10 Principles of Communication

1.    In elementary school, I was taught that I should communicate in a fashion such that I could be understood.  For over 50 years, I’ve felt that is an insufficient criterion.  We should strive to communicate so that we cannot be misunderstood, a much stricter standard.  Just because someone could understand you is not sufficient.  We need to try to avoid any miscommunication.  Especially today with tweets and texts and emails, messaging is fast and short, leading to ambiguity, poorly-chosen words, etc.

2.    I queue many emails and blogs for future delivery.  Thus, if I realize a comment was vague or omitted, I can improve the message before it is published.

3.    I use "Quick Text" in Outlook to store preferred wording so that I can be consistent in using optimal language.  It is easy to modify such wording for a specific application and to continuously improve it: you click it into text, modify it and, if appropriate, re-save.

4.    It amazes me how easily people can be offended by, and distrust, long-time friends.  Lifelong bonds can be destroyed so quickly.  Once I trust someone, it is very hard for them to cause me to distrust them.  I figure I must have misunderstood what they said or what they wanted to say.  Or they might have misunderstood me.  Or something happened that day that caused them to say something out of character, etc.  Why should one incident overturn years of evidence?

5.    If you’re selling a product, you must disclose all the negatives, but you don’t have to disclose all the positives.  Disclosing all the positives can be problematic:

a.    Minor details may bore or annoy your client because their time is valuable.

b.    It distracts from the main point.  Your client might start day-dreaming, hence not hear the main point.

c.    The positive might have some exceptions, limitations, etc.  So if you mention those positives, you must now mention all those negatives, even if minor.

d.    Mentioning some positives may damage your relationship.  If my financial advisor describes a product feature which will save me money if I go on Medicaid (common in the long-term care insurance industry), I’m thinking I should get a new advisor who will help me avoid being on Medicaid?

e.    You can inform the client about additional favorable features after the sale.

6.    I don’t like “fluff” features that sound better than they are (i.e., Restoration of Benefits or Return of Premium on Death prior to age 75).  I don’t mention them because I want to focus on the key issues and don’t want to feel obligated to explain why such features are not as good as they sound.  I certainly don’t want people to buy based on thinking something is better than it is.

7.    Clients also have a right to rely upon you, hence not have to make every decision.  I tell people "I recommend x or y for the following reason", making it clear that there are other choices.  If the client wants to know about those other choices, they can ask me.  So I don’t need to waste their time presenting those alternatives.

8.    We use sloppy terminology that can lead to misunderstanding and could cause lawsuits.  Amazingly, insurers encourage such sloppy wording.  For example, we sell "long-term care insurance", not “long-term care”.  Supposed “inflation protection” does not protect against all inflation (hence i refer to it as "benefit increase options intended to try to maintain purchasing power in the face of inflation"), etc.

9.    Suitability is part of sales, rather than compliance.  If you attend to suitability, you’ll have happier clients and more referrals.  Insurers put “suitability” in the Compliance sections of their broker guides.  What message does that send to brokers?  (That we don’t really believe in suitability, hence support it only because the regulators make us do it?)  What message does it send to regulators?  (That we support suitability only because they make us do so?  Such an approaches encourages them to wonder what else they should be requiring.)

10. Audiences are ADHD and distracted by their iPhones, thoughts, etc.  In a presentation, they may hear something that suddenly piques their interest, but you may have completed that thought and they can’t recover it.  That’s why I like to have "meat" on slides.  Someone can look up and recover the missed pearl of wisdom by reviewing the text of the slide.

The “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” op-ed

For those of you who have not read the script of the “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” printed by the NY Times, I have included it below my signature.

I presume that this person is acting in good faith.  It has seemed clear to me that a number of people have been acting in this fashion. Whether or not you agree with the decision to write this letter, you might still conclude that the writer has integrity.

I believe this person should identify himself/herself and resign for the following reasons:

1. Unless the writer is identified, some people will believe or wonder whether the letter is a hoax.
2. While I presume that this person is acting in good faith, it is hard to know how much to respect this letter without knowing who wrote it.
3. The NY Times says the writer is a senior member of the Trump administration, but how do we know that and how do we know what the NY Times considers to be “senior”?
4. It seems that the individual is a Trump appointee, but how do we know for sure?
5. Clearly, the letter will lead to a lot of effort to discover who the writer is and to a lot more distrust, chaos and potential finger-pointing in the Trump administration.  A number of people could lose their jobs because of this letter.  The letter indicates that the writer did not want such an outcome.
6. Other staff members may want to protect the writer from being discovered or defend him/her once discovered.  That would put their jobs in danger.
7. Resignation should not be a disaster because, as the letter-writer points out, others are also performing in such fashion.
8. If the letter-writer is concerned that others would be identified if his/her identity is exposed, then the letter should not have been written because that risk still exists without self-identification.

 Claude

 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

The Tragedy of the Resistance to Trump

Having been a strong “never Trump” individual during the presidential campaign, I have nonetheless acknowledged some things that he has done well and have tried to be fair. 

The continuous lies and deceptions of much of the Resistance have further divided the country (not only harming us but also benefiting our adversaries).  Many press and Democratic Party leaders continually forfeit the trust of moderates, undecided voters and conservatives.

I can definitely envision supporting efforts to remove Trump under specific circumstances (President Trump’s Helsinki statement was sadly “helpful” in this regard), but the Resistance has undermined my comfort with such efforts because:

1)     Because of the continuous distortions and hypocrisy of the Resistance, it would be hard for me to trust that such action is stimulated by patriotism rather than politics.

2)     I don’t see how I could convince my conservative friends that such action was not politically motivated.  The belief by many that it would be a move based on politics rather than principles would exacerbate the constitutional crisis.

When President Obama grabbed so much power inappropriately with his executive orders, I sometimes challenged Democrats, telling them they would not like it if a conservative president followed President Obama’s lead.  Unfortunately, they brushed me off, because in their eyes, the ends justified the means and they figured there was little chance of such a conservative being elected.

By the same token, if people who pursue Presidential removal have not earned trust, we risk descending into a political situation in which each administration is challenged in such ways.  I do not believe we can succeed as a country in such fashion.

I urge the Resistance to look in the mirror at their own actions and speech.  Do they not realize that John McCain’s final efforts and the "I am Part of the Resistance" letter expose the failings of the Resistance as well as of Donald Trump?

Melinda Henneberger's article about John McCain

Melissa Henneberger’s excellent September 1 column about John McCain (Link) included “get beyond tribalism”, “put aside our political differences”, “honor”, etc., but she did not exemplify such virtue when she wrote “Paul Ryan, of all people, reminded us…that subterfuge is overrated and…honesty remains a viable option”. (Italics added by me)

When people oppose some of the direction of their team, do they resign, risking that undesirable actions dominate more strongly?  Or do they stay the course, trying to have a positive influence?  Do they fight every battle or pick the ones they feel they can influence?  These are not easy decisions.

Criticism of Paul Ryan is fine (I’ve been disappointed by some of this actions*), but should be specific, rather than name-calling, and was out-of-place in her otherwise outstanding article.  Sadly and ironically, her comment about Ryan represents the behavior Senator McCain hoped to curb.

* For example, I am disappointed that Paul Ryan will not allow a vote on proposed legislation supported by a majority of the House, if a majority of Republicans do not support the legislation.