Are you still trying to define Trump’s win? It’s actually pretty simple. He was considerate of his followers, who ultimately became his voters. His focus remained on the current concerns expressed by ordinary voters. Whether you consider his motives to be pure or not, he was successful in convincing the majority of U.S. voters that he was sincere, 

The atmosphere of politics is intensely emotional. Trump plugged into the basic fears and concerns of his supporters and responded directly to them.

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals is a 1971 book by American community activist and writer Saul D. Alinsky. It describes how to successfully run a movement for change. It was the last book written by Alinsky, and it was published shortly before his death in 1972.

Why should you read it, more than 50 years later? It also helped launch a mode of thinking that is best defined as “the end justifies the means.”

And what did that do? The scales of justice were forever tipped. (Remember the lady wearing the blindfold and holding the scales? Many believe that you still can’t fully trust her.) 

Read Alinsky’s book. Millions of others have, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Regardless of how you define yourself politically, it will be empowering to know how we got to where we are now.

The only way to change the intensity of your feelings about the 2024 presidential election is by changing your frame of reference about what you see, and see in yourself.

How do you do that successfully, beyond a sheer act of willpower? The only way, I believe, is through awareness — or the changing of awareness — the highest level of the management hierarchy. (see: Where Business Ethics Begin, pg. 109)

If you are extremely emotional about the political environment right now, you probably haven’t experienced what I call “180 Degree Vision” in my book. Leadership: Where Business Ethics Begin describes this concept on page 162.

Once obtained, 180 Degree Vision results in an individual having true objectivity when observing life events. One should be INVOLVED but not OF this physical journey.

The election of 2024 was stunning, no matter which side of the aisle you preferred. Nobody expected what happened. Nobody.

Theories abound, and the reasons that the current president-elect will soon be taking the oath of office will be analyzed long after he returns to the White House. 

So what does it all mean? For starters, you need to read my book. Leadership: Where Business Ethics Begin.

I wrote it 20 years ago, but until November 5, 2024 it was just rhetoric.

I’ve been watching those of you who post since the social media form of expression became popular, I guess over the last couple of decades. It’s been interesting and as diverse as I could possibly imagine!

Historically, being an insistent fact finder, I have just observed the social media, especially as I consider myself a computer newcomer. I had people working for me to handle the new age technology. Recently, I’ve started to write on my book blog as a very difficult professional commitment came to an end twelve months ago.

So briefly for those of you that are connected within social media — family, friends, and acquaintances — let me share with you for a change. Hopefully to your benefit!

For almost 45 years since I was 25 (wow, what I have learned!) I have been teaching, counseling and assisting adults, within the college environment initially and later in business — commercial banking and finance in particular.

During that time, I’ve seen a couple of private sector industries all but destroyed through no fault of their own. (amazing to observe the time it takes to impact millions of people). Also, our nation’s sovereignty was attacked within our borders on September 11, 2001 – much like Pearl Harbor (a day that will live in infamy), an occurrence that was said would never happen again.

So, what did I do in these public companies that I instructed other adults to do? I directed everyone to a greater good — starting with the board of directors through the executive management people. Both simple and very difficult.

How I did it is what I attempting to define within my sharing with you on my blog and in my book Leadership: Where Business Ethics Begin — and the more than 20 books and publications I devoured over the years as part of the book’s bibliography.

Why am I doing this? Because we all need a little caring here in life from friends! And I count myself as one of them directly or indirectly with you all. Imagine this as just another limitless social media’s approach that adds to life and learning.

I would also like to help throttle down the ongoing negative narrative by pointing out a greater good through perspective, or evolving perspective based on both types of learning.

We act and react to the world around us through our conscious mind activity. Moment by moment, we spontaneously react within the spectrum of human emotions that shape our personal reality. The result leads to behavior that spans the dual nature of emotion from love to hatred.

This reaction is a result of functioning from what has been called our “center of the universe” vision as our conscious mind creates this universe and is a function of externally learned behavior.

What we fail to realize is that by accepting conscious mind activity (externally learned information) as reality, we are misinformed within our created universe. This is at odds with the level of our 180-degree vision that comes from superconscious mind activity, as I discuss within my book, Leadership: Where Business Ethics Begin.

Our ability to (internally) communicate is a gift of awareness where information is developed directly between conscious and superconscious ideas and information.

To nurture that ability should be at the height of our endeavors in this physical world and should be contemplated on a daily basis.

Moving outside the business environment to social or political environments to explain cause and effect chains lasting for decades and millennia — how does one reach a behavior point that convinces one that they believe they are “in the world but not of it”? It is all but impossible unless one begins to manifest an outlook of this physical world that is described in the book as “one hundred eighty-degree vision.”

This vision is not only how we look at business issues, but also at society and the constantly evolving behavior and beliefs that unfold over time. For example the feeling of pride — especially extreme ethnic, race or religious pride (within the environment in which we are born or raised) — can be considered the seeds or root cause that sow powerful emotions and beliefs that can develop into dislike for a particular person or ethnicity and end up as racism, hatred, and condemnation of an ethnicity or creed.

The emotions that lead one to being in and of the world can be seen within the more current political environment, such as that experienced during the last 20 years an extreme dislike or hatred for a political perspective or person. It can be a feeling so extreme that actual physical and emotional harm is wished for the members of the “other side” when negative feelings of the heart are allowed to manifest.

If you experience these negative feelings most frequently, then you are both in the world and of the world and lack sustained one hundred eighty-degree vision.

A major objective of my blog is to help the reader reach a level of understanding concerning the statement, “Be in the world, but not of it. Be involved in the physical world, but not controlled by it.”

In order to do that, an in-depth understanding of the two terms is required.  This blog addresses two important ideas: “competitive” and “root cause.”

As I wrote the book Leadership: Where Business Ethics Begin, I became more consumed with trying to understand how people were interpreting the words used.  This was especially true when I incorporated a new word to describe a concept.  An example of this was the phrase “physicalization process”. What did the reader think was meant the new word “physicalization” was used? What was I trying to convey? (I will attempt to explain this idea in a future blog.)

I have always asked myself when reading another author’s work what that person was trying to say or communicate by using a particular word.  This was especially true since I have authored a number of articles, books, training manuals and advertisements over the forty years that I have been involved with training new leaders — especially if I created a new word to describe an activity or event.

The more powerful the message I was trying to convey, the more powerful and important the reason for the words became.

The words I’m addressing in this blog are “competitive” and “root cause”.

Let me start with “root cause.”  I ask that you bear with me because the definition of root cause as applied relates to a strong understanding or awareness of its meaning as used within the book and is only as broad as each of our individual understanding of what it is and means. Let me repeat: the definition of root cause as applied within the book takes on an infinite understanding of what it can mean.

As such, the gap between each of our understanding of root cause as used within the book is very, very broad.  The idea of 180-degree awareness and the difference in understanding adds from that awareness to this gap exponentially.

It is because of these gaps that the reader must take time to contemplate what the author is trying to communicate if they are to gain powerfully from an incorporation into our understanding. In other words, it’s understanding the root cause of something from my super-conscious mind standpoint rather than conscious mind — and of course we all know that is impossible!  Correct?

So let’s begin with an accepted definition from Wikipedia as given from a Google inquiry:

“A root cause is an initiating cause of either a condition or a CAUSAL CHAIN that leads to an outcome (good or bad) or effect of interest (good or bad). The term denotes the earliest, most basic, “deepest” cause for a given behavior or problem, most often construed as a fault. The idea is that you can only see an error by its manifest results or signs in total over time.  How accurate you are deteriorates quickly in time when the people making the determination have shorter tenure and were not part of what was being experience at the time a major root cause event happened (example: special sauce).” [an example to be used later]

In fact, as with the increasing turnover of staff and the current misunderstanding of the importance of long-term relationships with employees, supplier, vendors and customers – and as relationships cycle into shorter time periods — soft dollar information is impossible to obtain.

Today and over the last forty years, the focus has narrowed to short term hard dollar results pervasively within a company’s board of directors’ process to executives and employees. History has shortened accordingly due to the inability to assess soft dollar knowledge and information held within the people participating in the value creation of the company over time.  There are so many sayings that attempt to articulate this lack of historical foresight such as “[that person or company] that lives by the sword, dies by the sword.” These aphorisms are used to describe a company that is consumed by the bottom line within their accounting and administration responsibilities from the time they start their annual planning process to the budget development and monthly plan, to actual board meeting structure and analysis.

So, what should one do when faced with the above scenario where everyone is lockstep in line with a narrow process and short-term hard dollar focus?  The answer is: create a greater good!

So where does one begin to create a greater good that begins to impact a frame of reference and in turn the competitive environment that is probably running rampant where everyone is at odds with each other – perhaps so much that they are ready to sacrifice each other?  Begin with the arduous task of creating a cause and effect chain that begins to demonstrate that the creativity coming out of that process is drawing on the super conscious mind activity.  How do you know when that is happening?

When it comes to working with a root cause, the process should include the popularized statement of “getting back to basics.”  It should also include our knowledge of what decisions were made, and more important, why they were made. We should constantly try to move back in time when analyzing a problem or result, such as a loss in profitability or business, with the basic question, “How did we get here?”

Stop at this point and let the physicalization process begin its work.

Further discussion to follow on my next blog.

It is my observation that extreme “Ethnic Pride” is an important seed leading to both mild and “Extreme Racism”.

History teaches us that.