Tag: Joe Paterno

Dilemma and Decision

Leaders are tasked and paid to make decisions.

Hard calls. Tie-breaking calls. Go for the Gold, or take the safe route.

Coach Joe Paterno had a lot of wins, but many were taken away from him because of one mis-step.

Pope Benedict XVI , however, did call it quit (right timing).

And Tesla–Solarcity–Space X? the jury is still out on that one risky “pal”.

No pain no gain.

One good thing about this brutal Recession: it separates the wheat from the chaff.

The wheat here might be Indie-Capitalism, sports diplomacy, soft-power influence…

We simply cannot afford full-scale hardware-driven conflicts as in years past.

First the Soviet bloc folded. And now, the US with Sequestration.

Our machine has gotten ahead of us, the cart before the horse.

If only we could disrupt ourselves, or press “reset”. One other way is to review the old play book and give it another try.

For instance, it’s quite couner-intuitive since the IT industry migrates to the Cloud away from the office, Yahoo wants its workers to head back to it.

They will probably work out of virtual stations, with wi-fi and white boards, to lunch in play room like in nearby Googleplex.

Dilemma and Decision.

Work and life balance.

Private cloud or complete virtuality.

Hybrid or plug-in EV.

Key Stone or kicking the can.

21st-century dilemma requires 21st-century leadership.

Who among us are ready and willing to step up to the plate!

He who lives in a glass house refuses to throw stones.

When looking at the game from that standpoint, executive’s high exit bonus  is not such a bad deal. It would cost more for them to stay on than to leave. Zappos learned this and paid its new employees a bonus for leaving than for sticking around. It’s the culture, stupid. Decision or dilemma.

Myopia

It was just a few years ago when friends and I discussed the inevitable departure of Joe Paterno at Penn State. Retired? Replaced? Removed? Now, it turns out, it’s his statue that got removed.

Who would have conjured up that scenario.

Today, the Nittany Lions will get their verdict from the NCAA. I am hoping for a lighter sentence. I bleed Blue.

(and Orange, at MCI).

Penn State taught me about being a team player. WE ARE.

Today, my team, our team gets punished.

Not for its diligence and desire to win. But for its failure in moral leadership.

Physical and moral aptitude, hand in hand.

Certain lines cannot be crossed, not without penalty. We know the rules. We play by the rules. Now we are penalized by the rules. Fair play. The only way.

There will be no applause sound track today. Maybe just silence. The same silence that the leadership at Penn State chose as a response to the Sandusky‘s accusation a decade ago.

When I went to school there, during Spring Break concert, the opening act was “Here comes the Sun“. Maybe the school should invite that guy to play again. Maybe, the magic works again.

Pushing away darkness, pushing away institutional myopia. And most of all, showing and shedding more lights on Beaver Stadium, where our school mascot will once again do one-hand push-ups on the sideline while defense” Push them back, push them back way back.”

Highs and lows

Perhaps one of the places you wouldn’t like to visit these days is Happy Valley, PA.

Heart of Penn State Football. Normally alumni would post home-game tickets as if they were for Albert Hall‘s Fab reunion concert.

Now, it’s a place that is much condemned: punishment for Penn State, penalty for Penn State.

Alumni started to flip the script: BOT this and that, the Governor himself, where was he? etc…

This fiasco reminds me of a rack-focused shot from a David Lynch‘s movie, perhaps Mulholland Drive? which slowly reveals what’s beneath the well-manicured auto-irrigated lawn. Finally, real Happy Valley is revealed.

We know now, there is no perfect place. Nor people. Just ordinary human beings with highs and lows.

Like you and I.

It’s like when we receive our transcript: some courses we did better than others.

Oh well.

Ethically, Penn State is getting its report card. We Penn Staters are getting a black-eye.

Hard to imagine “senior panic” plus austerity, plus this. Perfect storm.

I feel for graduating seniors. I want to remind them of Steve Jobs‘ commencement address “Stay hungry, stay foolish”, plus, “Stay clean”.  BTW, I am not ashamed to admit I started out there at Penn State in my first job as a janitor at the HUB. Reports say one of the janitors at PSU saw what happened but “was afraid for his job”etc…

Maybe he too should be taken into custody for not doing his job: cleaning up the mess at Penn State.

Not “where was the Governor”, but “where was the janitor”. Highs and lows.

Monday-morning quarterbacking

We can’t change history, but we can sure learn from it.

Just view training film, freezeframing it, and nail down some take-aways.

What did we do wrong? why? what did we fail to do? Where?

Avoid assigning blame.

Move forward.

America is all about the future.

Sarah who?

Sandusky who?

Just do it (BTW, Nike removed JoePa’s name off list).

Brand recovery. Monday-morning quarterbacking.

Some companies insist on hiring people who have failed.

It costs them less to have workers who learned hard lessons on someone else’s watch.

Second chances.

Know what not to do, or dare not repeat the same mistake.

As human, we adapt well. Survival of the fittest.

It’s by no chance that our life expectancy has risen from 49 to mid-70. Go oatmeal go.

For Joe Paterno, it was 85. A lot of Monday mornings during his tenure.

It ended just short of a Greek tragedy.

Now we know. In hindsight. On Monday morning. We who are smart and stand on moral high ground.

Do we know what it’s like to be on that field, in those shoes, during the heat of the game?

Right there! Freeze frame it. you see? What should we have done. Best thing is not to have it happen the second time around, not in this life time.

P.S. From the President’s desk comes this announcement on Monday AM

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Announcement-from-Penn-State-College-3877559.S.135017698?view=&gid=3877559&type=member&item=135017698&trk=NUS_DISC_Q-ttle

Changing-transforming

The first comes natural. The second,  involves an act of the will and intervention. Penn State will need to be transformed.

Besides, it’s not the place. It’s the institutional mindset. We know this. We will do it, individually and collectively.

It’s Sunday morning. I will use this day to reflect on my experience at Happy Valley. Those 4 years have always been special to me. Now, they will need to be looked at in a different light. Perhaps with more maturity due to hindsight.

Today, when I jog pass a lush-green golf course, I still think of PSU’s.

The shorter loop is 4 miles, the 8-shape loop 8 miles.

Students could be seen jogging around the clock up and down those hills. The book Running was a run-away best seller at the time. So were jogging shorts.

And…..long socks with color-stripes up to our knees .

We would watch Midnight Cowboy, Midnight Express…anything with “midnight” in the title. Disco was in the air. And the shiny silk shirts.

Long-hair students sat along “the Wall”, while more traditional ones would stop by the Creamery. The best there is.

When it’s home-game weekend, you can hear the roaring echo from Beaver Stadium. Post-game evening, win or lose, it’s full house at local pubs. It’s fun to go out in Happy Valley. Everyone finds a date, winter or summer.

It’s 50’s innocence, now facing 21st-century ethical dilemma: big box, big bucks and bomb-shell publicity problems.

I can well imagine the press descending upon State College, the Corner Room, Old Main, the HUB. I am sure they interview students, staff and faculty for reaction.

I am sure they camp out at nearby hotels (lots of them to accommodate tourists). Then, they would pack up and go on to the next disaster.

Happy Valley will once again be quiet..until September.

Summer there is hot. Student housing are sparingly occupied, either by those who need to work summer job, or take a summer course to finish up their degrees.

If any good comes out of this, it’s the proper place of football in the scheme of things. Perhaps academic, and yes, ethics.

Institution for higher learning, for learners and decent folks, PE included, but not as THE thing at Penn State. The changing and transforming of place, people and priority.

Ignore it!

Willful ignorance, kicking the can further down the road. Hoping it lands on someone else’s front yard.

Problems got ignored,  because if solved, it’s gonna cost. Penn State pedophile problem is one.

One of us vs societal rule of law, subjectivity vs objectivity, warm feelings vs calm rationality.

I read JoePa’s son’s op-ed in USA Today. He asks for suspense of disbelief until the full investigation is out (email in context etc….).

In short, we need time. Kick the can a little further down the road once more.

Don’t ignore it, but also, don’t just immediately jump to conclusion.

Moral dilemma.

Beaver Stadium was adding seats. Can’t just tear them down.

Moral rehab vs mortar remodeling. If you look back, you will turn into salt.

Just ignore it?

Tragedy comes in three for me: 1975 Saigon evacuation landing at Penn State – devastated. Three-Mile-Island internship 79 – terrifying. Now FootballGate.

I want to ignore it. Then it creeps up. Like an unwanted member of the family.

Hoping there is no such thing called Thanksgiving, so you don’t have to face him/her. Meeting with Jesus. Court date. Press inquiry. Public debate.

Can’t ignore it now, ever.

the right screen

Smart phones got computer, TV and phone screens, all in once. The combined screen.

I was sitting in front of a lap top and an attached large screen. For a moment, I looked at one screen while the action took place at the other. To catch on, I  need to follow the cursor to know where the action was.

In life, we have looked in the wrong place for the right thing.

(to make friends while in prison, for instance).

Penn State commissioned JoePa statue in front of Beaver Stadium, just to now debate whether to take it down.

The Christian in Asia a few centuries ago, were told to remove ancestor’s altars, traditionally placed at the center of the home.

The FEDs keeps reducing rates. Should we look there for future directions? Unemployment indicators? Housing and foreclosure reports?

Never have we been tested as during the past 4 years.

Am I looking at the wrong screen?

Prophets have arisen, and more shades of truths have been made available.

Which way is the wind blowing?

Put your money in Macau.

or in Manhattan?

Google Glasses or JcPenney?

Pick your people right. Business model can always be modified as we go along. Often times, it’s on the wrong screen anyway. Keep the statue. Make it a teachable monument. After all, JoePa had always championed scholarship and athletic pursuit hand in hand. Institution for higher learning should at least have intellectual honesty and moral conviction to defend its mantel and mission. Especially when it is now looking at the right screen not smokescreen.

Taking chances

Peter’s Principle states that line managers are often promoted “beyond their level of competency”.

In other words, a technical guy, best at his job, ends up being the boss who has to crawl his way through business dilemma and personnel issues.

In life, however, some problems cannot be solved at the same level where they had first occurred. Bully problems at school, for instance, need intervention. Or as recently as this morning, Sandusky‘s sin exposed and dealt with in public.

It’s a call to take chances, to take risks if we were to make any progress.

This Recession has drawn out both the best and the worst in us.

Some of us rose to the occasion. Diversify ourselves. Or take the high road (going after our passion or non-profit work).

Others just checked out. Drifted.

I have met a bunch of expats who kept staying in-country indefinitely.

Extended vacation.

Or permanent student.

Profitable venues i.e. financial and housing sectors are hitting bottom.

We are left with the “sure things”: food, clothing and shelter (renting).

Even families once so close now seem so far. Recession pull them apart, that was.

My friend reminded me how long it took Japan to get through its V-shaped recovery. 18 years.

Ouch! I will be dead by then.

Still there are things that need risks: crossing the street, eating one more bite of that greasy foods or banking on the elusive thing called love.

Friends went into fields which are quite different from their academic and career backgrounds. That’s risk-taking.

I spotted excitement and adrenaline.

For VC‘s, they need to hit 20% of the time, to cover the other 80% failures.

Still it’s worth it.

Still taking that chance.

Still go for it. Or else it wouldn’t be solving the problem at a higher level.

Because after all, many of those problems cannot be solved if left where it started.

But beware of over-promotion (beyond one’s level of competency). Peter’s Principle.

My Happy Valley

A photo of  Penn Stater, eyes glued to the Collegian, brought back strong memories of the HUB (Student Union Building) and my time in Happy Valley.

State College was home to me for 4 years. Happy Days. The Wall. The Corner Room. Beaver Stadium. Best ice-cream at the Creamery.

In the Spring, at outdoor concert , we heard  “Here comes the Sun” as an opening act. I saw Bruce Springsteen at a concert in the HUB Ballroom, and remembered thinking, “that man got juice”  (Born to run).

I too was on the run. From the burning monk and burning napalm. From the war last day (7th Fleet spanned the horizon as far as the eyes could see) I too was born to run. The road took me to Native American geography (Susquehanna River and Indian Town Gap). Most memorable was when  I ran into and received kindness from a fellow refugee I met on a  Harrisburg snowy night.

Across from campus, at the Corner Room, we had many coffee refills without getting dirty looks.

Raymond Brown, the Penn State Choir Master, drilled it in us to “Breathe” and “Think”.

His football counterpart, Joe Paterno, had turned Head Coach a decade before I got there.

When I left for a TV internship, he was still there. Today, as of this writing, he is still there (sneakers and Tootsie glass).

(Latest news break announced this would be his last season).

I never came back to Beaver Stadium for commencement. I was an intern at an ABC-TV station in Wilkes Barre on my last quarter.

We got a call to cover nearby Three-Mile-Island incident.  As usual, we set out with our battery pack and a fresh roll of tape.

Then the story broke, and we ended up in a ghost town (people rushed to withdraw cash from ATM”s) again, with lots of coffee refills

and still with no dirty looks, only worry ones. It’s the second time within the span of 4 years that I was stuck in one set of clothes for days on end.

In the span of those four years, I was insulated from a changed world outside of Happy Valley. That world had turned more cynical, and more sexually aggressive (Last Tango in Paris).

But I managed to take courses in Science, Technology and Society whose premises stay with me until today.

We invented the Machine, but in the process, the Machine reinvented us (I am a BMW driver, an I Phone user etc…).

What I saw before Happy Valley (7th Fleet on the War last day, B-52 bombers overhead at night etc…) and after (nuclear power went wild) served as two bookends, with near fairy tales in between (We went singing at nursing homes on Sundays, or performed with Andre Previn and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall).

We were still using punch cards at the only two computers accessible to students. All of us used manual type writers to write term papers and produce newspaper, the Collegian. My dorm mate worked as an Editor  there.  Right after we saw Bruce Springteen, Jeff’s eyes lit up when he saw I could play the solo part of  “Born To Run”.

It must have been a trip for them to experience a foreign student first hand, as opposed to viewing characters like Sixteen Candles’  Luong Duk Long “what automobile?”, and to find out I shared  delayed curiosity and hidden aspiration (Deep Throat shown on campus? Is this Bob Woodward’s idea of a joke?)

Seeing today’s students holding up the Collegian warms my heart, despite the sad circumstance surrounded it (sexual abuse and institutional cover-up scandal).

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2011/11/07/column_sandusky.aspx

I know next to nothing about football besides coming into contact with a few players who dozed off in my Speech class and Jimmy Cefalo who served as an intern at the same time I was at WNEP-TV.

But for years since, I haven’t found a place, and a time, that shaped the lives of so many, mine included,  for the good.

When the Lion, our mascot,  did one-hand push ups, we and alumni counted out loud, you could feel the stadium rock. We all felt mighty proud. And rightly so, because WE ARE…and still are PENN STATE.

Losing one’s self

In a recent NYT op-ed, David Brooks summed up prevailing graduation themes: find yourself, live to the fullest, be passion-focused etc.. instead of losing yourself in solving others’ problem. Even my kid knows that time passes more quickly when you are absorbed in a task.

When you lose yourself, you end up finding it.

Before graduating, I took up an internship at an ABC affiliate in Scranton, PA.  At the time, it had a huge dump for abandoned cars. Mount Pocono was not too far away. Often times, the only news in town was trash workers’ strike, which I helped cover with passion.

Then, we were sent to Harrisburg to follow a lead on a nuclear power p accident. Before I knew it, I was held up for days, learning more about broadcasting than I could ever learn in 4 years.

I never went back to Beaver Stadium to receive my diploma. But I did get my badge of life. After the experience of working for nothing, but learning everything, I went on to make three rounds of volunteer overseas to lose myself again and again (all along acquiring the sense of place, of cultures and social webs.)

He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.

From there, I found my modus operandi: work hard, play hard, and work some more (adrenaline producer).

Schools are so structured and protective. The institutions are built on a foundation of learning, character building and self/status-preserving. Students aren’t encouraged to take risks, much less think out-of-the-box (occasionally, they brought in speakers from “outside”, but the script remains the same: conformity).

I hung out with a group of well-meaning students: wholesome and healthy (Get Together, Kum By Ya).  But life outside of campus is quite off-script. On campus, Joe Paterno might be our “God“, Raymond Brown, another one (Penn State Choir), but the Trinity in real life, I found out, were gold, silver and green.

It’s hard to convince people to think critically and carry on intelligent discussions without screaming, attacking and holding a personal vendetta.

At work, instead of collaborating, I found clique after clique.

In school, I forgot that I was non-white. In life, they make sure I am reminded of it.

So, to recent grads: keep losing yourself that you may find it.

Other people may know some parts of you better than yourself. So, to fully discover yourself, you will have play sport-contact against life’s jagged edges.

One day, hopefully sooner than later, you will come to a sudden realization that you are not the center of the universe, and that not every one accepts and loves you unconditionally as your mom and dad have (I use present tense for you, but past tense for me).  And the most you can elicit from strangers are like a line in a Chicago album “does anybody know what time it is”.

Life is difficult. Life in post-Recession era is even more difficult.

The only way to survive this downturn is to charge out of the gate, ready to give yourself completely away without hope of a return. Surprise the world with your Camelot zeal . Ask not…..Infect others with your enthusiasm and passion.

We need your strong muscles and your radiant smile.

I love those who pulled all-night going over text books. Now get ready for lengthier and thornier book of life.

It’s only just begun. Ironically the beginning was at the end, the way Orientals flip their books. Counter-prevailing as it is, David Brooks has a point. So was T.S. Elliot.