Why Obama Won the Election

2008 Election Results - the Growing Democratic Possibility

I voted today in California using my absentee ballot because I am headed for Europe and will miss the election. Absentee voters sometimes think they are not counted on election day. This is a myth. Because I am missing the celebration, I am declaring the results now, two weeks in advance of Election Day.

 
The election is over for a five glaring reasons:

1. The War – Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton largely because of one issue: he voted against the war. He has singularly differentiated himself, and against McCain, it is a more stark difference.

2. Change – McCain is the Faux-Maverick. Both the mavericks in both parties won their nominations, an encouraging fact. That signals the electorate wants change. The problem for McCain is Obama owns the Change mantra, and has proven in the Campaign Death March, he means it.

3. Sarah Palin – is an embarrassment. Most Americans think Bush has done enough damage, and it’s time for strong leadership. Palin represents another poorly prepared politician who will need to be propped up by advisors. McCain blew this Big Time. This weekend, my die-hard Repulican brother-in-law said he was changing to Obama because of Palin. This man was recently worried about Obama’s relationship with Reverend Wright and his strength on terrorism. Palin trumps all these issues. She is not a statesperson deserving of high office.

4. The Economy – Warren Buffet supports Barack. Game over. Buffet is not just esteemed as a brilliant investor. He is one of the few trusted financial figures in this unstable economy.

At a large dinner in Silicon Valley filled with hundreds of venture capitalists and financial people at a swank country club last week, one of the smartest VCs I know said, “Invest in Buffet’s company. Don’t buy GE. Don’t buy Goldman Sachs. Regardless of their price right now.” Here’s a man in a room full of folks who might often fall for the No-Taxes-Republican-Head-Fake. Not this time (as Obama often says). This room of financiers was full of Buffet and Obama supporters.

5. International Leadership – I have yet to meet one person overseas, in numerous trips, who likes George Bush and supports the war. Who cares? These people don’t vote here? In fact, this is telling. America sometimes ignores common international logic, but the preponderance of international support for a different direction says a lot about where our country needs to go. Leaders in this country want to re-establish the country globally; these leaders largely support Obama.

The War, Change, Sarah Palin, The Economy, and International leadership. These are the glaring reasons Obama won.

He won’t win of course unless every one of you American readers gets to the polls and makes your vote count. I have had a dream for some time: that Obama beats McCain decisively by a minimum of eight percentage points, that he wins states like North Carolina and turns the Democratic vote into a wider base, that the election is a clear signal to Change. We need every vote cast. This is the best opportunity we have had since Kennedy to have a Real Leader.

McCain will not win. Not this time.

The Secret Ingredient to Blogs?

(Warning: This ingredient may not be for every blogger.) The ingredient is mixing business and personal issues. Right off the bat, this flies in the face of accepted Public Relations rules. But, the more personal and authentic a blogger can be, the more readers will believe a blog. Why do I say this?

I was honored to have Christine Kent of Ragan’s Media Relations Report cover my story of cancer in this blog. She asked me if there was any upside to executives talking about personal issues in their blog. My response was, “if executives blog honestly and passionately about something personal, there’s no need to figure out if there’s a corporate upside or downside.” The question is not about upside; it should be about authenticity.

People are sick and tired of all the media relations filters. One principle problem with our US Presidential Campaign Death March is everything is filtered down to pablum. No surprise: the one moment Hillary Clinton got emotional in public, the media treated her more positively for her authenticity.

The majority of advice on writing good blogs is keep it short, be punchy, be pithy, be controversial, and the like. While most of this is reasonable advice, speaking from the heart trumps most of this. My longest blogs are my most well read. Another popular piece of advice is have a clear theme or subject for your blogs. Again, I stumbled on mixing business and personal issues at the risk of being scattered, yet today a woman who is a volunteer for Livestrong told me in an email, “I love that it’s corporate and personal at the same time: it’s you. In my work… I have proposed launching blogs with the same natural style. Now I have a good example to show my Board of Directors.” Lesson: Do not obey all the rules. Make your own.

But why mix business and personal issues? Well, it’s not for everyone as I warned at the start. I told Christine Kent it’s Steve Jobs’ business if he wishes to talk about his personal life. Also, the rules are different for public companies.

If you can mix the two, you open the opportunity of showing more passion, more heart, more transparency, and then all that Often Boring Business stuff just might have a chance of being a little more interesting.

Is Agile Development Only for Nerds?

Eskander Matta

This man says, “No.” So what? He may look a little nerdy but he is a Senior Vice President at Wells Fargo Bank and using agile development techniques, he has dramatically reduced the time to develop new products for Wells Fargo’s online business.

 
What’s the big deal? Eskander Matta is not a software developer, and he is not in the IT department. Eskander is a banking executive, with a Harvard MBA, who thinks traditional development methodologies are impediments to building new online products faster and better. Eskander believes, “There is so much innovation in Financial Services that speed to market is critical. A lengthy linear process inhibits one’s ability to compete.”

Eighteen months ago, Eskander got a group of bank employees together to take a meat cleaver to a development cycle that had 26 artifacts (think: pieces of documentation). His goal was to remove all artifacts that had no downstream consumer. “If no one is going to read it, then get rid of it”, he asked the team. The team whacked the process down to 5 artifacts. Then equally important, all this was enabled with a wiki.

As is most often the case, Eskander, the business guy, asked the IT dept what wiki to use. The IT guys told him to use Confluence.

By underpinning everything with the wiki, communication and interaction between people was enabled. “If the wiki was a static word document, it wouldn’t have worked”, Eskander points out. The wiki enabled collaboration in a more formal sense.

What’s so interesting is…

• A business executive took the leadership to streamline development using Agile Development concepts.
• The outcome was fantastic: 26 development artifacts reduced to 5.
• The result ended up on one collaborative work space on a wiki.
• All this was in service of a major bank producing new online products faster.

Granted, Financial Services is largely an information business, this sector is the biggest spender on IT, and in this instance, the product was the Internet. Yet, this story is compelling evidence that there are other executives out there who understand what technology can do, who seek best practices like Agile Development, and who seek out the newest collaborative technologies.