Justin Foster Unfiltered

I always love these. Funny how far we have come as a society. They advertising is a reflection of a society's values. I guess that explains beer commercials.

This is a must-read. Here is a summary of the 10 lessons:

- Go into your cave.
- It's okay to be the King.
- Transcend orthodoxy.
- Just say no.
- Serve your customer. No, really.
- Everything is marketing.
- Kill the past.
- Turn feedback into inspiration.
- Don't invent, re-invent.
- Play by your own clock.

John Wooden has always been a mythical figure to me. Someone that was before my time, but whose teachings had such a profound on the people he coached that they still held him in great reverence.

Coach Wooden was a leadership consultant before that was even a term. As such, his quotes and concepts have been used by thousands. However, I have never found any Wooden-related resource for benchmarking leadership as a character trait. So I made one.

This is pretty simple. I selected 14 quotes and applied them to a benchmarking template I use for brands. You can use this on yourself - but I think it would make an excellent tool rating anyone in and/or aspiring to a leadership role - i.e. management candidates.

It also can be used to benchmark those that aspire to elected office. I plan on using it as my version of a Voter Guide. If someone grades out high in these areas, then they are electable. If they don't, then they aren't.

In many ways it is a reality check between the abstract theory of leadership and the actual behavior of true leaders.

Yesterday's passage of the House's Health Care Reform bill and the above article were the catalysts for this observation:

Where innovation goes, affordability follows.

I have some fundamental philosophical reasons for not supporting the recent legislation. Chiefly, I view the government's involvement in our lives as accepting that mediocrity is the highest level we can achieve. There are also issues related to the constitutionality of dramatically increasing government's role in health care. Finally, when is the last time that the government was able to solve a problem better than the free market?

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about innovation - or the lack thereof.

Innovation has always been at the forefront of medical advances. This has lead to curing diseases, extending life, and many other advancements that were unheard of just 75 years ago. And, yes, there has been some government involvement in this area - primarily through grants and tax credits.

However, there has been little to no innovation on how we PAY for medicine. We consumers have been trained that the issue is coverage, not the causes that require needing insurance in the first place. In short, it has been the accepted norm that unhealthy behavior is ok as long as there is a way to pay for it. As such, we end up with no innovation on a payment method ... thus the ensuing skyrocketing costs. This especially applies to behavioral driven issues such obesity and its many side effects.

Not coincidentally, elective items such as plastic surgery and Lasik have seen a dramatic drop in price. Primarily because they were exposed to the free markets.

Another way to look at it is that insurance companies have created a "corporate socialism" model. For years, the government has colluded with insurance companies (and providers) through regulation (no portability, pre-existing condition clauses, etc) and by not addressing the core issue. That is why President's Obama's claims about insurance company "greed" are disingenuous. Insurance company profits are on the lower end of the scale, plus they are going to receive millions of new customers under his plan. The bottom line: there is lack of innovation on payment models because there is no incentive to do so.

What the Fast Company article lays-out is extremely innovative ... and it will work if there is motive for innovation. However, with the government dramatically increasing their presence in our lives, where is the motivation for innovation? We can damn insurance companies for their lack of innovation, but do we expect the government to be any more innovative? Without that, the future of health care is simply social with an "ism" at the end.

My take on the whole issue of the number of Twitter followers I have ...

I don't care.

This also applies to the number of Twitter followers anyone else has. "Followers" is a false positive as far as a metric. Number of Followers is like a Twitter version of an Arbitron or Nielsen rating. It really doesn't mean all that much.

If you want to measure something on Twitter, measure the number of re-tweets (RTs) you get. RTs mean you are posting interesting stuff.

Keep in mind that Twitter is all about RIGHT NOW. This means being interesting, useful, funny, provocative, etc. in an immediate format. How do you that? By being those things off-line and extending them to Twitter and other social mediums.