Tag: corporate culture

We Are Not Better Together: The illusion of leadership

Let’s clear some things up right now, because I’m tired of hearing the term.  We are not better together.  More minds do not make something better.  These are dumb, communist ideas by outside influencers who have tried over time to slide dumb ideas about how society should be structured under the door and have left us with a lot of garbage like that term to muddle through.  I receive numerous emails from people, and someone sent me one of those LinkedIn links to a statement from a consultant group about leadership, as if to refute my position on the matter. I had to give that person a healthy dose of reality.   More is not always better.  More administrative minds do not improve processes. Instead, you often get the opposite; usually, you end up with more of a mess than any improvement.  If you want to improve something, identify your leader and then listen to them.  But don’t think that a bunch of useless people meandering through life can come together and improve something.  It never works.  The concept of teamwork has been grossly misused to incorporate elements of Marxism over the years through our public education system, and it was always a flawed idea. I think the reason for this was best captured in books like Robert Persig’s ideas on the Metaphysics of Quality.  His metaphor of people who sit in the back of a moving train is a particularly apt one that accurately reflects the truth in this matter.  Good leaders are at the front of the train where things can be seen as they are happening.  But most of the world sits in the back, where it’s safe, and analyzes data that has already passed.  It can be helpful information, but that’s not leadership.  And the communist societies of the world have tried to sell cowardice that way to make the timid feel like they were equal to good leaders.  And they are not. 

That is where most consultants get things wrong, and LinkedIn is full of those types of people who attend all the business seminars and listen to all that “team building” nonsense, such as the idea that no one person has all the answers and that more minds are better than just one.  What causes trouble in cultures that need leadership is the presence of committees, where administrative types try to lead an organization from the back of the train, rather than from the front, where they belong.  And often up front, where things are scary and coming fast, most people don’t have the guts to live there.  They always pick where it’s safe and build their 9-to-5 lives around the value of analysis, often from the caboose of a train, complete with lots of spreadsheets and graphs, but without the voice of leadership to guide the timid toward greatness.  Good leaders are listened to, not debated with.  So, any culture that wants to succeed needs to hear more than hold hands in the back of the train while the world outside moves quickly.  Leadership is not safe; it’s usually hazardous, and it requires a lot of toughness that most people never develop in their lives.  That doesn’t make those people useless.  However, they are unable to lead because they never developed the stomach for the rigors of the leadership task.  They have come up with all kinds of excuses why failure is best elevated in group consensus rather than the responsibility of leadership at the front of the train, where things are much more dangerous.

I’ve heard every excuse in the book as to why most people prefer the back of the train as opposed to where leadership lives, at the front.  They say, people, say dumb things like, “I don’t want the stress and want to avoid a heart attack.”  Or they will point to the need for time to decompress after work.  All they are doing is telling the world that they aren’t tough enough to be a leader of an organization and that they prefer the back of the train, where things are safe, and where they can share the experience with others holding hands for safety and security.  And it’s those types of people who want to believe that more is better and that no one mind is better than a collective whole.  This is the kind of flawed thinking that assumes the United Nations is better as a one-world government than the individual results of leadership that come from the United States, for instance.  You don’t see that the United Nations has accomplished much over the years to bring the kind of peace it has always intended.  It takes a strong individual country like the United States to provide that leadership.  And that same mentality could be applied to every organization; if a strong leader isn’t leading it, it is, to some degree, inefficient and destructive.  The only real way to pull off the illusion that more is better is to stop the train, which is impossible in day-to-day life.  But for the fantasy to work, the trains of life can’t be moving so that all those in the back can analyze data and make decisions in time to do something about it, which is unrealistic.  Trains are constantly moving, and they require sharp, focused minds to be at the front of the train, leading everyone at the cutting edge. 

I’m usually nice to people who send me stupid ideas like this one, the LinkedIn warriors who buy into all the corporate placations created by consultants who are leeching off the profitability of the few.  Consultants like teachers do what they do not because they are good or the best in their field.  Occasionally, you find an exception, but not very often, certainly not often enough to alter the statistical analysis.  What you get are people who lack the courage to lead an organization and try to sell companies on a scam that more analysis from the back of the train will help a struggling company.  However, as soon as the consultant leaves with their misguided ideas of ‘better together,’ the organization falls back into its previous state because it failed to identify its leaders and place them in the correct positions to succeed.  And success is usually found by shutting up and listening to a leader, not in building consensus with a bunch of people in the back of the fast-moving train who are too timid to do what it takes to lead people.  To conceal their timidity from the world, they have adopted these misguided notions about leadership, none of which are accurate.  And they have made a mess out of the world at every level.  So, if you really want to fix anything, figure out who you are: either a back-of-the-train analysis cruncher who likes things safe and secure, or a daring, cutting-edge type who will go it alone and make decisions where they matter, and tell people behind them what to do and when to do it.  If you find a good leader, you’ll find a successful organization.  However, once that leader is gone, the people are left without direction and powerless to improve their lives, and this is the case in almost every circumstance.  We are not better together.  We are better when those people shut up, and listen to the leader among them.  And then, and only then, does everything get better for everyone.

Rich Hoffman

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The Communism of LinkedIn: It’s a dating app for job seekers who desire the destruction of corporate America

I was never a big fan of LinkedIn, even before they banned my account over my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, which they thought was disparaging to their excellent relationship with China.  So, to answer the question I get at least 50 times a week, no, I am not on LinkedIn.  I was, for a while, out of some obligation I thought was part of the modern world.  But I had little value for it, so at the first dispute, we parted ways happily, which has provided me with just enough emotional distance to have an objective opinion about it.  LinkedIn has a very menacing presence in all actuality and is laced with communism in ways that an entire generation has not considered, and I find it despicable.  I view people with a job with a good company yet still maintain a LinkedIn profile as adulterous married people who always look at their dating apps with an eye on something better.  It is impossible to be in a committed relationship with a spouse while always looking out to see if there is someone better.  A job, like a good marriage, requires a commitment, and dating apps are a clear sign that one or both spouses are not committed to the relationship.  That is essentially what LinkedIn does; it is a dating app for job seekers.  And if someone has a good job and a good employer, well, they should be committed to that relationship, and they shouldn’t always be looking for a better job.  Some people out there, just like people who get divorced a lot, are always looking for the next best thing, and by jumping from job to job, they might find opportunities that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.  But that is my position on LinkedIn. It’s a dating app that shows a lack of commitment to an employer and that people who are on it all the time are one-foot-in, one-foot-out types of people who are not very valuable to an organization. 

Yet, there is something far worse with LinkedIn that indicates its Chinese roots, which it is well known for supporting.  The hidden message of LinkedIn is that people don’t matter and that leadership is embodied in the collective, not the individual.  LinkedIn goes against the gunfighter metaphor that I use often, the comparison of the lone gunfighter who steps into a saloon out of a heavy rain and orders whiskey at the bar with their back turned to the room.  The gunfighter knows that nobody will make a move because the room is full of parasites who want to use anybody they can meet to further their life in some way.  So the gunfighter doesn’t worry about some assassin that might try to shoot them in the back.  Such thoughts are Hollywood fantasy.  In real life, people are much more malicious and lazy.  They’ll use them before trying to kill someone for all they are worth.  Therefore, people of worth are precious in the world because most people fall well short.  Instead, most people reside in the crowd, happy to follow others, which is why the gunfighter knows they can order a whisky at the bar and enjoy it without concern for potential assassins.  Nothing in the world is more valuable than leadership, and leadership is not formed through networks and relationships.  It’s in understanding the motivations of other human beings and what they are willing to do to obtain value, then directing them toward some state of usefulness.  LinkedIn is an audience of people in the saloon looking at the gunfighter, measuring to see if something can be gained from a relationship.  When discussing networking, we are talking about building relationships in this fashion. 

Yet China, as a collectivist, communist society, does not strive to empower its individuals into greatness.  They look for compliance as their primary objective, so they have much trouble building their economy.  Without the outside influence of globalists from the World Economic Forum mentality, China would still be a poor country.  All their wealth has been stolen; it wasn’t generated through individual achievement, as in Western capitalist countries.  In many ways, the designers of Linkedin are well aware of this.  The hidden message of LinkedIn is that individuals do not matter, nor do other companies.  By filtering down individual achievement, the people on LinkedIn are not looking for the next Jack Welsh or President Trump in the world, who ran a very successful show on television about the values of business in The Apprentice.  They want a society of bootlickers who are not committed to corporate leadership and are ultimately easy to control from the centralized state.  By always being willing to jump from one job to another, nobody has deep roots of commitment to their employers, making them weak toward centralized control.  The LinkedIn audience is looking for compliant, noncommitted people to populate the workplaces of the world, and the effect is noticeable.  Professionally, there are a lot of non-committed people out there who show fragile leadership toward their organizations.  And that is by design.  LinkedIn tells the professional world that people don’t matter; they can all be traded like baseball cards and easily replaced.  So, puff yourself up to potential employers looking for just such a poison and destroy the concept of capitalism by destroying the notion of authentic leadership among the corporate community. 

You have to watch these tech firms and understand their overall philosophy for getting into business, to begin with.  Facebook was a dating app that tapped into the human need to be wanted and then exploited that desire with a sense of community or communism.  That same approach was introduced to Western cultures by attacking the concept of marriage with easy divorce.  If you were unhappy with your spouse, get a new one.  Don’t fight out the problems; go somewhere else, which has destroyed the concept of the American family or even a European family.  And in so doing, that gives the state more power over the individuals involved.  Rather than the family or the corporate culture having the strength and ability to resist such temptations.  The way to attack the concept of family was to make divorce more socially acceptable and too tempting whenever things got tough in a marriage.  LinkedIn has sought to do the same in corporate structure, making it easy for talent to leave at the first sign of trouble and keeping CEOs always turning toward the state for approval rather than providing leadership through the frequent storms of life.  In many ways, we see the essential conflict of our times: Do you follow the leadership of Yahweh, or do you seek the many gods of Canaan and sacrifice your firstborn children to appease them?  LinkedIn says to appease the gods, make whatever sacrifices you need to make, and surrender leadership to the state.  I say, be the gunfighter, follow after the individual Yahweh and the rebellion against collectivism that he represented, which formulated the foundations of all Western culture.  Be the leader, not a follower.  And don’t seek the arms of always some new opportunity. Instead, continuously make the best of what you have and fight for a better day.  And stay away from the communist desires of LinkedIn. 

Rich Hoffman

College Was Always a Dumb Idea: The creation of an ‘expert’ class in America has nearly destroyed our country

I have an article that has been one of my most popular over the last 12 years titled, The Most Successful People Who Didn’t Go to College, and it’s a long list. Looking at that list, it is quite evident that college doesn’t make people successful. Honestly, it likely hinders success; it holds people back. It doesn’t advance them the way it was intended in the socialist novel for which college educations are based in America, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, written in 1888.   Knowing what we do now, with over a hundred years of the scam fully deployed, we can see what that mode of attack was and how effective it was for the wrong things, the creation of a class system in America, of a corporate expert class that was more of a European concept than an American one. Clearly, now, America’s workforce and the people of the culture were far better off without college. The greatest economy in the world was created with the most diverse people populating it. But the scam came in much the way that the Federal government tried to backdoor Covid vaccine mandates. They made a tiered system for which they managed to get corporations to play along. Go to college so you can get a good job with some big corporation. Go to their liberal-controlled schools. Pay them extraordinarily high fees. Replace the parent by sending the kid away from the family and let the liberal institution become the next influence on the young mind. Do all these things so that corporations could get a nice compliant socialist, a top-down “expert.” And the same companies who are now woke, which is about everyone, were the first to sign up and say that they wouldn’t hire the right people for the right job; instead, they’d only hire the person with the degree even if a better person was available who didn’t go through the liberal meat grinder. 

As a result of this government/corporate alliance, we have ended up with an army of expert bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci due to this misguided approach to education. You can go to just about any major company, and populating their white-collar culture is an endless parade of Dr. Fauci types. These mindless bureaucrats bring socialism to their culture and hold the company back. They certainly don’t help it because they have learned all the wrong things. I have argued for years that the college experience was not worth it, that America would have been far better off not participating in that European mindset. College was sold to America as a globalist idea. We didn’t need it. In America, hard work and intelligence were the criteria that capitalism rewarded. If people wanted to be successful, then they could get there through hard work and perseverance.   College told students that a degree would make them successful, and a countless stream of do-gooder parents got suckered into the scam. After all, who wants their children to have a bad life? The college concept told them that their child would have an open door to a good, high-paying job by paying for college. And corporations are obliged only to hire college graduates. It was, in essence, an early version of a Covid Passport concept. Because they were so successful with the college concept, the Desecrators of Davos thought they could get away with the massive Covid scam that killed millions of people and destroyed the lives of many millions more.   The people who Covid easily suckered turned out to be all the college graduates who have their professional work environments decorated with symbols of their alma mater. They were the ones wearing their masks in their cars with the windows rolled up during Covid. They were the ones so easily suckered by the expert class, and in the aftermath, they were the ones most damaged by what happened. 

I say all this as a person who knows a lot of people with advanced degrees. The process does not destroy everyone. I know several people who have Master’s degrees and doctorates, even multiple doctorates.   But I don’t see that it has really helped them become smarter. A real education never stops; it involves knowing many things very well. And it can’t be purchased. Most people in any field of endeavor, including the medical occupations, would do better in apprentice programs than in what they learned in medical school. For all the lawyers out there who put so much effort into law school, we saw recently how great legal minds like Rudy Guiliani were treated, even with all the academic and professional bells and whistles. If he didn’t play ball with some institutional desire, his BAR Association membership could be removed instantly. That has made a compliant class of adults afraid to rock the boat against the established order, which isn’t an American idea. Most corporations are filled with people who were taught in college to get along to keep their jobs, so they check their opinions at the door and never speak up. We also saw during Covid where doctors had the threat of their licenses removed from them if they didn’t get on the Dr. Fauci bandwagon of denying hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid instead of pushing the pharmaceutical approach with vaccines. Kids learned in college that the usually liberal professor sets the ground rules for passing the class. Colleges taught students what to think, not how to think, and that basic premise is the foundation for everything that went wrong during Covid. College graduates, especially at the corporate leadership level, were too quick to abandon critical thinking and instead did exactly what the government told them to do. And too many people did it without question.

I’ve put out the alarm for many years. I went to college, and I thought it was terribly stupid. It was a worthless experience. I was always learning and thought of education as reading books in a Waffle House at 4 AM in the morning, which is how I spent most of my twenties. I never learned not to think and pursue knowledge, and the only use college did have was getting an opportunity to interview for a big job. My wife went to college as well, and it was also useless for her. We were never compliant people, so college ran against everything we stood for. Those most successful in college have turned out to be those least able to innovate in the world or think for themselves when needed. They demonstrate institutional compliance but not critical thinking. And the walls all came crashing down regarding the concept, with Covid showing where all the cracks really are in our society. The idea of an “educated class” in America has no real place in our free and open society. It has been just another socialist experiment gone wrong. It created a culture of worthless expert class losers who have ruined everything they have touched and driven America into the arms of globalism, which has been detrimental. And the price is obvious now. It’s hard for people to admit how suckered they were for jumping through all the hoops to accommodate the college degree scam, but it’s time to have an advanced discussion about the worthlessness of the college experience. It has not been suitable for American life. It’s the wrong idea for developing a workforce and has been a dismal failure. Institutional mechanisms can’t purchase education. It must be lived, and there is no substitute for experience. And it’s time to reevaluate the whole process for the sake of our future needs in an America First world. 

Rich Hoffman

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