PERSPECTIVE: People, Not Cars, Should Be Union Station Priority

by Krysia Solheim The New Haven community has consistently voiced opposition to the State's plan to build a new $50 million parking garage for Union Station in New Haven, and the State has failed to adequately respond to our concerns, requests, and comments on the design and the environmental impact assessment.

The New Haven community wants new infrastructure and development to prioritize people, not cars. Currently, 30 percent of New Haven residents, including myself, do not own a car.[1] We want a city with better mass transit and better cycling and pedestrian infrastructure and connectivity. We do not want more parking garages or more public space allocated to cars.

We also want development to support healthy lifestyles and enable a vital New Haven.

New Haven residents suffer from the highest rates of asthma hospitalization in the state - the neighborhood surrounding Union Station is an asthma hot spot.[2] Air quality will continue to worsen if the garage is built because more people will drive to Union Station instead of using more sustainable modes of transportation to get there.

The State has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 2001 levels by 2050 and the City of New Haven is in the process of committing to the same target. Transportation emissions account for 36 percent (2013 inventory)[3] of Connecticut's greenhouse gas emissions. They account for about 26 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions. It is astounding then, that the State wants to spend $50 million on a garage that will only induce more people to drive instead of investing funds to induce more people to walk, bike, and take transit.

Greenhouse gas emissions are a regional and global issue and the State should be seriously considering environmental impacts and how to protect people, especially low-income environmental justice communities who have long borne the brunt of pollution and are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts.

The City of New Haven and the New Haven Parking Authority understand what the community wants and should be allowed to continue to manage Union Station. They have invested in multimodal connectivity to the station, including a free downtown shuttle with GPS and bike parking infrastructure, and have plans for further transportation oriented development in line with this area’s needs.

I have lived most of my life abroad and have seen wonderful examples of cities that have invested in their train stations and multimodal connectivity to ensure that their communities have reliable access to jobs, that they have clean air, and that they do not have to spend a burdensome portion of their income on transportation or subsidizing the increasing costs of maintaining infrastructure for cars.

I strongly believe that the City of New Haven and the New Haven Parking Authority are best equipped to bring similar forward thinking planning and infrastructure to Union Station and the Greater New Haven region.

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Krysia Solheim is the owner and founder of Viosimo, an environmental sustainability consulting firm. She holds a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Environmental Science from the University of Arizona with minors in Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese; and a Masters in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Born in Arizona, Krysia grew up in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cyprus, Venezuela, and Qatar.  She speaks English, Spanish, and Greek fluently and intermediate Chinese and Arabic, has dual American and Greek citizenship, and is a resident of New Haven.

[1]www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html

[2] http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/hems/asthma/pdf/asthmadatabrief_2013.pdf

[3]www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/climatechange/2012_ghg_inventory_2015/ct_2013_ghg_inventory.pdf

PERSPECTIVE: Don't Overlook Your Foreign Assets

by Sharon K. Brune Are you subject to IRS penalties of $10,000 or more -- and don’t even know it?

Do you have a foreign bank account or other foreign asset? If you neglected to properly report such accounts or investments, you may be liable for civil and criminal penalties that start at $10,000 – even if you don’t owe any taxes on that foreign money!

There is a laundry list of forms the IRS may require from people who hold foreign bank accounts or other assets.  Chief among them is the FinCEN Form 114, colloquially known as the FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts).  It has a fairly low threshold for reporting, and requires not only direct account holders to report, but also requires reporting by those with signature authority over foreign accounts and majority owners of business entities with foreign accounts, among others.  In short, you might think your account is too small or your connection to a foreign asset is too minimal to require reporting, but you may well be wrong.

Frequently taxpayers are surprised to learn they were required to file forms related to foreign assets.  Commonly heard laments include these and countless other variations:

• I’ve only got two accounts of $5,000 each.
• I only have $10,000 in a single account that I haven’t touched in years.
• It’s not my account – I only have signature authority over an account in case something happens to my parents who live in another country.
• I’m a citizen of another country but living in the US – I don’t need to report my foreign assets, do I?
• My accounts are in Canada. That’s not foreign, is it?
• I own a corporation or partnership that does business abroad. We have foreign bank accounts for these branches.  They’re not mine.
• My grandfather, who lives in a foreign country, created a trust for my benefit. I didn’t receive any money this year.

In each of the above scenarios, there is a strong likelihood that a reporting requirement exists – even if you don’t owe taxes on the accounts.

Bank accounts aren’t the only assets that need to be reported.  Various other forms address reporting investments in foreign businesses, receipt of bequests from foreign persons, ownership of foreign rental property, loans to a foreign party, to name but a few.

Individuals aren’t the only ones required to file these reports.  Some forms require business entities, trusts, or estates to file as well, if there are involvements with foreign assets.

New for forms filed in 2017 is a change in the due date.  Formerly required to be received by the Department of the Treasury by June 30, the revised receipt date is now April 15 with an automatic extension allowed to October 15.

Hopefully no one will be shocked to learn that income from all sources, including foreign, is required to be reported on a tax return filed by a US person or entity.

If you have overlooked filing any foreign reporting informational forms, getting “right” with the IRS will be less complicated if any income associated with foreign holdings was properly reported.  The IRS is trying to encourage compliance, knowing that in many cases people were truly unaware of the requirements.  There are disclosure programs and approaches that can allow you to get caught up, and may mitigate some of the possible penalties associated with non-filing.

Note that there is no statute of limitations when it comes to forms that were not filed – the IRS can come looking for you well beyond the typical three years’ statute of limitations normally associated with a routine Form 1040.

Burying your head in the sand and procrastinating will not make this problem go away. Better to get professional advice and take all necessary steps to comply with IRS requirements.

_______________________________

Sharon K. Brune, CPA, is a partner in the New Haven office of Beers, Hamerman, Cohen & Burger, P.C. She can be reached at 203.787.6527 x109 or sbrune@bhcbcpa.com

PERSPECTIVE: Don’t Block Emerging Technologies, Consumer Choice in Eye Care

by Gary D. LeBeau With the advent of e-commerce and new technologies involving telemedicine, the healthcare industry is transforming and is now giving consumers greater freedom than ever before.  More and more consumers are receiving their health care and health products in new ways and the Internet has been a huge asset in lowering prices, increasing access and helping working families get what they need even outside of so-called “regular” business hours.  This convenience is quickly becoming a necessity in today’s world.

For example, federal law states that patients can leave their eye doctor’s office with a copy of their prescription, giving them the choice of how they will fill it. Whether it’s through their desktop computers, an app on their mobile device or tablet, through the mail, or at a discount retailer, the choice is up to the patient to decide in consultation with their doctor.

These innovations, however, create new challenges in the legal, legislative, and regulatory arenas, as established providers often seek to restrict competition and protect their market share from emerging threats.   .  This has been especially evident in the contact lens market, which has been repeatedly targeted by protectionist legislation that ignores the reality of modern day technologies in telemedicine.

Proposed legislation frequently uses “protecting public health” as a rationale for restricting the use of new technology in eye care.  In fact, there is not a single reported instance of a patient being harmed using these new technologies and there are multiple tools used to screen patients and direct them to a medical provider when appropriate.  In addition, physicians should always be given the discretion to use the technologies that – in their medical judgment – are in the best interest of their individual patients.

Here in Connecticut, H.B. 6012, An Act Concerning Consumer Protection in Eye Care, looks to amend general statues to require various mandates on industry and requirements for consumers before permitting a remote or in-person eye assessment using automated equipment or an application designed to be used on a telephone, computer or Internet-based mobile device.  If enacted, this legislation will make Connecticut stand alone as the state with the most stringent restrictions on consumer choice.  Other states, including Virginia, have recently passed legislation going in the opposite direction to specifically allow the use of this ocular technology.

Connecticut Legislators should resist attempts to stifle innovation and prevent consumers from making their own decisions.  Connecticut should not place itself at a competitive disadvantage with other states when it comes to emerging technologies and innovation in the health care sector.

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Gary D. LeBeau was a Connecticut state representative (1991- 1995) and a state senator (1997-2015) during which time he served as co-chair of the Commerce Committee.  He also served as co-chair of the National Council of State Legislators Commerce and Labor Committee from 2010 to 2014 and first chairperson of the state legislature’s Manufacturing Caucus, 2012-2015.

PERSPECTIVE: Connecticut’s Upside-Down Property Tax System

by Ellen Shemitz and Ray Noonan There is something terribly wrong with taxes in Connecticut, but it is not what the conservative think tanks would have you believe. State and local taxes in our state are not troubling because they are too high across the board; they are troubling because they are wildly unfair, asking those with the least to pay far higher rates than those with the most resources.  This upside-down tax system hurts not only working families struggling to make ends meet, but it also harms the long term economic health of the state, making us less competitive by holding back thousands of children and parents from contributing their full potential.

Thriving communities are made possible by good schools, clean streets, safe neighborhoods, and other public services. To support these building blocks of economic development, Connecticut towns need a stable revenue system that provides them with adequate resources.  Addressing that need requires a hard look at our property tax system, which largely leaves towns on their own to fund local services and as a result creates huge disparities in opportunity.

For the 2015-2016 school year, Greenwich homeowners paid $1,127 in property taxes for every hundred thousand dollars of home value and in return received education funding of $21,331 per pupil. In contrast, Bridgeport homeowners paid $4,220 per hundred thousand dollars of home value yet received $14,343 per pupil in return—in other words, far higher taxes for far fewer educational resources. Since education funding affects educational and life outcomes, these differences result in differences in opportunity for Connecticut’s children based solely on where they are born.

Connecticut didn’t arrive at this situation by accident. Decades of “redlining,” or systematically denying investment to communities of color, prevented these communities from sharing in America’s postwar wealth. Years of restrictive covenants—contracts mandating that property be sold only to whites—excluded families of color from wealthier communities. Today, exclusionary zoning policies limit affordable housing across the state, denying low-income families the opportunity of a better education for their children. Inequalities that took generations of intentional policy to enact will take big ideas to fix.

One big idea Connecticut should consider comes from neighboring Vermont. To fund its schools, Vermont levies a statewide property tax that ensures equal education dollars for equal property tax rates. Applied here, children in Greenwich would still benefit from $21,331 per student in education funding, but the tax rate needed to raise that amount of money would be the same in Greenwich as it would be in every other town in the state. Conversely, Bridgeport could continue to spend $14,343 per pupil, but would no longer be compelled to charge as high taxes solely because of its restricted property base. We found that such a system in Connecticut would benefit 75 percent of residents in 117 cities and towns.

This system would also revitalize economic development in Connecticut by reinvigorating growth in our dense urban cores and inner-ring suburbs. Currently, large disparities in property tax rates between neighboring communities discourage development in the very places to which businesses and young families want to move. The state program in place to alleviate this problem, Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), has never been fully funded. By fully funding PILOT and reducing these disparities, a statewide property tax would better align business incentives with state priorities.

For too long our laws have unfairly limited who is entitled to the benefits of living in a community that can afford good schools. Surely changes in the law today can ensure that, at the very least, those benefits are not afforded at a steep discount.

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Ellen Shemitz is Executive Director and Ray Noonan is Associate Policy Fellow for Connecticut Voices for Children.  

PERSPECTIVE: Public + Private = Powerful

by Rie Poirier-Campbell It’s no secret that the Hartford Public Schools are facing severe budget challenges, tied largely to our city’s and state’s grave financial pains. In fact, the magnitude of the problem in the school district is unprecedented, with a gap of as much as $20 million predicted for next school year.

Recently, Aetna, Travelers and The Hartford stepped up to help our city in a big way: pledging a combined $10 million each year for five years to ease the budget crisis, and – equally important – calling on other corporations to join them. This is the kind of fresh, civic-minded, business-smart, public/private approach that can help our community begin to dig out and move forward.

Public/private partnerships aggregate and focus new resources to public needs in a way that a strict reliance on tax dollars never can. They also bring highly creative thinking, enthusiastic teammates and often more cost-effective systems for delivering needed services.

Public/private partnerships are more than just an extra source of revenue. They’re a new way of doing business. Like all partnerships, they may take more work and ramp-up time than going it on your own. And they take ongoing investment on both sides. But the payoffs are far greater.

That’s the idea behind Hartford Performs’ partnership with the Hartford Public Schools. A few years ago, when Hartford students’ test scores were at their lowest, our region’s vibrant arts community asked the school district how it could help. Many arts organizations and teaching artists had done some work in the schools and saw how adding music or theater techniques to a lesson could help children learn. They, along with classroom teachers, knew that when students get up and dance like planets in the solar system, they internalize abstract concepts such as rotation and revolution. When they act out a scene from a book, they better understand the characters’ motives and develop empathy.

What they also knew was that, while some students in Hartford had access to this kind of innovative teaching approach, most did not. What was needed was a system for making sure that every student, regardless of grade or school, have the benefit of arts experiences that would help them learn core subjects.

So the school district and the arts community created a public/private partnership to build that system. Hartford Public Schools invested financial resources; arts organizations invested human resources and innovation; and forward-thinking corporations and foundations created leverage by underwriting the infrastructure to make it all work.

The result is that, today, every Hartford Public School student from prekindergarten through eighth grade has teaching artists visit their classrooms several times a year to help them understand things like fractions, adverbs, the water cycle and the Emancipation Proclamation, by drawing, dancing, drumming and dramatizing. The students are not only learning, they’re enjoying what they’re learning. It’s such a powerful model. I will never forget seeing a student’s eureka moment when he finally figured out what one-eighth meant by coloring it out with a teaching artist.

The numbers bear out how well this approach works. Teachers who participated in a recent independent evaluation said that Hartford Performs programs helped their students develop vocabulary (92%), express themselves verbally (88%), develop active listening skills (96%), work collaboratively with other students (86%), develop problem-solving skills (75%), retain information (93%), develop social skills (89%) and express themselves in writing (65%).

None of this would have been possible without the public/private partnership that developed this broad-reaching and cost-effective system of services for Hartford kids. Further, it’s easy to see how this model can be replicated to serve Hartford students in other areas, such as sports, life skills, civics or vocational/technical learning.

Even – and I would argue especially – in tight budget times, this model is well worth continued investment by all partners, private and public, who are interested in advancing the achievement of Hartford students.

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Rie Poirier-Campbell is Executive Director of Hartford Performs

PERSPECTIVE: Is Your School Fresh Check Day Cool?

by Rachel Papke Most people are surprised to learn that suicide is the second leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 15-24.

The Jordan Porco Foundation’s mission is to prevent suicide, promote mental health, and create a message of hope for young adults. They accomplish this by providing engaging and uplifting peer-run programs on college campuses. Their signature program is Fresh Check Day.

Fresh Check Day is an uplifting mental health promotion and suicide prevention event that includes interactive expo booths, peer-to-peer messaging, support of multiple campus departments and groups, free food, entertainment, and exciting prizes and giveaways.

Fresh Check Day aims to create an approachable and hopeful atmosphere where students are encouraged to engage in dialogue about mental health and helps to build a bridge between students and the mental health resources available.

The program’s primary goals are to:

• Increase awareness of mental health resources and services available to students
• Reduce stigma and misconceptions around mental health and suicide that often deter individuals from seeking help
• Empower peers to be gatekeepers by understanding warning signs and knowing what to do if a friend is exhibiting signs of suicide or a mental health concern
• Increase willingness to ask for help if experiencing emotional distress

The Jordan Porco Foundation does not charge a fee for service for Fresh Check Day in consideration of varying capacities to fund large-scale mental health programming. Instead, they provide significant support and ask participating schools to provide the remaining essential components within their budgetary means.

This year they experienced incredible growth. They expanded Fresh Check Day to a national reach that includes 14 states, with 58 events this year alone. Currently, they have signed-on 90 schools in 28 states, plus the District of Columbia, and counting.

In Connecticut, 22 institutions are participating, including:  Gateway Community College on April 11, the University of Hartford on April 12, Norwalk Community College on April 19, University of Saint Joseph on April 19, University of Connecticut on April 22, Sacred Heart University on April 28, Three Rivers Community College on September 20, Connecticut College on September 22, Quinnipiac University on October 6, and Central Connecticut State University on October 17.

What can you do?  Bring Fresh Check Day to your school. You can connect with Student Activities, Residential Life, Health Services, your school’s counseling services, or anyone you can think of on campus, and have them get in touch with the Jordan Porco Foundation. Or, you can e-mail the Jordan Porco Foundation at info@jordanporcofoundation.org to introduce yourself, and the programming staff will help you.

“This was an eye opening experience,” said one college participant.  “It helped me feel like I wasn’t alone.”  Added another: “As someone whose mental health had limited my life for some time, I want you to know that these things change lives.  Your event made people feel valued and important and cared about.  You may never hear thank you from everyone that today changed their life but I can promise you our campus is a safe place because of Fresh Check Day.”

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Rachel Papke is Communications Coordinator at the Jordan Porco Foundation

The Jordan Porco Foundation is a 501(c) (3) public charity. Their programs strive to start a conversation about mental health that reduces stigma while encouraging help-seeking and supportive behaviors.  Tickets to Jordan’s Journey Gala, their annual event in support of the Jordan Porco Foundation’s lifesaving programs are now available.  The event is on March 25.  Learn more at jordanporcofoundation.org or (860) 904-6041.

PERSPECTIVE: Fighting Fake News in the Classroom

by Lorenzo Burgio The struggle to tell fact from fiction in the digital age is the battle being fought recently by teachers and professors.

A Stanford study recently found that students in middle school, high school and college, are bad at verifying the news read online — which is worrisome.

The ability to verify news is something that has to be practiced in the nation’s classrooms, said Professor Sam Wineburg, who produced research for the Stanford study, to NPR.

In the study, Wineburg explained that the concept becomes even more worrisome because “many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media, they are equally perceptive about what they find there.” This makes young people a major factor, because they are susceptible to believing fake news and more prone to spreading it.

“How do they become prepared to make the choices about what to believe, what to forward, what to post to their friends, when they’ve been given no practice in school?” said Wineburg to NPR.

This idea is becoming even more prominent as the media is constantly being attacked or used for personal agendas, and this is something educators are aware of.

This is also a responsibility that is falling more and more into the hands of teachers and professors, because “fewer schools now have librarians, who traditionally taught research skills,” explained The Wall Street Journal.

As Facebook works with the Associated Press and other organizations to ensure fake news is not spread throughout the social media platform, efforts in the classroom can also help tame the spread of fallacies on the Internet.

“Teachers from elementary school through college are telling students how to distinguish between factual and fictional news — and why they should care that there’s a difference,” wrote USA Today.

Encouraging and teaching the ability to sift out fake news in the nation’s classrooms is necessary. This ability is vital to becoming a functioning and involved member of society and can only benefit future voters.

California lawmakers passed a bill in January that requires the state to teach courses that help students between grades seven and 12 distinguish fact from fiction and understand the repercussions of spreading fake news.

The dynamics of these courses are specifically designed to have students combat fake news by knowing proper reporting techniques. They teach students to ask questions such as, “Are other news sites reporting on it? How is the writing? Can I find the people in the story elsewhere online?”

There is also be a special emphasis on using tools such as Snope.com and FactCheck.org to validate all information and to always think twice before sharing something on social media.

These courses should be taught nationwide. In a digital world that is only becoming increasingly technologically based, these are necessary skills that students should be properly educated in and to combat the spread and influence of fake news. It is particularly significant because the young social media users play such a large role in spreading fallacies due to their familiarity and expertise with social media, and the perceived notion that news shared by them is of the same stature.

Lorenzo Burgio is editor of Central Recorder, the student newspaper of Central Connecticut State University, where this column first appeared.  Published with permission.

PERSPECTIVE: Just 3 of the JUST 100

by Larry Bingaman Quarterly earnings alone can no longer determine the success of corporate America – such assessment is shortsighted and has proven harmful to the well being of our economy and those who support it. According to Paul Tudor Jones^1, “…we as a society have come to view our companies and corporations in a very narrow, almost monomaniacal fashion with regard to how we value them, and we have put so much emphasis on profits, on short-term quarterly earnings and share prices, at the exclusion of all else. It's like we've ripped the humanity out of our companies.”

Stark words that hold much truth. Why do we as a society check our values and purpose at the door before entering the workplace? Why do we in the US have the greatest income inequality and the greatest social problems?¹ What are we doing to reverse this trend of unjust behavior in our corporations and companies?

I agree with Paul Tudor Jones – we must hold all companies accountable.¹ Through Tudor Jones’ JUST 100: America’s Best Corporate Citizens in 2016², he does JUST that. His research team surveyed 50,000 Americans on corporate behavior, ranking the largest 897 publically-traded companies within their industries according to the following 10 metrics: worker pay and benefits, worker treatment, supply chain impact, community well-being, domestic job creation, product attributes, customer treatment, leadership and ethics, environmental impact, and investor alignment.³

Interestingly, each of these metrics align with three of the four tenants of Conscious Capitalism, a business philosophy stating that business should exist to elevate humanity through higher purpose, conscious leadership, conscious culture, and stakeholder orientation. Of note, the JUST 100 study does not seem to capture whether the company embraces a higher purpose. It will be interesting to see if this driver is added as the study matures.

Three of the JUST 100 companies are headquartered here in Connecticut:

• FactSet Research Systems, Inc, ranking #2 out of 23 Consumer & Diversified Finance companies;
• Cigna, ranking #2 out of 27 Health Care Providers & Services companies; and
• Terex, ranking #2 out of 32 Machinery companies.

In FactSet’s category of Consumer & Diversified Finance companies, American Express ranked first while Capital One Financial ranked third. FactSet’s JUST Strengths included worker pay and benefits, paying its workers above the industry average and having the employees themselves highly rate company benefits such as healthcare, paid time off, and free working lunch in its offices. Additional strengths included investor alignment and domestic job creation.⁴

In the rankings, Cigna was preceded by Humana and followed by Anthem. Its JUST Strengths include worker treatment, environmental impact, and investor alignment. According to the company’s JUST Capital report, “The company shows good performance in serving the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, and the environment, as well as investors.” Its noted that Cigna focused intently on employee diversity and inclusion with over 1,400 clinical staff participating in Culture Diversity Forums in 2015 and 2016, and it has provided more than $5.6 million in funding through Educational Reimbursement Program.⁵

Terex, which was sandwiched in the rankings between first place Cummins and third place Deere, won the category for worker treatment as a result of its commitment to diversity and inclusion. While additional JUST Strengths include domestic job creation and product attributes, it is noted that the company was outperformed by peers in supply chain impact, citing the need to enhance management of the social impact of its supply chain.⁶

While we should be proud of these three corporations for their commitment to just behavior, I propose we should be calling on all Connecticut companies to commit to uphold a similar level of “justness.” A commitment to justness and Conscious Capitalism would no doubt benefit our employees, our customers, our companies, our communities, and the economic well being of our state.

If you want to learn more about the JUST 100 or Connecticut’s Conscious Capitalism Chapter, which seeks to engage, educate, and inspire leaders to practice Conscious Capitalism so they can make a positive impact on their business or organizations and its people, then please email me at info@consciouscapitalismct.org.

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Larry Bingaman is the president & CEO of the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority (RWA). Since 2009, he has been keenly focused on RWA’s sustainable and conscious business practices that maintain and grow the region’s rich natural resources to create new opportunities.  He is deeply involved in the New Haven community, serving as a founding board member of the Connecticut Chapter of Conscious Capitalism, chairman of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, member of the Gateway President’s Advisory Council, and member of the Business Advisory Council at Southern Connecticut State University.

NOTES

1. Tudor Jones, P. (2015, April). Paul Tudor Jones: Why we need to rethink capitalism [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_tudor_jones_ii_why_we_need_to_rethink_capitalism
2. JUST Capital, Retrieved from https://justcapital.com
3. Whittaker, M. (2016, November 30). The Just 100 Methodology: How The Rankings Work. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinwhittaker/2016/11/30/the-just-100-methodology-how-the-rankings-work/#572dfd4643ed
4. JUST Capital, Retrieved from https://dataexplorer.justcapital.com/pdfs/FDS.pdf
5. JUST Capital, Retrieved from https://dataexplorer.justcapital.com/pdfs/CI.pdf
6. JUST Capital, Retrieved from https://dataexplorer.justcapital.com/pdfs/TEX.pdf

PERSPECTIVE: Self Control is the Best Control

by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff One of the great motivational discoveries of the twentieth century is that people who coordinate and control their own work produce greater economic and social results than those who do not. Many leaders, though they might deny it, act as though they prefer control to results. How do we know? They impose coordination and control from above. They have never experienced the alternative: control from within.

Running large-group strategic-planning meetings in the 1990s, we soon recognized that we preferred results to control. We could not control scores of people working in the same room toward a plan that incorporates all of their experiences and aspirations. We found that we got the best results by focusing everyone on the same goal, creating structures for self-managing, and getting out of the way.

That way of leading proved harder than we imagined. Our biggest challenge was controlling ourselves—holding back, waiting, listening, opening doors, and letting people learn their own capabilities. Doing that meant setting the bar higher.  We had given ourselves a new leadership challenge. We had to overturn the conventions we inherited. As we became more confident of consistent results, we began inviting others to try leading in new ways.

We have now helped thousands of people access the advanced skills presented here—“advanced” in the sense of adding new capabilities to your repertoire. These skills need not replace anything you do now. If you are trying some of them for the first time, however, you will indeed be “overturning convention” if you employ them to plan, organize, motivate, and control.

We settled on eight core skills after much iteration. You could easily make our list longer.  These are skills that reinforce one another, that we could use anywhere, and that led people to do more than they dreamed they could. Best of all, we could bring them to bear on any given day. You can do likewise if you are willing to experiment.  But are you?

More than 50 years ago, Douglas McGregor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote an all-time best seller, The Human Side of Enterprise. His was the famous Theory X, Theory Y book. McGregor described how our assumptions about human nature determine how we lead. Theory X assumes that most people are dependent, dislike work, and require close supervision. Theory Y assumes that most people enjoy work, want to learn, and welcome responsibility. Each theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The tighter the control, the narrower the jobs, and the less judgment people exercise, the more helpless, inept, and dependent they become.

“They act like children,” says the boss.  “He treats us like children,” say the employees.

By contrast, people who have discretion, broad skills, accurate information, and opportunities for growth motivate themselves. From birth we carry the seeds of both theories. Babies come into the world helpless and dependent—and also curious and eager to learn. When (unconscious) Theory X assumptions dominate an organization, they translate into dysfunctional policies, procedures, and structures. They discourage the behavior leaders want to instill.

On the other hand, we have seen people around the globe act out (unconscious) Theory Y assumptions. Under the right conditions, they rediscover natural impulses they had since birth, impulses nourished by unconventional policies, procedures, and structures. People respond to jobs that foster autonomy and growth. Structure includes determining who is allowed to do what. That is something you can control. It involves encouraging people to take initiative beyond their job descriptions. It means enabling communication up, down, and sideways, not just top to bottom. It means turning supervisors into coaches. It means insisting on integrating meetings between departments rather than putting up with silos.

Much organizational conflict is structural. People act the way their jobs require. Salespeople emphasize interpersonal skills. They spend time in small talk before getting down to business. Production workers relate to their machines. They skip the small talk and solve the problem. The structural strategy is to encourage people to maintain their functional differences.

This includes appointing people to integrating roles, using project coordinators, and having cross-functional mechanisms such as product teams and ad hoc problem-solving teams that head off conflict.  In our book “Lead More, Control Less,” we show how to develop the following skills:

• Gain more control by controlling less
• Get others to share responsibility
• Change the structures under which people interact without struggling to change the people
• Demonstrate how getting the “whole system” to explore the “whole elephant” leads to high motivation and fast implementation
• Use anxiety and authority projections to build respect and improve teamwork
• Resolve conflicts and lead people to find where they are 100 percent in agreement
• Experience what you can accomplish by trying out actions that may not come naturally

We emphasize a stubborn reality: Change means doing something you never did before. That is the message from ordinary leaders in business, education, health care, and community building who discovered new capabilities in themselves. We quote them throughout the book.  You may find changing structure ahead of behavior a stretch if you are used to managing personal styles, attitudes, motivations, and extrinsic rewards.  Each chapter advocates an advanced leadership skill and principles of action that you can try out every day:

1. Control Structure, Not People
2. Let Everyone Be Responsible
3. Consider Anxiety “Blocked Excitement”
4. Avoid “Taking It Personally”
5. Disrupt Fight or Flight
6. Include the Right People
7. Experience the “Whole Elephant”
8. Surface Unspoken Agreements

We invite you to travel with us down a road where people perform better the more you let go. If you go far enough, you will discover higher performance, greater self-control in others, and greater freedom for yourself. When you see the results you are getting, you will need no further proof.

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Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff are co-authors of “Lead More, Control Less.” Janoff will be speaking on February 23 at Leadership Greater Hartford’s Lessons in Leadership program. Book excerpt published with permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

PERSPECTIVE: Taking Risks, Serving Customers Key to Sustaining Success

by Mickey Herbert A few years ago, I was asked to talk to a group about my career as an entrepreneur.  I had never considered myself an entrepreneur, but I realized that I had taken risks in my professional life that were, in retrospect, pretty significant.  Here’s what I had to say regarding risk taking and a company's corporate culture.

My parents were always my mentors, teaching me integrity, and how to be respectful of others.  I'm not sure how they taught me to be a risk taker, but somehow, I think I got that from them too. 

Nobody in my family had ever gone to college, and I remember when my Swarthmore College acceptance letter came in the mail to our home my father took it to work before I even saw it. He wanted to show it to all the PhD's he worked for at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory.

He hadn't finished college because of WWII, but he had learned glass blowing in the Navy and he was the only one who could build those lasers they designed.  He was also a terrific athlete, a football and baseball player in the mold of Babe Ruth, who might have played professional sports except he opted to be the first kid on his block to enlist after Pearl Harbor.

So, in a very real sense, he encouraged me to take the risks he never had the opportunity to take.  Above all else, he wanted me to go to college and/or to play professional baseball, the two life choices that had eluded him because of the war.

Throughout my life, I have always wanted to live up to the person my father wanted me to be - indeed, to be the person he wanted to be if circumstances in our country were different, almost 80 years ago.

To quote Mark Twain, one of our state's most famous citizens, who died over 100 years ago, "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.  So, throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore, Dream, Discover.

So, with a firm sense of right and wrong, but no money to speak of, I went off to college in Pennsylvania, foregoing, by the way, an opportunity to sign a professional baseball contract. After college, I went straight to the Harvard Business School, then to New York City for a couple years before I headed to Minnesota - where I didn't know a single person in the upper Midwest.

Six years later, I set sail for Connecticut where, again, I did not know a single person in this state, but I was determined to become a successful CEO of a new health plan which would challenge Blue Cross and Blue Shield - Connecticut's dominant health insurer - covering most of our state's 3.5 million residents. I also took advantage of an opportunity to play fast-pitch softball with the Raybestos Cardinals in Stratford, the defending national fast-pitch champions at that time.

Management guru Tom Peters has said that the greatest predictor of one's success in business is one's willingness to take risks.  I used to have a sign in my office which said "Mistakes don't matter, it's the response to error that counts".  In other words, I believe we should all be risk takers, and not be afraid to make mistakes; but when you do make one (and I've made a few doozies in my life), learn from it so you won't make that mistake again.

Because I was a CEO from 1976 to 2010 (and am now one again), I had the incredible opportunity over three and a half decades to define the corporate culture at three companies - PHS, the Bridgeport Bluefish and ConnectiCare. In looking back, I realize that so much of what made these three companies special is very simple.  Peter Drucker once said that successful management is doing a few simple things and doing them well.  For me, it was figuring out what business we were in, and then sticking to the knitting. 

• At PHS, and then again at ConnectiCare, we determined that our business was delivering the highest quality, affordable health care, with unsurpassed customer service, to the citizens of our region. Notice that I said nothing about health insurance. At PHS, we had a slogan, "Intensive Caring" that we trademarked and ingrained into every employee we hired.
• At ConnectiCare, our slogan, and theme song, was "You Know Us by Heart" which carried the very same message.
• At the Bluefish, we determined at the very outset that we were in the business of delivering the highest quality, affordable, family entertainment to the citizens of our region. Notice I didn't say anything about professional baseball.  We made the ballpark a happy, happening place where people wanted to be, a veritable town meeting place, a place where they could be proud to be in and from, Bridgeport, a place where something was going wonderfully right in a city that had often seen things go wrong.

At all three companies, we made all kinds of decisions to increase our likelihood of success, not the least of which was to hire the best people we could, provide them with extraordinary training, and then empower them to go out and make decisions on their own.  What I guess it is about more than anything else is having a totally-focused, customer-friendly culture.

I feel very fortunate to be able now, at the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, to continue the legacy.

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Mickey Herbert is President and CEO of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council