Lou Reed: linger on

Lots of fine tributes to Lou Reed last week. I've been listening to the man's music for 25 years and love it still.

So here's my Lou Reed top 10, in no particular order...

Sunday Morning
Satellite of Love
What Goes On
Pale Blue Eyes
Stephanie Says
Venus in Furs
Coney Island Baby
Dirty Blvd
The Murder Mystery
Last Great American Whale

Six of my ten are Velvet Underground tracks. So I guess I feel - like most people - that the early years of Reed's career were his peak. But you have to love how the guy kept making uncompromising music on his own terms, into middle age and beyond. I remember when New York came out in 1989. To me and my friends at school it was one of the most angry and sharply political albums we had ever heard. It's also a terrific collection of rock songs.

And that for me is the key to Reed's longevity, the real reason I'm still listening to him: superbly-crafted songs that are full of invention. Strip away the drugs and the sleaze and much of what the media has focused on in the wake of the man's death, and at the core of everything is the quality and creativity of the music. That's why he will surely linger on.

Young people full of ability

During recent years, I've been fortunate to work with some amazing and inspiring people. Last week provided yet another example.

The occasion was a discussion group that I facilitated with seven young people, all of whom have a visual impairment (i.e. they are blind or partially sighted to a degree that presents challenges when getting out and about). In many ways the group were typical of Generation Y: sociable, adept communicators, pragmatists rather than idealists, very much online and digitally networked, keen to get out, meet new people and have new experiences.

But what really struck me was how these young people - all of whom have a disability - were willing to consider the needs not only of themselves, but also of others. For them, there are older, more isolated people with a visual impairment who also require support and services but whose needs are distinctly different from their own. Some are even volunteering with charities in their area to provide help to such people.

All this reminded me of a couple of important points. Firstly, we live in a climate where people who claim any sort of disability benefit are liable to be labelled scroungers. But in my experience, young people with disabilities have no desire to scrounge. They want to play a full part in society. They want to fulfil their potential in life, in education and in work. They are also prepared to give back and to help others if they can, as the participants in my discussion group last week showed.

The second point has more to do with age than disability. The cohort of young people that is currently entering - or attempting to enter - the job market has a huge amount going for it. Their ability to communicate and their openness to change are refreshing and full of potential. They are also much more giving than is generally acknowledged. For example, recent stats from the UK Cabinet Office suggest strong levels of volunteering among younger age groups.

But this cohort also faces significant challenges, given the realities of an economy that offers a lack of entry-level jobs and rising costs of living. So let's hope employers and the government work to give young people a break and support them in progressing towards their goals in work and life, whatever their abilities.

Bad attitudes at high altitudes

This week has brought news of fighting between groups of climbers and guides on Mount Everest. My impression is that such high-altitude altercations have been brewing for some time.

Ever wondered what it's like to be on the world's highest peak, without incurring the massive expense and life-threatening risk that such endeavours can entail? If so, I highly recommend Into Thin Air by Jon Kracauer. This gripping first-hand account of the 1996 Everest disaster shows us how Everest has become perilously over-crowded.

It's no surprise that the bad atmosphere up there has got even worse over the years. It's also undeniable that the over-crowding, coupled with the commercial imperative to get paying customers to the top, has made an already hostile environment even more dangerous.

One thing's for sure, I'm going nowhere near Everest. Big money and big mountains simply don't mix.

Statistics under the influence

To anyone like myself who has worked in market research, it comes as little surprise that respondents to surveys have been under-reporting the amount they drink (see here). Come to think of it, to anyone with any experience of human nature, this should come as no surprise.

When quizzed in a survey, many people provide what they feel to be acceptable answers, rather than giving their best shot at the truth. This is the case even when the interviewer is a complete stranger (or when the survey is online) and they've been assured that their answers will be treated anonymously.

The alcohol stats are just one example of this. Other surveys routinely tell us that up to 70% of the UK population give to charity. I doubt the figure is so high.

But my favourite examples are surveys exploring personal relationships. They tend to tell us that men have had up to twice as many sexual partners as women. This is in fact mathematically impossible. If two groups are "interacting", then the average number of interactions is the same in each group*. The reality is that heterosexual men and heterosexual woman have, on average, the same number of sexual partners in a lifetime. All the surveys tell us is that, true to stereotype, women as a group prefer to underplay their promiscuity, men to exaggerate it.

The lesson of all this is not that we should be sceptical of all market research. But thinking carefully about where statistics come from and what they really mean should be standard practice for us all, market researchers included.

* OK, just in case there are any genuine detail freaks reading this.... I'll admit it's possible that other interactions outside UK man + UK woman (e.g. men having relations with other men or with non-UK women) could have some effect in boosting the figures for the male population. But that couldn't possibly explain such large discrepancies in the data. Similarly, we might acknowledge that some alcohol, once purchased, never actually gets consumed. But again the effect is not big enough to explain the big gap between booze sales and what people say they drink.

Deception in cycling: the truth will set you free

Time for a book recommendation. Amid all the hubbub around Lance Armstrong's overdue "confession", I was reading The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle.

The book has two great strengths. One is Hamilton's candid, exhaustive retelling of the drug-taking and other cheating that he took part in as an elite bike rider. If you want to know what the peloton was really up to, and just how widespread and routine it all was, there are answers here.

The second reason I will remember this book is more surprising. Hamilton regrets what he did, but he is bold enough to pose thorny moral questions about his actions. He describes how, as a rising star in professional cycling and a member of Armstrong's US Postal team, there came a point where he had a choice: he could take performance-enhancing drugs or he could find another job. Such was the extent of drug-taking by the 90s, that you simply couldn't keep up without some EPO, testosterone, or whatever your particular cocktail came to be.

The Secret Race doesn't ask us to excuse the drugs or the blood transfusions or the wholesale deception that took place. It does, however, get us thinking about what we might have done, had we been in Hamilton's position and faced with the same choice. At the same time, Hamilton's account of the anguish he has experienced - physically at times but primarily mentally - as a result of drug-taking and blood transfusions leaves us in no doubt that cheats pay for their crimes, one way or another. And, of course, he was eventually caught, exposed, vilified, banned.

Faced with his fateful choice again, Hamilton would I'm sure opt to "just say no" and stay honest. Ultimately, his story encourages us to do just that, whatever the immediate cost.

Trust Barometer puts high pressure on leaders

The annual Edelmann Trust Barometer was published this week. It received noticeably less attention from the media than in recent years, no doubt because it doesn't show any dramatic year-on-year falls in the trust that the public feels for institutions and business. Nonetheless, the survey continues to underline the high levels of scepticism and mistrust that now characterise our perceptions of political and business leaders.

One finding that inevitably stands out is the attitude towards banks and bankers. Trust in the banking industry in the UK has halved in the past five years, not surprisingly. Of the 18 countries surveyed, only Spain and Ireland have less trust in their banks. The fact that trust levels are twice as high in the US as in the UK must surely say something not just about the way the financial crisis has been reported and perceived on each side of the Atlantic, but also about the healthy degree of scepticism that naturally occurs among the British public. It would certainly be hard to argue that US banks have behaved any more honourably than their UK counterparts (see my post The Flaw: money-grabbing and misery in modern America).

The Trust Barometer also underlines how the events of recent years have cemented the public's mistrust of both political and business leadership, at least in the developed world. CEOs are little more trusted than government officials. And once again, the UK displays one of the highest degrees of scepticism among the countries surveyed.

Edelmann's analysis concludes that, in order to regain the respect and trust they have lost, leaders need to throw out the old mantra of top-down authority and embrace the "new mandate" of "inclusive management".  I believe that such a shift is healthy not only for leaders themselves but also for the performance of organisations. For one thing, many of the damaging leadership mistakes of recent years - from the ridiculous bets on subprime mortgages to insane corporate mergers (RBS-ABN, HP-Autonomy, etc) to the Iraq War - have happened because people with power were able to push through decisions that surely wouldn't have stood up to reasoned, informed and independent group scrutiny.

More diffuse models of leadership will gradually emerge. Chains of command will give way to webs of influence. The challenge then becomes to ensure that organisations don't drift into a sclerotic, directionless mess that stifles decision-making and accountability. Let's hope the finest minds in organisational development are at work on this very issue as I type.