The Articulate CEO

Famous Speeches... Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The State has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led, almost exclusively, with his left [hand]. And Tom Robinson now sits before you, having taken "The Oath" with the only good hand he possesses -- his right.

I have nothing but pity in my heart for the Chief Witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But, my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say "guilt," gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She's committed no crime. She has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But, what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did.

Now what did she do? She tempted a negro. She was white and she tempted a negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.

The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Lincoln County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen -- to this Court -- in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted; confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption, the evil assumption, that all negroes lie; all negroes are basically immoral beings; all negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself, gentlemen, a lie -- which I do not need to point out to you.

And so, a quiet, humble, respectable negro, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against two white peoples. The defendant is not guilty. But somebody in this courtroom is.

Now, gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality!

Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this man to his family.

In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe Tom Robinson.

 

Babies, Mozart, Neuroscience and the Media - The Perfect Storm

Imagine a world in which you simply played a tune for your baby and they automatically became more intelligent just by listening to it. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could just download a bit of Beethoven or Mozart from iTunes, plug in your ipod and get better test scores? It would be fantastic wouldn't it? That's why hundreds of thousands of parents around the world do exactly that with products like 'Baby Mozart'. They spend millions on these products and what is known as the Mozart Effect trying to give their kids every advantage in life. Unfortunately, genius though he may have been, Mozart can't make you smarter.

The Mozart Effect was introduced to the world in the form of an article from the journal 'Nature'. In this article, it was reported that "...college students who listened to about ten minutes of a Mozart piano sonata showed a significant improvement on spatial reasoning tasks compared with a group of students who listened to a relaxation tape." This 1993 study seemed to show that intelligence could be improved by simply listening to classical music. Though it was difficult to replicate by other researchers, and it never claimed to improve spatial reasoning over the long term, the Mozart Effect was utilized as justification for companies to sell Mozart CDs to families with infants.

Later research would suggest that short-term mental arousal could explain the Mozart Effect. This would explain why individuals listening to music that they themselves enjoy (whether it be Mozart or not) feel more alert versus those that are not listening to anything. Perhaps you feel more alert after reading a story that makes you feel excited or after watching a thrilling movie. Any such activities could potentially improve short-term spatial ability, though not your intelligence.

So, Mozart may well make you feel a bit smarter and can certainly make you a little more alert for a very short space of time (if you like that sort of thing) but, trust me, you are as dopey as you ever were. If you are a parent who has bought into the Mozart Effect you may even be slightly more dopey than you thought you were!

The Mozart effect is an example of how science and the media mix in our world. A suggestion in a few paragraphs in a scientific journal becomes a universal truth in a matter of months, eventually believed even by the scientists who initially recognized how their work had been distorted and exaggerated by the media. Others, smelling the money, jump on the bandwagon and play to the crowd, adding their own myths, questionable claims, and distortions to the mix. In this case, many uncritical supporters line up to defend the faith because at stake here is the future of our children. We then have books, tapes, CDs, institutes, government programs, etc. Soon the myth is believed by millions as a scientific fact. In this case, the process met with little critical resistance because we already know that music can affect feelings and moods, so why shouldn't it affect intelligence and health, even if only slightly and temporarily? It's just commonsense, right? Yes, and all the more reason to be skeptical.

The Three Little Pigs in a World Gone Mad!

Remember the childhood story “The Three Little Pigs”? A classic tale complete with animals, action, and some life lessons about not taking the easiest route that, despite variations over the years, has always retained its core story. At least it had up until now.

Apparently a new version of the story is now appearing in US classrooms. In this new version, the wolf has a sudden heart attack while trying to blow down the third little pig’s adobe house. The three little pigs rush to his aid, save him, and while trying to flee from him once recovered, realize that the whole “huff and puff and blow your house down” thing was a simple “lack of communication”: the wolf actually wanted to move in with the pigs and was testing each house’s structural integrity.

The story also includes issues around housing shortages as well as houses made of recycled newspaper and aluminum and the wolf turns out to be a vegetarian. What the hell is going on?

Here are a couple of exerpts for you to judge for yourself...

Build A Better Vocabulary

Improving your vocabulary can be done at any age and any level of education and everyone can benefit. An enlarged vocabulary has the potential to enhance spoken and written communication as well as providing a deeper grasp of any language. What's more there are a variety of ways to improve your vocabulary, most of which are interactive and easy.

One of the best ways to improve your vocabulary is to read more. Reading is clearly linked with a larger vocabulary, especially if you seek out books in unfamiliar genres or about unfamiliar topics. Either non-fiction or fiction in a wide variety of fields can improve your vocabulary and general knowledge. As you read, make a note of unfamiliar words, look them up, and write down the definition.

Another way to improve your vocabulary is to play word games. Games like Scrabble and Boggle will encourage your brain to play with words and letters, as well as learning new ones. If you play Scrabble with an open dictionary you can encourage people to try out words they might otherwise be afraid of using.

Another way of improving your vocabulary is to do word puzzles. Most newspapers include crosswords, simple cryptology puzzles, and jumbles of varying degrees of difficulty. You can also purchase books of word puzzles that become increasingly difficult as you progress.

A simple way to improve your vocabulary is to use the dictionary. Create flash cards of unfamiliar words and practice them in the train, on the bus, or when you wake up in the morning. Try to practice words in a variety of environments so that you really learn them, and make sure to use the words in daily sentences as well so that you can grow accustomed to using them correctly. If you hear someone using a word you don’t recognize, look it up!

Many websites are dedicated to improving your vocabulary, and you can subscribe to word of the day features, word games, and other fun activities which will improve your vocabulary. In addition, you may find a community of individuals with interests like yours. If you are a twitter user then follow me on @simplydefined as we try to define the world in 140 characters or less.

Communicating Your Social Status Online

Given how important status symbols are in the real world it was kind of inevitable that they would start to be seen in the virtual world as well.

Being connected is suddenly seen as the thing to be and what started with showing off the number of visitors to your Flickr page or Wordpress blog now also encompasses the number of your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, YouTube Channel subscribers, LinkedIn connections and a host of other measures that tell the world you are tech savvy.

According to trendwatching.com, in the next 12 months you can’t go wrong supplying your (online-loving) customers with any kind of symbol, virtual or 'real world' that helps them display to peers their online contributions, 'interestingness', creations or popularity.

Just as people like to be seen consuming luxury products to show off their wealth, or driving a Prius to let us know they care about the environment, they also like their virtual offerings to be somehow recognised.

As more and more people invest in building a digital brand such as their own blog or online diary you can expect to see a greater demand for all sorts of digital endorsements of that brand.

Interestingly, one extra element to watch out for is new status symbols that straddle the 'real' and 'online' worlds.

From physical manifestations of digital status (think personalised Facebook and Twitter memorabilia), to online recognition of physical activities (status updates or badges based on real-world visits), consumers will seek to display their online status symbols in all arenas.

For example, Twournal enables Twitter users to transform their tweets and pictures into a real-life published journal. In addition to creating their own 'books', users can also buy and sell publications from other users. US based CrowdedInk offers an app that allows users to generate mugs filled with pictures of their Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Users only need to enter their username and a preview of the mug is automatically generated in minutes.

As more and more businesses look to create fans from consumers they are also going to need to be conscious of recognising those fans and rewarding them for their patronage in every world they might inhabit – real or otherwise.

Learn more about Twournal

 

Gender Bias Turns Out to be Just That… Gender Bias!

It's the never-ending mainstay of the media and more than one or two professional speakers. Differences between male and female abilities - from map reading to multi-tasking, or from parking to expressing emotion - can be traced to variations in the hard-wiring of their brains at birth, it is claimed. Key evolutionary differences separate the intellects of men and women, and it is all down to our ancient hunter-gatherer genes that program our brains.

The belief has become widespread, particularly in the wake of the publication of international bestsellers, such as John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which stress the innate differences between the minds of men and women.

Problem is that it all appears to be wrong. In fact, there are no major neurological differences between the sexes, according to a new book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, to be published by Icon next month. There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men but the wiring is soft, not hard.

In short, our intellects are not prisoners of our genders or our genes and those who claim otherwise are merely coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility. It is a case backed by Lise Eliot, an associate professor based at the Chicago Medical School. ''All the mounting evidence indicates these ideas about hard-wired differences between male and female brains are wrong,'' she says. 

''Yes, there are basic behavioural differences between the sexes, but we should note that these differences increase with age because our children's intellectual biases are being exaggerated and intensified by our gendered culture. Children don't inherit intellectual differences. They learn them. They are a result of what we expect a boy or a girl to be.''

So boys develop improved spatial skills not because of an innate superiority but because they are expected and are encouraged to be strong at sport, which requires expertise at catching and throwing. Similarly, it is anticipated that girls will be more emotional and talkative, and so their verbal skills are emphasised by teachers and parents.

The present popular stress on innate intellectual differences between the sexes is, in part, a response to psychologists' emphasis of the environment's importance in the development of skills and personality in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. This led to a reaction against nurture as the principal factor in the development of human characteristics and to an exaggeration of the influence of genes and inherited abilities.

In fact, many of the studies that claim to highlight differences between the brains of males and females are spurious. They are based on tests carried out on only a small number of individuals and their results are often not repeated by other scientists. However, their results are published and accepted by teachers and others as proof of basic differences between boys and girls.

We then get all sorts of ridiculous conclusions about very important issues being made. Already sexism disguised in neuroscientific finery is changing the way our children are taught.  There is almost nothing we do with our brains that is hard-wired.  Every skill, attribute and personality trait is moulded by experience.

 

Gobbledygook and Homogenized Nonsense

Everyday I receive endless corporate correspondence purporting to be from various CEOs and their underlings. I say ‘purported to be’ because other than a name mentioned at the end of the correspondence there is actually no way to tell.

Regardless of the company or organisation it is coming from it all appears to have been written by the same person – a rather dull and dim-witted person at that. You have probably been receiving the same correspondence. It contains phrases like ‘going forward’, ‘cutting edge’, ‘industry standard’, market leading’ and ‘interoperable’ (my personal favourite).

As David Meerman Scott points out in his excellent e-book “The Gobbledygook Manifesto” when we see these phrases and others like them our eyes tend to glaze over and we scratch our heads wondering what the hell this is all supposed to mean.  

It is so prevalent that it means we have a tendency to automatically dismiss all communications of this ilk and quickly consign it to the dustbin of ‘same old, same old’.

David speaks very eloquently about the inherent marketing problems in these approaches but I think there is an even bigger leadership issue. As the CEO your voice should resonate through any communication that has your name attached. I should be able to picture you saying it and recognise both the language and the sentiment.  

If I see a piece of communication that has supposedly come from your desk but doesn’t represent your voice then I am going to start making a lot of very unfavourable assumptions about your commitment, your level of caring and ultimately your ability to lead.

Let me see ‘you’ in your communication and not the ‘gobbledygook’ that plagues the business world.