if you are brief. Articulation is about picking the best words to allow people to respond and buy into the idea.

Look at your favourite ads what do they say and why? In the overwhelming majority of cases you will see brevity is a selling point.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one easy method is to look at how the company is selling itself. Are the ads clear or from your opinion needs to be cleaned up to tell the story. In the President’s letter to the shareholders what great ideas were highlighted, ask about the process from idea to product or service.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In today’s business world using social media is part of the strategy but similar to other aspects of life, some with be good and others not so. The book The Impact Equation written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith published by Portfolio Books/Penguin, NY, 2012 will help the social media releases create impact with the formula Impact = C x (R+E+A+T+E)  or CREATE. The letters stand for Contrast, Reach, Exposure, Articulation, Trust and Echo.

Contrast is an idea has to be similar but different from what is out there. Other words are differentiation, positioning, interest.

Reach  – the higher number of people you connect with, the more influential your idea can become

Exposure is how often you connect to them.

Articulation is being understood instantly

Trust is trust but you need to know why people trust you

Echo is about the feeling of connection you give your reader, visitor or participant.

Contrast is about ideas and understanding them. The shape of an idea matters. Every idea has a sender and a receiver.The receiver must be open for the idea to take root or have resonance. They have to get it.

Human beings are powerful pattern recognition machines, we do it very well. It helps us see what works and what does not; it helps us see which of our actions are worth repeating and which are not. Contrast is about pattern breaking and the first method to do this is think about who the message is for. Thus contrast is about strong positioning of your ideas which allows it to create value. To come up with the ideas there is a process which helps

1. What is the goal of the idea? why do you need one?

2. How does this idea fit my existing framework? does it?

3. How much work does this idea add to my life?

4. What will it take to accomplish this idea? List what will it take to get your idea going.

5. What additional resources do I need to make this idea work?

6. How will I know whether to keep going or quit?  A useful resource is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. He uses the term pivot which refers to the moment a start-up has to decide whether to press on with the original idea or pivot to a new angle.

7. When will I be done?  is the ideas temporary? what makes it a success or failure?

How will you know you have a good idea?

Good ideas make you feel ….  something, anything!

Good ideas attach themselves to other concepts in the brain

Good ideas fulfill a need.

If no need is being fulfilled an idea will die a quick death, the challenge will be to find people with the need. In terms of attachment to other ideas, emotion plays a role.

How to use Contrast if you have an existing business:

1. Judge the value propositions of the space you are engaging in. What other offerings define the space?

2. Pan out. Is your value information or emotion? Is it entertainment or education?

3. Where must you compete and what is critical in this space in order to maintain position? If you lost an entire arm of your products would you go bankrupt?

4. What can be diminished? What really matters to the audience you are targeting? Do they really care about a given product or part of your business?

5. What can be eliminated? The values you serve are not equal to all of your customers.

Linking to dividend producing stocks, as social media continues to evolve, companies need to evolve to capture spending and to grow, how is your older established company doing it?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

If you read a newspaper one of the sections is the sports section. The reporters cover what happens on the sports field of the city particularly professional sports. The professional sports greatly helped by TV revenues but started with exposure on radio, for the TV networks professional sports are relatively inexpensive to produce, but guarantees in every game examples of determination, imagination, courage, drive, highs and lows or a microcosm portion of life. Within each sport of the hundreds of athletes which can be seen only a few emerge to change the game or dominate it with their play. Every sport has one – their names reflect the before and afterwards, before the player the sport was played; during and afterwards the player dominated a part of the game which meant everyone else had to change to both defend him or her and play like them. In the book, The Dominators – The Remarkable Athletes who Changed Their Sport Forever by Frank Orr and George Tracz published by Warwick Publishing, Toronto, 2004. Professional sports are a big field and as North Americans the sports more athletes are from there but the names are world-wide – Muhammad Ali. Lance Armstrong, Bjorn Borg, Jim Brown, Babe Didrikson, Julius Erving, Wayne Gretzky, Mia Hamm, Michael Jordan, Sandy Koufax, Nancy Lopez, Maradona, Rocky Marciano, Helen Wills Moody, Joe Namath, Martina Navratilova, Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Orr, Pele, Richard Petty, Jacques Plante, Jerry Rice, Jackie Robinson, Patrick Roy, Bill Russell, Babe Ruth, Pete Sampras, Michael Schumacher, Secretariat, Annika Sorenstam, Lawrence Taylor, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods and Cy Young,  There is no doubt other names could be put forth but the authors had to narrow the field down.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the dominator in this case are the companies who have continued to make profits and raising their dividends on a yearly basis. The reality is there are not that many companies on the list but those on the list make it look easy to do. One of the biggest challenges on choosing the dominator is to narrow down the field which allows you to pick one of many great choices. When investing try to pick a dominator or best in class and although stock prices will go up and down, your choice will pay off well.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

There is an interesting story going on in the taxi industry, although none of the companies are public. The taxi industry is regulated by municipalities who issues plates and then drivers rent the plate to work. Those that own the plates charge rental of the plate and franchising fees for name of company and connection to the routing center. Within this heavily regulated business comes Uber who does everything by its app or mobile phone system. This means the players in the regulated system are fighting the new, how it works out in the end is anyone best guess except the cost f the rental plates at the taxi service is likely to significantly fall.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in all industries that are regulated, someone is always offering an alternative. Often those alternatives are in left field (or far from the action) but if the correct conditions begin to allow expansion, the gateway is open. Thus you can see the near monopoly businesses fighting to save their margins and suggesting the public is better served by the existing system. It is easier to see in some industries such as the taxi one, but as an investor you need to pay attention to the alternatives of the companies you are investing in.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.