Hasta La Gadget!

We are now in the middle of summer, which for many parents often means packing up the car, the kids, and hitting the road to visit favorite haunts or explore new places.

I remember summer trips when I was growing up, travelling across the west in the family car, visiting Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks – wowed by the beauty and majesty of our national park system. I also remember a visit to Boston harbor and climbing aboard “Old Ironsides,” the famed Navy ship from the War of 1812. Standing on the deck made real what until then was only a story from a history book.

Years later, we shared the same experience with our sons, traveling through Yosemite, Canyonlands and Yellowstone, as well as Native American monuments and Gettysburg.

Trips like those make us appreciate both our beautiful country and our history. No nation does a better job of protecting the special places, and the stories, which make us who we are.

One of the most effective ways to protect our heritage is a little-known federal program called the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Since it was created 50 years ago, it has helped protect thousands of acres of parks and forests, and hundreds of historic sites.

One of the beauties of LWCF is that it doesn’t use any of our tax dollars. It comes from money paid by oil companies who want to drill for oil and gas in offshore waters owned by all Americans. It is supposed to receive $900 million a year, but Congress usually cuts it deeply.

This week, for example, a House committee is writing a budget bill for the year beginning Oct. 1, and proposes only $152 million for LWCF, which means the program would only get about one-sixth of the money it is supposed to receive.

And that would be a shame, because the program does more than just protect places for families who are out on the road. Congress should provide the full $900 million funding for the program, as called for in the budget submitted to Congress earlier this year by President Obama.

It has also helped save and build some of our greatest parks close to home, such as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, or the Gateway National Recreation Area in New York. Many people who live in cities won’t be able to jump in the car, but they still should have a place to get outside experience the both the wonders of nature and the legacy of the American experience.

Now, our nation is in the midst of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the great conflict which helped define who we are, and which is still being studied today. The LWCF has helped there, too, by protecting some of the battlefields. For example, the National Park Service recently used it to add a major piece to the Richmond National Battlefield Park.

And we are also celebrating the first step toward “America’s Best Idea” – our National Park System. In the summer of 1864, in the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln affirmed the importance of protecting the places that have become part of our national character. He did so by signing a bill granting the Yosemite Valley to the State of California to protect that beautiful and iconic landscape. Years later, Yosemite became a national park.

Anyone who pays attention to Washington knows there isn’t much the politicians agree on these days. But behind the headlines, one of the great things about LWCF is that is supported by both parties in Congress.

As Congress tries to write a budget, it has some difficult choices. But one of the easiest calls is to provide all the money it should for a program which has worked beautifully since it was created.

If Congress does that, it will provide more wonderful places for all those kids who are now in the back of their parents’ cars to take their own children years from now. We should never stop protecting and celebrating the special places in America.

Last week, India’s new finance minister revealed his government’s $300-billion annual budget for the fiscal year that began on April 1, 2014. Arun Jaitley, who has charge of both finance and defense in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, projected that the budget deficit would remain at the same level, 4.1 percent, as planned by his predecessor, Harvard M.B.A. P. Chidambaram.

Jaitley’s 36-page speech took over two hours to deliver to India’s lower house of parliament and was sprinkled with over two dozen small programs worth about $16 million each, or about 0.005 percent of the annual expense plan. However, many Western media reports have focused on the content of these miniscule projects while underemphasizing, even ignoring, key developments that affect American, European and Japanese companies.

Let’s look at changes that are meaningful to companies outside India, basically in the area of encouraging investments by overseas entities, removing bottlenecks and deploying capital into the markets.

Encouraging Foreign Investment

Jaitley promised to lift economic growth to about 8 percent within three years, a conservative target for a minister who promised bold new initiatives. But contained in his long speech are a number of free-enterprise, fair-trade initiatives that, if they capture the attention of local and global corporate executives, could start to unlock the innate productivity of Indian workers. Here are four examples:

• Income arising for foreign-portfolio investors (FPIs) in India from the sale of securities will be treated more favorably as capital gains; earlier there was some ambiguity about this. Currently such FPIs have invested over $130 billion in India’s stock market, and their actions have significant effects on share prices.
• The new government kept its election promise to permit foreign companies to own up to 49 percent of an Indian defense manufacturing venture. The United States is now India’s largest defense supplier, and India is the largest buyer of defense equipment in the world. At the old limit of 26 percent, there was almost zero American foreign direct investment in defense in India. At the same time Indian defense spending is being raised to $37 billion per year, $1 billion more than Chidambaram projected.
• A number of American insurance companies, such as New York Life, did enter India at the 26-percent investment limit. Again the FDI limit in insurance was raised to 49 percent.
• If you wanted to invest in urban housing in India as a foreign company, you needed to build out at least 500,000 square feet. Jaitley lowered this limit to 200,000 square feet of built-up area and halved the financial investment threshold to just $5 million. Flipping your investment is still discouraged, so you must hold it for at least three years.

Deploying Capital

For the first time India is going to introduce real-estate-investment trusts (REITs) and encourage overseas Indians to participate. Over the decades REITs have played an important role in securitizing the real-estate market in the U.S.A. and should enable many passive Indian investors to participate in the benefits of an urbanizing society. India’s real-estate market is notoriously opaque, and professionalizing might also start to shine stronger light and reduce the role of undocumented or “black” money in this asset. Bollywood has certainly benefited from corporate funding in marginalizing organized crime’s role in funding movies.

A new kind of investment trust for infrastructure (InvIT) is also being introduced. It is still unclear if corporate entities with no ties to India can participate in these REITs and InvITs.

A $1.6-billion seed fund is being created to provide equity and soft loans to startup companies. The idea is to encourage private capital to join in as a co-investor. There is currently no specific guidance on whether foreign capital will be welcomed in these startup initiatives. Since about 1998, venture capital and private equity in India have largely been sparked from incoming investment from the U.S., Singapore and Europe.

Removing Bottlenecks

When I was researching my book, Doing Business in 21st-Century India, a retired, highly regarded chief of staff to India’s prime minister admitted to me privately that much of India’s economic progress had taken place despite the government, not because of it. While this is common wisdom in corporate America, it used to be near-heresy in India, with its legacy of a Soviet-style “planned” economy. Here are four key elements from the new Indian budget that essentially show government getting out of the way of business:

• In an effort to increase tax revenue, India has been aggressive in review of transfer prices between foreign entities and their Indian associates; Jaitley proposes to make the transfer pricing rules more transparent and less ambiguous.
• Nine international airports will be equipped with electronic incoming traveler authorizations to grant visas on arrival for foreign tourists from several designated countries, including the United States. Business travelers might still need a visa.
• Currently, tax regimes in India vary by state and cause tremendous inefficiencies in the flow of goods across state boundaries. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley assured the government’s intent to “end the talking” on the proposed standardized GST (goods and services tax) and move to implementation.
• The government did not change most direct and indirect rates in any way that would deter foreign investors. Customs duties were reduced on several ingredient items (such as glycerin to make soap, steel-grade limestone and crude naphthalene) in order to encourage local manufacturing. These reductions will benefit any company, domestic or foreign, that uses the ingredients to manufacture specified products in India.

The Final Take

When Jaitley promised to stay away from “mindless populism” in the budget, many analysts mistook it to mean a retreat from populism altogether. In a democracy with high illiteracy rates and extreme rural poverty, populism is unavoidable. Perhaps the dozens of small giveaway programs are the new government’s expression of “mindful” populism: Spend a little bit of money on a lot of tiny projects in order to please voters while reserving the gunpowder for a few key initiatives.

Was this budget a “bold departure” from the past for India? Not really, but it is a welcome incremental change in the right direction. If the Modi government is able to follow through with concrete actions on initiatives such as the standardized GST, India’s growth rate will rebound readily. Two or three years of the right incremental changes could amount to an economic revolution in today’s India.

Nina Simone’s, Whitney Houston’s and Aaliyah’s biopics aren’t the only films to stir up family drama and casting controversies. Richard Pryor’s can now be added to the list.

The legendary comedian’s son, Richard Pryor Jr., previously dismissed Nick Cannon as an adequate choice for the role of playing his father in director Lee Daniels’ upcoming film. However only days later, Pryor has reportedly changed his mind.

“I am actually very excited about it now. He changed my mind by how he is delving into it.”

Cannon’s apparent devotion to learning to live like Pryor has apparently impressed the legendary comedian’s son.

“He did the small thing of using his left hand instead of his right hand, he picked up smoking to try and emulate my dad, he’s let his hair grow out. He’s looking into who my dad really was, looking into his childhood, who he was raised by and around, and he is interested in talking to me about who my dad was.”

Pryor Jr. is still concerned about the controversial relationship between his father’s widow, Jennifer Lee Pryor, who has all the rights to his material, and how she will be depicted in the film.

“She is going to portray herself as angelic when it was the opposite,” he said. “She’s not a nice lady…My dad’s money took care of him, they didn’t even live in the same home.”

But confidence in Nick Cannon’s candidacy for the lead of the film seems to be one less worry about his father’s legacy. Nick Cannon has yet to land the role for certain, but Pryor Jr.’s support is at the very least a major encouragement.

[h/t Daily Mail]

If you desire to be a great chief executive leader, being coachable is required. You simply can’t achieve leadership greatness if you only depend on your perception of how you lead. There was a time in my life that “being coachable” was not a possessed trait. In fact while feedback was desired, when heard, it was rather hurtful and not something embraced. Can you relate to that?

If we are truthful — most of us say we want feedback about our leadership style and effectiveness. When someone gives us feedback we often disregard the positive comments and concentrate on the negative comments. We then either can’t believe what has been said or we just don’t hear it. In order to grow as a transformed executive leader, listening and acting upon feedback is imperative.

The desire to listen and learn from feedback makes or breaks our ability to grow. We are coachable if we can hear and grow. If not, we aren’t coachable. Fortunately for most of us, there comes a time when the desire to listen and learn is greater than the pain in hearing feedback. Consequently executive leadership characteristics grow and effectiveness as an executive leader escalates accordingly.

When in graduate school, an instructor told us that the higher you go up the corporate ladder the more unlikely someone will tell you if you have bad breath. While that was shared in a tongue and cheek way, it is true. Once you have positional authority where you have the power to ensure employment, or not, you often won’t hear full truth. Feedback can then be quite skewed giving you the impression you are doing well when in fact there areas needing your attention to grow.

How do you get the truth about your executive leadership effectiveness so that you can grow? Here are a few ways that help…

1. If your organization has a strong and effective 360 Feedback program in place, participate. 360 Feedback is a tool that if used well in an organization can be very helpful. It is a formal program and is done in an anonymous fashion. It is so named as it is intended to obtain feedback from a full 360 degrees around you — your employees and direct reports, your boss or board, and others you work with in your organization. However, if organizations don’t follow the process of gathering feedback with effective follow-up and a plan with timelines for improvement, the results are less optimal and typically not as helpful.
2. If you don’t have a 360 Feedback or similar organizational tool but you have a human resources department, enlist the director or leader of the department to send an anonymous survey. This survey should be sent to five to 15 people you work with closely (organizational size depending) to obtain feedback about your effectiveness as an executive leader. It is best if you have all levels provide input — employees who work for you, direct reports and board members you work with. The focus should be simple — your strengths and weaknesses as an executive leader.
3. If you have a boss (board chair or board member) who is experienced with giving feedback and is respectful and truthful in sharing feedback about your effectiveness, listen and allow them to mentor you.
4. Enlist an executive coach who can watch you in action, has your best interest at heart and is honest and respectful in sharing observations about your effectiveness as a leader.
5. Study yourself and watch the way others react to you — employees, your executive team, and others. This is helpful if done with any of the tools mentioned above to match your perception with others.

Now you have selected and implemented a mechanism to obtain feedback, then what’s next? Working with many executive leaders, knowing what to do with the feedback is as hard if not harder than hearing the feedback. Habits are hard to change and many people are of the opinion that we are stuck with the way we are and can’t change. That just isn’t true. People can and do change if the feedback is respectful and delivered in a way that honors the person. Time is needed to allow us to change.

Here are a few tips to help you move forward and change:

1. Examine whatever facts you have about your executive leadership style and effectiveness as objectively as possible
2. Remember to pay attention to what others say about your strengths as well as weaknesses in order to balance the scale, so to speak
3. Realize that if others perceive you differently than what you see in yourself, it isn’t about who is right, it is about what your willingness to consider a different perspective
4. Begin identifying the drivers that cause the behaviors others see in you.
5. Develop a plan that can address the drivers and transform your weaknesses into strengths.
6. Implement your plan, notice, and celebrate your improvement independently.

Remember many of us are great at noticing weaknesses, particularly in others. But we are less capable of noticing when someone has changed and flipped a weakness into strength. It might take time for others to notice the difference, but over time, they will.

The most important lesson is to learn how you can embrace a personal life-long coachable spirit. If you do, everyone around you wins.

This article first appeared on WallinEnterprises.com. Let’s connect: LinkedIn | Twitter

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is asking an appeals court to overturn a stay of execution for John Middleton, scheduled to die early Wednesday for killing three people in northern Missouri in 1995.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry ruled Tuesday that there was enough question about whether Middleton’s sanity that a hearing should take place. The U.S. Constitution prohibits executing the mentally ill. Koster asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the stay.

Middleton was a methamphetamine dealer convicted of killing Randy “Happy” Hamilton, Stacey Hodge and Alfred Pinegar because he feared they would go to police.

In a separate ruling late Monday, the appeals court refused to halt the execution on Middleton’s claim that he is innocent. Middleton’s attorneys appealed that case to the Supreme Court.