The Cautionary Tale of Andrew Cuomo

 There are a few routes to success as a politician. Sadly, most of them crowd out the people who might make the best politicians. Andrew Cuomo represents a good example of one archetype. He is not the worst leader the world has ever seen, but he has flaws common to that archetype, and these have recently been cruelly exposed.

 

It is not easy to succeed at politics, whether local or national, large or small, democratic or autocratic. Even those who succeed struggle to sustain that success. Enoch Powell, a classic example of a different archetype, is credited with quipping that all political careers end in failure.

 

To understand why success is tough to achieve and usually ephemeral, we need to try to understand personalities and systems. To even want to be a politician requires an unusual personality type. It needs supreme self-confidence, resilient against constant attack. It needs some vision, a platform that can carry a message that will inspire followers. It requires the ability to lead a team, involving detailed planning, coaching, courage and much besides. And it needs some charisma to convey a message of content and of trust.

 

In most societies, success requires lots of other things as well, factors which narrow down the list of candidates and eliminate most of the potential talent. In the USA especially, it requires vast sums of money. Donors are needed to build and sustain name recognition, and investments of time and money are needed that are beyond ordinary people. Once a reputation has been established, the investment of time does not go away but it does become possible to become rich – which provides its own pitfalls.

 

Another prerequisite is often the head start from a network or position. It helps to have royal blood or a title or a father who is an army general or a business titan or a gang leader, or a bit of luck gaining exposure on a talent show or other media outlet – itself often far from a meritocratic process. In more traditional societies, nearly all opportunity is inherited. In the west, we scoff at the “big man” of Africa or the nomenklatura of Russia, but the leaders of our own countries often have rather similar profiles.

 

Andrew Cuomo ticks nearly all of the boxes to have a chance of success. Most important, he is the son of a successful politician. His dad was governor of New York State from 1983-1994. This gave Andrew an enormous head start. Name recognition was handed on a plate, and so were a huge bank account and a massive list of potential donors and operatives. Whereas most newcomers need a vision that explodes into public consciousness, Andrew’s could evolve from a satisfactory starting point of continuing the legacy of Dad. 

 

Growing up in a political family offered other benefits too. Some of the personality traits, like the salesman’s knack of being able to recover from being knocked down, might be inherited or developed during childhood or simply copied. Watching how Dad coped with adversity will have developed resilience in the son. Sadly, the less salubrious aspects of the paternal template will have been transferred as well.

 

In recent months, the Cuomo template has been laid bare, good and bad. On the plus side, his communication skills early in the pandemic were outstanding and truly valuable. In contrast to Trump, his measured daily news conferences became required viewing and a source of comfort. It was clear he was using his influence to prioritise and to marshal resources. His compassion was authentic, and his work rate exemplary. He kept a clear focus even when provoked and showed considerable courage.

 

But the cautionary tale was waiting in the wings to bite him. The classic politician has a personality type that exudes hubris, and Andrew Cuomo chose to cash in on his celebrity by writing a hubristic book. He did it while the pandemic was far from defeated, and the need for a tidy story led him to spin his questionable decisions regarding nursing homes.

 

In reality, Cuomo was probably between a rock and a hard place when it came to nursing homes. It was only a year ago, but we forget how deep were the ignorance and panic when the pandemic struck New York so brutally. The hospitals could not cope, and patients who seemed to have recovered had to be sent somewhere. It was hard to see any other solution than to send them back to their nursing homes, and trust that their contagion had reduced and that the homes were able to quarantine these people satisfactorily. It was a risk, but what else could he do?

 

The problem was not the decision but the book. The book needed a tidy story, so the figures were massaged. And this left Cuomo open to attack should his popularity wane.

 

What is now obvious was that many people were waiting for a chance to attack a vulnerable Cuomo. His leadership style has been one of bullying. He has managed the message and ruthlessly supressed opposition. He has built his own brand by appealing directly to the people and then exploited it by forcing others into subservience to him or to risk attack. He has cultivated key elements of the press, trade unions, donors and other interest groups. Power comes above all else.

 

His current personal crisis was catalysed by revelations of another vulnerability, when many women have come forward accusing him of making them uncomfortable. In the age of “me too”, this is toxic for a Democrat.

 

So we have seen a familiar pattern for people of his style. He rides triumphantly on a seemingly smooth sea, until the sea is revealed to be anything but smooth underneath. One point of vulnerability quickly becomes a storm. Past bullying catches up with him as everybody can’t wait to pile in.

 

Now he faces enquiries from a torrent of accusations by women, a review of his potential cover up of the nursing home scandal, and other abuses of power, cheered on by De Blasio, Kim and others who have suffered bullying over the years.

 

But there is another takeaway, one that suggests that it is too soon to write Cuomo off. People with his skillset fight ruthlessly to the end using all means at their disposal. Favours are called in, procedural tricks are utilised. It helps that he has carefully failed to cultivate any successor, instead choosing tame surrogates as deputies. He can point to enduring support among those in the electorate who have bought into his brand.

 

There are eerie similarities with another brilliant but ruthless politician from another part of the world, Bibi Netanyahu. The personality types are similar. The Netanyahu story is further advanced than the Cuomo one, and might provide good clues as to how the Cuomo one might develop. Bibi is still standing after facing years of constant attack and many apparently damning revelations. Do not count out either man yet.

 

Supporters of both men would argue that we should accept the good with the bad when it comes to this sort of leader. The same bullying and bending of the rules and brand building and courage can be a recipe to really get things done, especially in crises. Netanyahu can rightly be proud of his country’s vaccination record. Distasteful as it is to many of us, he has also advanced the narrow political interests of his base. Cuomo has also achieved a lot for New York.

 

Personally I don’t buy that version of events. I like to believe that there are routes to success that include more integrity. If we had a politics that was not stacked against talent, we could hope for more role models of talent with integrity.    

A Sex Consent App

 An official in Australia recently made a tentative proposal that an app be developed so that both parties can positively confirm consent before sex is initiated.

 

The poor man was pilloried for this suggestion. I guess it didn’t help that he was a middle-aged man, and his job related to law enforcement. How could such a fellow claim to understand the nuances of modern life? How could anybody try to reduce our most romantic engagements to a scientific button pushing exercise? Actually, I think the poor fellow is on to something.

 

While I am at it, I would love for a second, related app to be developed. This one would require positive consent for the possibility of a pregnancy arising.

 

Imagine the benefits of these two little apps. Women (and men) would be protected from the “he said, she said” ambiguity that comes up in legal cases, and more often stops legal cases or even formal disputes from arising. There would be full equality between the partners in terms of responsibility and accountability, for both sex and pregnancy. Unwanted pregnancies, that have blighted countless female lives since time immemorial, would become a thing of the past.

 

These potential benefits are so large that surely it is worth trying to address the legitimate issues that would make it difficult to implement these apps. Rather than quoting an issue and immediately dismissing the ideas, we would embrace the dream of the ideas and work back to try to address the issues.

 

The issues arise in at least four categories. There are technical concerns, privacy issues, ethical or moral or spiritual matters, and concerns about loss of romantic spontaneity and the joy of “the game”. Let us address them each in turn.

 

Technical issues are critical, but given the rate of medical and IT progress in the last few years they are probably surmountable quite quickly. For the pregnancy consent, the challenge is a medical one. Reliable contraception would need to be the default for both women and men. Both parties would need to actively “turn it off” for pregnancy to become possible, each having to signal agreement for both themselves and their partner. The contraceptive device could be physical or pharmaceutical, whichever can be proved to be 100% reliable. I sense the medical community could quickly come up with this if it had the will. For established couples, they could choose to change their default (only with each other) to “on”, perhaps needing to be positively reconfirmed monthly.

 

For the sex consent app, the technical issue is more about definition. What is sex? Does it have to involve penetration? Andrew Cuomo is about to lose is job (quite rightly) for far more modest transgressions. But an app is unlikely to work for leering or innuendo or even touching. So the issue of abuse and consent would not entirely go away with an app. It would also not eliminate rape: it would only make it indisputable that it had occurred. This issue would require more thought. Perhaps there can be a series of levels of activity, each requiring additional consent with the app. No doubt that could be other rules for same sex couples, and for young people or couples with a large age difference. This could become very complicated very quickly.

 

Next there are privacy concerns. The entire sexual history of all of us would be sitting on the Internet. These are obviously dangerous data, open to significant abuse in the wrong hands. Even if the company operating the app platform made promises about deletion or encryption or protection, it would take a while for us to build trust. Hopefully this challenge is surmountable technically.

 

The third group of concerns are about ethics and morals. Religious lobbies would doubtless reject the ideas out of hand, especially my one about pregnancy. The element of chance is considered by many to be an application of the will of God and something that we humans have no right to tamper with.

 

Of course the same arguments have been used against abortion, contraception and sex before marriage. Indeed, such people don’t seem to approve very much of sex at all (especially not for women, interestingly). Just like with contraception, it will be argued that the pregnancy app is a license for loose morals, allowing sex without its potential consequence. Then men in many cultures believe they have a right to demand sex whenever they feel like it.

 

There will be no winning over these constituencies. I can make as many liberal counter arguments as I like, about the grinding poverty caused by unwanted pregnancies, failed marriages or overpopulation, or about the sickness misery caused to victims of sexual abuse, about pervasive sexual inequality, or even the abuse of power by some women who may threaten a partner or even become pregnant deliberately without consent.

 

Society would need to be ready to accept the apps, and the politics would be fraught in many countries. Debate should be welcomed, for these are fundamental changes and no doubt there would be unintended consequences. But it is surely a good thing that the debates starts as quickly as possible and from a basis of knowledge and real possibilities rather than loose speculation.

 

The fourth concern is about the positive aspects of sexual ambiguity. Romance, chivalry, spontaneity and uncertainty provide a lot of joy for many people (and a lot of misery for others). It does seem rather heartless to potentially turn all of this off, reducing such joys to the pressing of buttons. My belief is that we would find new normals that continued to offer the same joy, but took away many of the negative consequences. It would be hard to predict how this would evolve, and perhaps some positive aspects of romance might be lost, even permanently.

 

So be it. The same sorts of arguments were used against bans of smoking or imposition of seatbelts or curtailing other reckless behaviours. Sometimes the benefit to society is so great that new rules or norms simply make sense.

 

Which brings me back to the potential benefits of these innovations. I would guess that a large majority of women have suffered an unwanted pregnancy or at least weeks of horrific fear contemplating its possibility. Many live with crushing guilt or some societal ostracism due to their sexual history. Our most important tasks on earth, to find the joy of love and to procreate, are too often sources of random outcomes and of misery.

 

In fifty years time, people will look back on our current society and shake their heads in disbelief about how we handle love, sex and pregnancy. A mature society should find a better way. Let us start solving the technical challenges now, in a way that guards our privacy. Then we can start hacking away at the moral objections and challenge the romantic ones.      

Please can we sing again

 My optimism about the next phase of the pandemic feels more justified with each passing week. The vaccine programmes are ramping up and getting shots into people’s arms, including my own. Europe seems a long way behind the US and the UK, but it is roughly where those countries were just one month ago, so I predict that the wait will not be too long for most people. As for developing countries, I also think that the current pessimism is misplaced. Once the west and China get up to 60%, they will start to donate huge quantities, and many countries can hope for something like herd immunity by the end of 2021.

 

What happens next? One challenge for all countries is how to get the rate of vaccinated adults up from 60% to 80%, once the vaccine becomes available to all who want it. Depending on the level of fear and distrust and laziness, many might choose to delay or avoid their shot. For this phase I love the Israeli initiative to give all vaccinated people a green symbol on a national app. Restaurants, clubs, businesses and synagogues then have a choice whether to opt in or opt out. If they opt in, then they can only admit vaccinated people, but then those people can behave without restriction. If they opt out they can continue to admit the non-vaccinated, but the overall business then remains subject to restrictions on capacity, mask wearing and so on. I find this brilliant, and I believe the main effect will be to quickly persuade many of the reluctant to get vaccinated, once they see their lives becoming sadder than their peers. I hope other countries adopt this sort of scheme, and not just for travel.

 

In the US, I can already sense the coming surge of people no longer following the stricter guidelines, supported by businesses anxious to rebuild their followings. I feel it myself. On Friday I will visit a museum on the subway, and I would have few qualms with other such ventures, and this feeling will become stronger with every passing month. I don’t think this sort of behaviour is reckless so long as it is within limits – I will still wear a mask in many situations and avoid crowds, and will continue with the added hand washing and so on. But we won’t want to hear any longer of more stringent restrictions. The CDC obviously sense this coming, and today announced that gatherings containing only vaccinated people are now permitted in houses and without masks.

 

So soon I will be looking for some updated realistic guidance about choral singing. Those of us who sing in groups have been almost silenced throughout the pandemic, because the science suggests that the droplets we emit through energetic singing are especially dangerous. That science is supported by a tragic incident at the start of the pandemic, where disease and even death ripped through a choir who organised one rehearsal too many. It is chastening to realise that I believe that I attended a rehearsal for a different choir on exactly the same day.

 

Now there is a need for some sensible risk management. I accept that we cannot go back to singing as we did, even if a group is fully vaccinated. But the current guidance, which is to hardly sing at all except outdoors or in tiny, tiny groups, already feels too restrictive. It is a year to the day from the last time I was able to sing with my wonderful church choir, and we are all becoming less patient now. Next month, by which time most or maybe all of us will have been vaccinated, that impatience will grow, and with it the temptation to invent our own solution.

 

So I am hoping that the various associations are busy creating new guidelines. Conceding that I am a total amateur, I can suggest a few.

 

Firstly, ventilation seems to be critical. I have one choir that rehearses in a tiny space below ground level and with tiny windows. I don’t think we can sing there any more. Venues will have to be spacious and airy and equipped with devices to increase ventilation.

 

We probably should have implemented this years ago. I have probably been merrily passing on flu viruses in choir rehearsals forever. This extra awareness is one of the beneficial side effects of the pandemic.

 

Other steps depend on whether everybody in a group is vaccinated. Even if they are, I suggest that we stand at least three feet apart horizontally (so I cannot stretch out my arm and touch the torso of my neighbour), six feet apart vertically (so that I can’t emit particles to anybody directly in front of me) and fifteen feet away for people facing me (such as an audience, congregation or conductor). If we are seated, this can be easily arranged via spacing seats and have neighbouring rows offset, like they do in theatres. Perhaps a conductor would have to wear a face shield if he or she needed to be closer to the group. If not everybody is vaccinated, the distances will have to be larger, or perhaps unvaccinated singers will need to be placed in positions at the end of rows and further apart.

 

Then there are sensible other measures to reduce risk, but ideas that might take longer to get used to. We could restrict forte singing to specific short bursts. We could wear masks when not at our seats, like people do at restaurants now. We could institute regular five-minute breaks for the ventilation to do its job, and sanitation protocols too. We should also be careful about communal water or food – again, something we probably always should have been.

 

A tougher alternative would be to sing with a mask on, except for a few minutes each rehearsal or in performances (where spacing might have to be even wider, and the gap to the nearest audience member might need to be larger still). But, having sung with a mask on for the last few months, I don’t like the idea. It took me a while to get used to breath control while masked, until I realised that most of the problem lay in my brain. More seriously, diction is a disaster in masks, and diction is too important in any choir to sacrifice easily.

 

Another restriction is about singing when sick or sickening with anything viral. Again, we should not have been doing this in the past, but now it has become obvious. We don’t want to let down the group or to miss a concert experience, but the risk is too high. Some of my smaller groups will find it difficult to adapt to this one. At church, with only one or two to a part, we may need to institute a system of understudies and last minute backups. Sometimes the director might have to postpone a planned song and replace it with something simpler and not dependent on a missing singer. We will have to get used to it, but it is a price worth paying.

 

I hope I am not being reckless with these ideas. While vaccinations are not available to all they are probably premature, but in just one more month we will be a lot further forward with immunisation. It is surely better to be prepared with something that is relatively safe and also practical, rather than have groups making up their own rules in the rush to start singing again.

 

Today I received my first invitation to sing in a project for twelve months. The project is planned for August and I probably cannot make it, but simply receiving the e-mail made it feel like spring. Relief is on the way. Let us embrace it with due caution but also with realism about risks. 

The Minimum Wage

 In the USA, Joe Biden and the Democrats were trying to sneak in a huge increase of the federal minimum wage to from $7.25 per hour to $15. They were thwarted in the effort by an obscure senate procedure when an official deemed that the measure did not fit into a bill primarily about budgets. Now they will struggle to enact any increase, because they will need ten Republican votes. They only secured seven Republican votes to convict the ringleader of an attempted coup, so it is hard to see them gaining ten votes for very much at all.

 

The minimum wage is one of those policies that has gained credence over the last twenty years or so. Back in the days before the Great Wrong Turning around 1980, the effective floor in wages was set by generally low levels of unemployment and by active trade unions. Reagan and Thatcher destroyed the unions except in a few sectors, and the idea of unemployment has become more complex with the workforce being less defined than before, now including many more women, seniors, part-timers and gig workers.

 

Wage exploitation has always been present. When I was a regional manager for Shell’s petrol station business, we had a model used to make sure our station operators made a living but not an unreasonably good one, and that included a national recommendation for the hourly pay of cashiers. The more marginal stations would come to us for subsidies and we would often happily pay out, since we did not want them to cut costs or services too deeply and we wanted to keep our stations operating.

 

My region included many deprived areas including the valleys of South Wales, and we had several stations collected subsidies. One day I was visiting a station and happened to get into conversation with the cashier, who revealed that she was being paid about a third of our recommended wage. The station operator didn’t receive any subsidy after that, even though I had to stand up to some flak from his highly placed freemason friends.

 

When such practice became more widespread in the 1990’s, the left started advocating for national minimum wages. In the UK, it was one of Tony Blair’s signature initiatives. The right fought them tooth and nail, supported by analysis published in, inter alia, The Economist.

 

My favourite periodical argued, with some merit, that a minimum wage was a market distortion that would create the wrong incentives and ultimately cost jobs. If the differential between the lowest and the median wage in firms became too low, the incentive to work hard and be promoted would be reduced. Marginal firms would be unable to survive with higher wage bills. Firms would turn to automation, or offshoring, accelerating unemployment further. Disaster was predicted.

 

The arguments seem reasonable, but the facts generally proved otherwise. Unemployment did not spike. Automation and offshoring did happen, but the trend did not accelerate and is arguably better for innovation and for consumers anyway. Firms did go under, but new ones took their place. Differentials did not narrow because firms moved their whole wage structures to retain incentives. We should remember that this was the time when managers were awarding themselves 30% rises and stock options galore, so the incentive argument was always rather tenuous.

 

I have always felt the minimum wage argument to be more about human decency than economics. In the nineteenth century people worked for nothing, and we even had slavery. We still have human trafficking and exploitation, but surely our goal should be to reduce this, even if it distorts markets somewhat. Slave owners argued that plantations would become unprofitable without slaves, after all. There is surely a decent minimum that a human should receive for an hour’s honest labour. Unscrupulous employers will always try to squeeze wages if they can. Minimum wages are good things. If firms cannot survive while paying a decent human wage, society should not want those firms anyway: if consumers really do want or need such firms, they will pay more for their goods, as market economics dictates. If a consequence is higher unemployment, it is up to the welfare state to step in.

 

The right often argues in favour of tax credits instead of minimum wages. Under this system, a firm can pay below the minimum wage, and the difference is made up by the state via a sort of negative income tax. This has merit in some circumstances, but the right should listen to their own arguments. Tax credits are much more complex, much more open to fraud or exploitation or missing their intended beneficiaries, they have incentive issues and are a greater market distortion than minimum wages. Forget about it.

 

To their credit, The Economist has shown a recent trend of ditching some of its ideological positions and showing greater humanity, always guided by data. The minimum wage is one example of a policy they now generally support. Others include place-based support for the unemployed and some interventionist housing policies. In my opinion, it is an even better magazine as a result.

 

Now, what about Biden and the USA? I have a few suggestions for an optimal policy. Whether it stands any hope of becoming law is another thing entirely.

 

Firstly, I sympathise with an argument made by Republicans and some Democrats that the minimum wage should vary across the country. A fair wage for a fair hour’s work is universal, but it is easier to live decently on $10 per hour in Kansas than it is in San Francisco. I would propose a lower absolute national minimum wage, but with a mandated supplement based on a rental cost indicator by locality. This might even create a $20 minimum wage in San Francisco.

 

Second, why is the minimum wage not index linked so it rises automatically with inflation or median wages? Social security and some other benefits are index linked. Avoiding index linking is a clever trick by the right. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for a long, long time, during which it has progressively become less of a fair recompense for an hour’s labour, even in Kansas.

 

Lastly, let us not forget the egregious exceptions, most notably the minimum wage for tipped employees, which languishes at $2.13 per hour. Isn’t that a national disgrace? It is surely time to eliminate tips as an excuse for employers to treat their staff like chattel. Uber is trying and before the pandemic a few restaurants also joined a campaign to remove tips from the economy, or at least reduce them to a small, genuinely discretionary payment for exceptional service.

 

Highlighting the tipped minimum wage foreshadows the argument we will hear from employers. The pandemic has the restaurant industry on its knees. Demanding a potential tripling of staff wages will destroy it. There will no doubt be an onion handy to induce some tears as this argument is made.

 

Perhaps I would support a transition period of a couple of years for the tipped minimum to be abolished. But I would rather see fewer, well-run, quality restaurants offering fair wages to staff and not bullying customers with 15% tip standards than the inhuman mess we had before the pandemic. A tip should be discretionary. A wage should allow somebody to live with decency and not be exploited by their boss. This is simple humanity.

A Meaningful Lent

 The Christian observance of Lent starts today with Ash Wednesday and continues until Easter at the start of April. Today you may see Christians walking around with ashes on their heads.

 

I am a churchgoer but not really a believer, but Lent has meant something to me ever since I was sixteen. My mother was constantly badgering me about the dangers of alcoholism, convinced that it was partly hereditary and concerned that most of my close ancestors had a drink problem. Perhaps after attending a mass, one Ash Wednesday I decided to forsake alcohol for Lent, and I have kept up the practice ever since, not just for forty days but for forty years.

 

My logic was and remains that if I can live without alcohol for a spell of more than six weeks (about forty-five days, since for some reason Sundays do not count towards the forty), then I can drink all I like for the rest of the year, sure that I don’t have a problem. For anyone fearing addiction, I recommend the idea.

 

Lent is supposed to be a time of fasting and reflection. It seems especially appropriate this year, because my mood is of one final stretch of discipline before we can start to emerge from the pandemic after Easter.

 

The Ash Wednesday gospel is my favourite. We are told to give alms (generosity to those who need and can use it), fast (practice moderation) and pray (reflective thought), but do each of them covertly, so the practice is clearly for our own discipline and improvement rather than for appearances sake. It often strikes me that this approach seems to be missing when a grand building is ostentatiously dedicated to some philanthropist.

 

This is followed up by the gospel for the first Sunday of Lent, which turns things round and talks of temptations, albeit using imagery of the devil that I personally don’t find very helpful. The temptations are all about the allure of affirmation, status, power and hubris.

 

While classic religious teaching tells us to practice the good things and avoid the bad things in order to be rewarded in heaven, I don’t think we need to wait that long. Doing the good things makes us feel good straight away, and doing the bad things might give a cheap thrill but in the end serves to make us unhappy.

 

Most people’s concept of Lent is to give something up, and indeed fasting is part of the ritual. I give up alcohol myself, but I also support a more positive approach to the season, because giving something up doesn’t really benefit anybody except me. One idea I like is to use Lent for a project. Last year it was during Lent that I tried writing something substantial (I concede that this didn‘t really benefit anyone but me either). I haven’t had an inspiration yet, but perhaps a suitable project will come to mind during the coming days. 

 

I like the way that Lent occurs during the last quarter of winter, at least in the northern hemisphere. That fits the theme of buckling down and showing discipline, but being buoyed by the hope of warmer days ahead following Easter. I have no idea how Easter came to be celebrated in the spring, and it is also not clear to me why Lent should immediately precede it, because the original lenten fast of Jesus occurred after his baptism rather than before his death. Still, it feels a rather serendipitous choice.

 

This year this is true more than ever, for so many reasons beyond the weather. Even the weather reason is stronger than before. Last year it was walking that kept me going, and the best season of all for walking is the spring, so I can look forward to spring even more intently this year. Live sports have more recently played a part in keeping me going. In prior years I often counted down winter whenever driving past Citi Field (home of Mets baseball), anticipating the start of the season. This year that anticipation can be heightened by the possibility of attending games in person once again. I will be near the front of the line.

 

I am hoping that I will actually pay one or two visits to Citi Field before the baseball season starts this year, because it has just opened as a mass vaccination site for Queens residents and I have now become eligible, though sadly it is still very difficult to get an appointment. Yet I expect the supply to ramp up during lent, giving more and more of us the chance to welcome Easter with a new sense of security, though we should not become reckless.

 

I am an optimist about the next phase of the pandemic, because I think much of developed world will start to see the effect already noticeable in Israel when enough vulnerable people are vaccinated. Two more vaccines are in the pipeline, one of them a single dose one and both of them easier to distribute than Pfizer’s. I think the bottlenecks will clear more quickly than people are currently saying.

 

Then I think there will be a tipping point. The numbers will show fewer deaths. Businesses will be clamouring to reopen. Governments will want to see growth resume and the need for stimulus decline. Other lobbies will be vocal, for example airlines and hotels. But the loudest voice will be the people. We have lived through this for two Lents and a whole year in between. We will, cautiously, want to go and see our relatives and book some trips. With all that pressure, I don’t think Dr. Fauci will be able to stop us.

 

There are a couple of other reasons for this Lent to be even more meaningful for me. I am sure I am not alone in having put on weight during the pandemic. We have been deprived of our usual means of exercise, and couches tend to lead to snacking. I have been reluctant to diet, because I always feel weaker when dieting, and I want to keep up my strength in case covid comes along. But I have chosen Lent to rebalance those risks, and will use the period to diet this year. It fits to do this while avoiding all that fattening booze as well. Luckily, our local indoor pool is also open, so I can try to increase my exercise frequency as well.

 

After Easter, I am hoping for other blessings to return. We have a grandchild on the way, and it would be so lovely to be able to book an international trip to meet our new relative, and perhaps Easter will be the time for that. Then there is my choral singing, even more disrupted than most activities because it is especially dangerous. That won’t go back to normal until well after Easter, but at least we can use Easter as a starting point to plan and to dream. 

 

I am aware that for some the idea of enduring one last push, and the urgency of a reduction of pandemic restrictions, is far more serious than it is for me. We have managed to obtain a change of scene for two long spells during the last year, we have not been financially challenged, and my wife has benefited from the many advantages of working from home. It is not so hard to face a few more weeks of discipline in our situation. For those out of work or out of money or out of health or out of friends, the symbolic Easter cannot come soon enough.

 

The thought that came to me way back in 1977 about giving up alcohol for lent might be one of the most consequential thoughts I have ever had. It has shaped a lot in my life. For that alone I can be grateful for the annual Christian ritual. Beyond that, Lent has not always meant much to me, but this year it seems to have arrived at a perfect time. The headlines today are all about bad weather, vaccine shortages and economic hardships. Let us try to endure all of these things for a few more weeks. Easter is just around the corner.  

How the Edge Misleads

 The leading edge is a common term in business, so common that it is often jokingly termed the bleeding edge. Many distributions in life follow a bell curve, concentrated in the middle, and where the left hand group early adopters or the first over the parapet, can be termed the leading edge. This could represent the first customers of a new product, or the first firms trying to monetise a new technology, or the first people able to overcome some barrier.

 

It is just as well that most distributions naturally follow a normal or bell pattern. An illustrative example is the demand for Covid vaccines. The supply follows a standard bell curve, because some companies are quicker than others in developing a vaccine and some authorities are quicker in making one available. But the demand is not a bell curve at all; instead most people want a jab as soon as possible. The result is a market failure and a mismatch of supply and demand. Luckily, in most situations both supply and demand have features leading to a bell distribution, so both sides have a chance of matching each other, and also of adapting from early adopters.

 

It is these early adopters that led me to a concept I introduced last week and called the misleading edge. The issue is that early adopters are in no way typical, but special – that is how they become early adopters. And while early adopters offer the opportunity for adaptation and learning, the fact that they are special creates various risks from the wrong lessons being learned.

 

I believe an illustrative example arises in uses of new technologies. Some bright spark works out that a device like a wristwatch can be produced that offers medical data such as heart rate. The first producer is a computer nerd, so puts little effort into an easy user experience, instead opting for complexity. The first customers, the early adopters, are also nerdy, young fitness fanatics.

 

The producer looks at these first results and draws conclusions. Yes, there is a market for this product. Fitness fanatics are interested in all sorts of data, and are quite prepared to navigate small screens to secure a plethora of information. As a result, the producer doubles down on this customer segment. They succeed in creating a profitable niche.

 

What is the problem? It is possible that the producer has spurned a far larger opportunity, and a far more beneficial one for society. Older, less fit people could derive medical information from such a device that might save their life or at least improve its quality. But these people don’t see the marketing. If they see the marketing, they find it confusing. If by luck their child spots the marketing, works out its value for mum, and gives it as a gift, the parent still does not use it because the screen is too small to read and the user manual is full of technical claptrap. The producer does not see the potential, or gives up too soon, and fails to make the adaptations to unlock the true potential of the innovation. The early adopters have given misleading signals that have placed the technology or a sub-optimal trajectory.

 

I believe this is one reason why many new technologies remain niche for longer than they should. I also believe that a corporate culture that refuses to fall into the misleading edge trap is one reason behind the success of Apple.

 

The misleading edge applies just as much in situations that have nothing to do with products. An important example concerns diversity and inclusion, and the speed with which a minority enters an arena they had previously been excluded from.

 

Last week I argued that the women that first became successful in many fields often had special characteristics. That is just what one would expect; the problem is that this misleading edge of early adapters caused the wrong lessons to be drawn, damaging the wider diversity project.

 

I identified three archetypes of early successes. The first group are phenomena, women of such exceptional talents that they could knock down any barrier. Then there are impersonators, women who happen to have a set of skills more common in men, and thereafter equipped to succeed in a game still biased by rules set by men. The third group are kittens, women picked by men for reasons that suit men, including pliability or flattery or lack of threat.

 

The phenomena are fantastic examples but flawed role models, because few can emulate their talents. The myth of the American dream is perpetuated because a few phenomena demonstrate what is possible: it is just highly unlikely. By the same token, men can sustain a set of biased rules by pointing out that it is plainly possible to succeed; they can also delude themselves that the rules are not biased. Finally, the phenomena can make the men feel inadequate, and cause them to delay any relaxation of those rules.

 

The impersonators are also poor role models, because they might lead others to try to emulate their methods in order to succeed, directly contrary to the goal of broadening the diversity of skills and behaviours. Through no fault of their own, impersonators can prolong an exclusive culture. This cohort is also rather open to derision and unconscious bullying.

 

The kittens have an even more insidious success. They are often over-promoted and struggle, at the expense of their own mental health. They allow the exclusive group to maintain domination, while convincing themselves and others that the culture has changed, and also perpetuate the myth that women are somehow unsuitable or inferior.

 

The correct response to those at a leading edge is to welcome them and support them but avoid taking unhelpful lessons from them. This may take patience, and may also involve challenging advice offered by those from the leading edge and their advocates. Even if a quota is reached quickly, that does not imply success or a reason to slow down diversity efforts. Success is only assured once the profiles of successful women are themselves as diverse as those of their male colleagues.

 

The pitfalls of the misleading edge apply equally to other aspects of human diversity. The early ethnically different leaders often have a colonial type background, making them impersonators. Early LBGT leaders could be either impersonators or kittens, so much so that for a time the typical profile of a gay man among straight society was far from representative. We can celebrate these successes, but must double down until a wider sample break through the barriers. Many of these journeys remain far from complete.

 

Many companies in the developed world have reached a stage where they believe they have achieved true diversity. They would do well to look beyond the quotas and to look beyond the examples offered by the misleading edge. Until they do, they are more likely to emulate Fitbit (market capitalisation $1.7Bn) than Apple ($2.3 Trn).      

The Misleading Edge

 Over Christmas we watched the latest series of The Crown, and enjoyed it very much. The portrayals of Charles and Diana were believable. Everybody likes to vilify one of them and sanctify the other, but I have believed that they were both victims of nearly impossible circumstances. In particular, Charles was let down by his male role models. To its credit, the series pulled few punches, though I would have appreciated or more edgy portrayal of Prince Andrew. Perhaps we can look forward to that in the last two series.

 

The timeline for the series coincided with the decade that Margaret Thatcher dominated British politics. She is another character who divides, in that most people either adore her or hate her. I lean towards the latter, but I do accept that some of her reforms were timely. We left-wingers tend to gloss over the winter of discontent and the hegemony of Jones, Scanlon and Scargill. A correction was needed, just not a correction of the scale and heartlessness that thatcher provided.

 

One of the funniest moments in the series came when the Queen sought a clubby companionship with Thatcher by pointing out that they were both women of a similar age, and how remarkable it was to have such power in the hands of women. The Queen then asked why Thatcher had not appointed any other women to her cabinet. Thatcher replied with a misogynist remark that in her judgment (or experience, or opinion), women were not up to the job. Olivia Coleman’s face spoke volumes. I have no idea whether the conversation actually took place, but it does seem consistent with Thatcher’s personality.

 

Thatcher did not really consider herself a woman, at least not in the aspect of competence for senior executive positions. She was certainly a phenomenon. As a woman, we could also call her an impersonator. Her route to success was to behave like a man, indeed an extreme version of masculinity.

 

While we were watching the series, I got into a family conversation about our worst bosses. In Shell I had over twenty bosses: most of them were not very good, and the later ones tended to be worse than the early ones. I believe the role of boss is under-trained, misunderstood and also under-resourced, in that most bosses are expected to do so much else that they usually can’t find the time to do their boss job properly.

 

It was easy to decide my worst boss, an unfortunate gentleman recruited from outside into Shell who was comically out of his depth. At least, it was comical when we could overlook the damage his appointment did to the business, his team and to himself. He certainly was a major contribution to my breakdown in 2000.

 

What struck me was the winners of the silver and bronze medals in the terrible boss competition. I awarded those accolades to my only two female bosses.

 

The first was a bit of a Thatcher character, ruthless, ambitious and uncompromising. Those attributes are not always disastrous, but in the case of this woman they were allied with selfishness and some paranoia, leading her to betray her own team and others with some regularity.

 

The second was completely different. She was a delightful, charming woman, not lacking in insight, but promoted out of her depth and revealed as unable to make decisions or to lead. As a subordinate, I was faced was a blockage above me whenever I wanted to get anything done.

 

This last boss feels like a classic example of a third archetype I might call a kitten. Her femininity had drawn favourable attention of men throughout her career, and they were seduced into promoting her. She was the sort of woman that men were delighted to have as a peer, a pleasure to be round a no real competition to their own ambition.

 

In the case of female leaders, I suspect these three archetypes used to be typical of the few who first made it into the higher ranks. There were a few phenomena, immensely talented women who could not be stopped, and who were great motivators to other women but not really good examples of role models, since most simply lacked their talent. There were rather more impersonators, able to succeed by being like men, suppressing their femininity. And then we had the kittens, welcomed by men but ultimately ineffective.

 

Sheryl Sandberg is a good example of the impersonator category (though also quite phenomenal), and she wrote the famous instruction manual for other ambitious women, Lean In, with the basic advice for women to suppress femininity. I always thought this was disastrous advice for most women. Why try to succeed by developing the one attribute where you are likely to be inferior to male counterparts, masculinity?

 

Women suffered many impediments on their journey to being respected and promoted as leaders. Their education used to be worse, their parents steered them into limiting professions, panels full of men selected against the criterion of people like them, i.e. more men, and women in relationships are often still the ones expected to sacrifice career, especially when they become parents.  

 

Those are the fundamental reasons why women have taken a long time to rise to the top, despite belatedly effective diversity policies in companies. Perhaps we are now past this misleading edge concept, in which the first women to break through were phenomena, impersonators or kittens.

 

My suggestion is that it is important not to take the wrong lessons from the misleading edge. I think Sandberg’s book did damage. I think the kittens did more damage, by making men feel good when they should have felt guilty and by perpetuating myths about female unsuitability when they were over promoted. The phenomena are wonderful (unless called Thatcher), but can hardly be replicated.

 

Instead, companies need to push diversity as long as it takes for real breakthroughs, even if the early results disappoint. And women should follow my favourite general advice, to be themselves. I believe women will ultimately be superior leaders, just as the current crop of female political leaders are showing. It will just take perseverance. If my career started today, I expect that my female bosses would be more numerous, and among the best rather than the worst. The leading edge are necessary, but they are not sufficient, nor indicative, nor necessarily good examples to follow.

 

This week Bagehot in The Economist gave praise to Britain’s Tory party for its diversity success. They have given us two prime ministers and now the most diverse cabinet in history. However, I do wonder if we are still witnessing a misleading edge. The ethnic minority success stories, while impressive, feel a little bit kittenish to me. I hope I am wrong.

 

If I am right about the idea of a misleading edge, it would apply equally to other facets of diversity, for example racial and sexual diversity. I could argue that the first out gay men to emerge in public were kittens like Larry Grayson. These trailblazers are good, so long as we don’t declare success too early, or try to clone them too closely, or assume that those that follow them will have the same attributes.

 

Inequities are still legion, but there is also much to celebrate in terms of diversity in societies in the developed world. But let us be careful not to fall into traps posed by the misleading edge.