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Jonar Nader: We teach people one side of the virtues but I think life trips you up when you don’t understand the opposite of your virtues. So, if you understand love but you don’t understand hate even though I don’t want you to foster hate, but if you don’t know what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, it’ll jump on you, pounds on you.

Female: Yes.

Jonar Nader: And you find the greatest successful people in the world are those whom you might say infuriate other people but they’re not really infuriating other people. They are stopping others from infuriating them because they have momentum, they have direction, they know where they’re going, and other wishy-washy people around them keep telling them why they should slow down and destroy their momentum.

And I’m a consultant to business but I really, I tell my clients, ‘I don’t care about your business. I care about your people. And the only reason I consult to business is so that we can do something to improve life because business basically controls most of the world.’ I mean, if you talk about IBM, it’s – the capital flow is bigger some countries put together and it employs more people than some countries have as a population. So, a corporate life seems to dominate us. And I have seen people go home crying and I’m now writing about taking control of your career. But unfortunately, people don’t know how to do that …

Female: No, they go to school.

Jonar Nader: … because they go to school to get a university degree. And they think, ‘Oh! That might work.’ Or they get a divorce, they think, ‘That will make me happy.’ Or they get married and they think, ‘That will make me happy.’ And they always think happiness is somewhere else. They go on holidays over there because over there I’ll find happiness.

Male: Because you touched on university. You mentioned in some of your notes as a kindergarten for adults.

Jonar Nader: Yes. If by 13, you don’t have a gut feel and by 16, you’re not sure then I can assure you by 21, you still don’t know. So, you have people at 26 years of age still studying and still don’t know where they’re heading.

Female: And I – yes. And I …

Jonar Nader: I mean this notion …

Donna: Well, you’re like that.

Jonar Nader: No, I left school at 14 because I knew and people called me a school dropout and I said, ‘What do you mean a dropout? Is that – are you putting a negative tone on that because I finally knew where I was heading?’

Female: Yes.

Jonar Nader: And what I was doing? And you know, and so, life is about advantage. And they think I have an advantage if I have a Masters, whatever. But you won’t have 50,000 people a year who get one. So now, what’s your advantage? And the real advantage for me is not – yes, it’s what’s in your head. It’s what you do with what you have.

We are lopsided in our approach in that we all understand fear, none of us understand courage. And so, when you fuse fear plus courage, you arrive at conviction. And when you meet someone with conviction, you call them control freaks. You call them hard to get along with.

Female: Yes.

Jonar Nader: You call them prima donnas. But they know what they want to do.

Male: Yes.

Jonar Nader: As a digital age philosopher, my job is to help you ask the right questions. I found in life that if you tell people what to do, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t do – don’t – they say, ‘Look, I’ve heard it all before. I know it. Thank you.’ And they still go and do it because it is not their knowledge.

Female: Yes.

Jonar Nader: So, if they read a book and the book says, do and don’t. They say, ‘Look, yes, I’ve heard that before.’ So, what I do is I don’t challenge them that way. I ask them to ask themselves the right questions and I tell it in such a way that they build curiosity. And I lead them with that curiosity. And nothing mean to someone than wanting to know the answer. And I’ll find it.

Female: Now, How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People must be very popular. It’s in its third edition now.

Jonar Nader: Well, it hit number one in New Zealand.

Female: Yes, yes.

Male: Why do we avoid conflict?

Jonar Nader: Okay. Well, because we don’t have courage. And the definition of courage is to not allow anything or anyone to weaken your resolve. Many of us resolve and we even have New Year’s resolutions. We say, ‘I resolve that I will do this. I will stop smoking. I will tell my boss that I want a pay rise.’ But – but courage is not allowing people to weaken that resolve which means the absence of courage. For example, if you lack courage, it means that you go – want a pay rise and your boss does is threaten you, well what are you going to do about it? Nothing because you’re one week away from poverty. Most people are one paycheck away from poverty.

Female: Yes.

Jonar Nader: So, that weakens your resolve. Where will I get another job? I don’t have a good qualification. Oh, that will weaken my resolve. So, all of a sudden what you know is to be true, you cannot articulate, you cannot enact because all these get in the way.

Female: Yes.

Male: Exactly. And you touched on the nine modern diseases of failure.

Jonar Nader: Nine deadly.

Male: Deadly disease.

Jonar Nader: Intangible that they are.

Male: Yes.

Jonar Nader: And these diseases cannot be seen. And so for example, if you know, if I grab this …

Male: Yes.

Jonar Nader: … I’m sure it will annoy everyone on television and they’ll say, ‘What’s this guy doing with this?’ See, it’s tangible. And they say, ‘Geez, weird.’ Because the tangible things are instant. Everyone can see it. Now, but can they look at someone, an executive or a child and say that that child has got this trait or that trait. And the nine deadly – the tangible diseases begin with a poor abdication. And we abdicate. The very fact of buying insurance means I abdicate. I buy my car and I pay you $500 a year and if anything happens to it, it’s your problem. So, I’ve abdicated my responsibility for my car.

Now, we do that with school. We say, I abdicate my education to the teacher.

Female: For ten years, yes, yes.

Jonar Nader: Yes. And my welfare to the government, my future to the clairvoyant, my, you know, wealth to the lottery, and my career to my boss, and my happiness to my lover, and everything is over there. Remember? I keep saying. And that is a disease. There are other diseases like selfishness, like simplicity. And these intangibles are not seen because how can you see a busted, an idiot, a backstabber, a corporate, a monger?

Male: Absolutely.

Jonar Nader: And when I did use to see them, is that good English?

Female: Yes.

Jonar Nader: When I did see them, my boss would say, ‘Jonar, that’s a personality type.’ I say, ‘No, no. This guy is destroying our company. This guy is – is destroying people’s energies at the office.’ But the boss can’t see that because these idiots who actually destroy our lives know how to suck up to the boss and they look really good upward.

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Mary Lambie: Welcome to Today Live. Hello. I’m Mary Lambie. Tonight on the show, I’m catching up with rugby legend turned author, Grant Fox. Maria’s corner has another stack of selected sounds up for review. And my first guest tonight, well, he’s been stirring up quite some trouble in Australia with his unconventional business advice.

Jonar Nader: I’m not saying go out and make enemies. I’m not saying go out and be, you know, a corporate bastard and all those things. But just go out and do what is really enriching you.

Mary Lambie: So, are you saying that the people in the modern age are a bit constrained that we’ve taught in the universities to behave in a certain way and we can’t be who we really want to be?

Jonar Nader: Well, I mean you ask people, what do you want to be? They say, ‘Well, I’m studying now and when I grow older I think I’ll be something.’ And you say, ‘Well, are you happy now?’ ‘No, no, no, but I’m going to do a PhD or an MBA.’ Why? ‘So, I can get a better job.’ ‘But you don’t have a job.’ ‘Oh well, but in the future.’ And then forever living in the future. Meanwhile, they’re terribly miserable. They’re unhappy. They’re dissatisfied. They’re forever trying to think that wealth creation is only about money. But what about wealth creation in your heart? We only live once.

Mary Lambie: Yes, but do you think the university environment is also about enriching the soul, isn’t it?

Jonar Nader: That’s what you think.

Mary Lambie: Well, you’ve never been there. I have. So, I should know.

Jonar Nader: I have actually.

Mary Lambie: Oh, you have?

Jonar Nader: I went to university for three years.

Mary Lambie: Yes, but not to study though, did you?

Jonar Nader: No, to teach. No, I did actually did …

Mary Lambie: I see some irony in that too.

Jonar Nader: … I did three years of uni.

Mary Lambie: Oh, did you?

Jonar Nader: Yes.

Mary Lambie: I thought you left school at 14 and then actively encourage no one to go near your university.

Jonar Nader: I actually left school at 14. I studied part-time for six years, went to uni for three years then realized the whole thing was a joke, and decided to teach myself what I needed to learn, when I needed to learn it. So, I actually never stopped learning. But what does university and corporate life do to you? They give you these sets of expectations. Meanwhile, they’re robbing you of your own creativity because at uni, if you write a paper the way you really believe or what you really think, you’re not going to get good marks, are you?

Mary Lambie: Oh well, I’m not entirely sure about that because I think in the modern age, the university student is there, the teacher is the facilitator in order to sort of get the degree. And I think that there is a real move towards really trying to expand the mind.

Jonar Nader: Absolutely. I encourage expanding the mind. But I see what comes out of university. I employ people and used to and I used to think what – what do you good at? Or what’s your passion? They don’t know what their passion is. They just say, ‘I have a BSC. I have BBs major in Marketing.’ I say, ‘But what’s your passion?’ They don’t have it.

Mary Lambie: What do you want my passion to be?

Jonar Nader: Yes, you know. I want to – you know, I want to earn about 150 grand and you know, get a good car and live comfortably. That’s all so materialistic. And sure, I love the material things in life. But let’s see what the real value is of living because how are we going to make New Zealand better? How are we going to make Australia better? If all we do is keep taking American nonsense that comes through in these lovely guru books and all these statements and brain-washing type scenarios that sink to the lowest common denominator. You know, and who gets promoted in corporate life today? The backstabbers who know how to do it well enough.

Mary Lambie:

Jonar Nader: You know, the creative people, where do they end up?

Mary Lambie: Where do they end up?

Jonar Nader: You know, outside doing their things that they love most.

Mary Lambie: So, would you actively encourage people not to go to a university, not to encourage higher learning?

Jonar Nader: Let me put it to you this way, in the olden days we used to die at the age of 20 then we used to die at the age of 50. Now, we’re at about 80. But why is it now that you can be 31 and you’re still studying? 31? You’ve missed the peak of your life when you should be expanding to your best passionate. What are you doing at 31?

Mary Lambie: Yes, but just because someone is passionate doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be a great leader, does it for example? You see, if the corporate world was full of the people that you would want the corporate world to be full of, you know, passionate, bold, creative types, I mean what sort of state would it be?

Jonar Nader: Look, university is a lovely place to go when you know what you want to learn. But people who are there doing things that that is automatic. ‘Oh well, I’ll do a Bachelor of Science or Business because I think I might get a better job.’ We are so mechanical. We strip people of their creativity. I admire people who go on and study but it’s only when it’s really purposeful. When they say, ‘I now know what I’d like to do but I’m weak in Math or I’m weak in Accounting. Let me go and become a brilliant accountant so that I can run a better business.’ You don’t become an accountant and then go and look for ways in which to become a better business, you know. Which comes first?

Mary Lambie: You’ve upset some people with your book. How did you respond to it?

Jonar Nader: Well, isn’t it interesting? I did not wish it upon myself but my friends at Dale Carnegie & Associates and they’re lawyers who are called ‘Bare & Upham’ they sent me a letter from New York saying cease and desist, pulp your book, it’s unfair competition. So, I sent back a letter and engaged two layers, engaged the biggest publicist that money could buy and I’m off to the US on the 22nd of June. And I’m on the Today Show by the way and such like. And I’ll be telling them what I think. And I’m fighting. I mean, they’re a huge corporation and law has got nothing to do with justice. It’s all to do with money.

Mary Lambie: It’s good to see you practicing what you’re preaching. That is following your heart, following your passion. I thank you for your time today.

Jonar Nader: Yes.

Mary Lambie: It’s nice to catch up with you and good luck in the States.

Jonar Nader: Yes, thanks.

Mary Lambie: I think you might need it. The Dale Carnegie Tower is really tall, isn’t it?

Jonar Nader: I appreciate that.

Mary Lambie: Yes, thank you.

Jonar Nader: Thanks, Mary.

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Angela: Well, the time is up for our business segment now and my guest says meetings waste time. Yes! How many meetings do you go through and you sit there and you go run around in circle, you get absolutely nowhere. I mean, if you’re bored at work, have a meeting. It’s probably a good idea. If you’re a CEO of a company, weed out the red tape of the spaghetti-like systems and policies and chopped-defined ways of the system.

I’ve been reading the book and I love the – I mean, the title alone sold it to me. The book is called How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People. Now, this is the complete opposite of this adage that we’ve been living with since the year dot about winning friends and influencing people.

Jonar Nader: Yes.

Angela: Where did this come from?

Jonar Nader: The point being that if you want to live life to the fullest, you’ve got to first be in control of yourself. You can’t let others be in control of you and that means that you need to be wise. I mean, we talk about meetings. We don’t have meetings so that we can exchange knowledge. Oftentimes, a meeting is a ritual tribal activity that says, I’m the boss, you’re inferior, and this is going to …

Angela: One of the things that I found fascinating in your book was this balcony of life scenario.

Jonar Nader: Yes.

Angela: Tell us about that.

Jonar Nader: Okay. Well first, we say to people, imagine if you’re a just a spirit first and you’re standing on this balcony and you’re looking down on this round thing called earth. And you see strawberries and people making love and sand and sunshine and beautiful things, and then you say, ‘Would you like to wear a human body and go down on earth and actually spend some time?’ You say, ‘Yes, yes, pick me, pick me.’ Well Angela, what would you do? You’d say, ‘Well, I definitely have strawberries and I’ll go to the beach and I’ll make – I’ll feed the birds.’ Well, here you are, have you been to the beach? Have you had your strawberries and have you fed the birds?

And oftentimes what people wish for themselves is not what they are doing. The reason being is they just get so inundated with the bureaucracy, the red tape, with the backstabbing. And it can become incestuous. It can become such a burden that the only way out is out. No more fussing about. No more diplomacy. Just get out of my way. But it doesn’t mean that one needs to be rude or that you need to be inconsiderate. In fact, the book is quite the opposite. If people are rude to you and they’re inconsiderate towards you, then you need to stop it even if it means losing friends and infuriating people. That’s the notion. Now, I’m not saying go out and lose them. I’m saying just don’t let them waste your time because time is life.

Angela: Isn’t it a bit impractical though? I mean, yes, I’d love to be doing nothing but picking strawberries and lying about on the beach but I mean I’ve got to earn money to be able to do those things?

Jonar Nader: But you should be enjoying (as I can see you are) what you are doing. I mean, earning the money should be a by-product of absolutely doing what you love best. Getting a gold medal – you know, people don’t say, ‘I want a gold medal.’ They say, ‘I love swimming so much.’ And then the gold medal comes, you know. Look at these richest people in the world. Fortune Magazine this month had the 40 richest people under the age of 40 and all of them started out in a garage working ridiculously illegal hours just because they love doing what they were doing. Money and success should come as a result of what you do but you can’t do it just by doing it. You need to strengthen yourself.

Angela: You’re right though. I mean I love what I’m doing and I sort of always say to people I’m really lucky because my job is sort of like my hobby. I love this but some people can’t do what they love doing.

Jonar Nader: Well, if that’s the case …

Angela: Then what?

Jonar Nader: … well then if that’s the case, okay, that’s fine but make sure that it’s not made doubly hard for you by people who play the games around you. And you can’t then just go out and say, get out of my way if you yourself are not strong enough. So, the book talks about how to strengthen yourself, how to work in an environment in a group, and how to live in society. They’re the three important things. You don’t say to someone, ‘Look, you know, go and do this. Go and ride a bike.’ And they don’t know how to ride a bike. You don’t say to someone, go and reclaim your life when they don’t know what to do when the bus – so the book says, before you go to the bus and before you go to the government, any establishments and do what you believe has to be done, build yourself so that you yourself is strong and then strong in both personal sense, business sense, corporate sense, and societal sense, and then go throw the punches. And that’s what the book says.

Angela: One of the – the goal setting thing is really big in business these days. You know, set goals and achieve them. But you – you talked about, you know, like increasing sale target as a goal for individual. You say it’s counterproductive. Why is it so?

Jonar Nader: Yes. Well, I mean the whole notion of setting sales targets and so on is just one big game that executives play and you start off with let’s – let’s make a million dollars and then they take it all the way down to the poor person on the street and all of a sudden, the target is $2 million. We play these games. What you should do is not say, go out and make two million. It should be, go and do the best you can. Have fun. Be empowered. I can’t empower you. Only you can empower yourself. Only you can motivate yourself.

Angela: But you can give people the keys to empowerment, can’t you?

Jonar Nader: I think you can teach people about how to do things and the most important thing a business person can do is not to empower you but to take away the things that demoralize you. Take away the spaghetti-like bureaucracy. Take away the intimidation, the intangibles in the office that actually suppress you. They’re the things that I can do as a CEO. Not say to you, you are now empowered to make a decision. Well, you can’t. The – I can teach you about how to make better decisions, teach about customer service, but ultimately you have to make that decision. The best I can do is take away the idiots about you that actually stop you from being your best.

Angela: Certainly, in terms of customer service, there are some people working in the service industry who simply shouldn’t.

Jonar Nader: Yes.

Angela: Because they don’t seem to be people-people. So, how do you – how do you get them out of there?

Jonar Nader: Well, that’s comes back to the boss. I mean, absolutely the top. These people who have businesses and they give – notice on Saturdays, the casuals work in department stores. The busiest time is Saturdays for any retail. Yet, the people on the floor are those who are least interested in their career in the store. They’re just casuals and so on. That has got to change. And if you don’t want to change, fine. You just – you’ll just go out of business, you know. Customer service isn’t just about being nice to people. It’s about product knowledge, knowing your industry inside out, knowing everything about everything you can possibly know. If you don’t, get out of the way because selling is as much a profession as nuclear physicist.

Angela: It’s not about having Basil Fawlty on the shop.

Jonar Nader:

Angela: How to lose friends and absolutely infuriate people. And Jonar C. Nader has been with me this morning. Thank you very much.

Jonar Nader: Thanks, Angela.

Angela: It was a lot of fun. And the book is a lot of fun.

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Female: Thank you one and all.

Female: And again, welcome to you. You know, it’s been a week of joy and wonder and it’s time wrap up now our How to be Happy series with a whole bunch of miserable wingers. They don’t really. I’m only joking. We have looked this week at the spiritual and physical and practical and psychological sides of happiness. So, we welcome Dr. Sandra Cabot, futurist, Jonar Nader, and laughter specialist, Helene Grover.

Sandra Cabot: So, when – when you have something that makes you laugh, a very strong nervous pathway goes from the frontal lobe and temporal lobe as well. A lot of emotional stuff is into the hypothalamus and it generates chemicals like endorphins and it influences the pituitary gland which then influences your adrenal glands which produce more cortisone, more adrenaline. So, it balances your whole endocrine system. And there’s a specialty called neuropsychoendocrinology and it’s fascinating because it really is just at the beginning of discovering how the brain influences the chemicals in the brain such as the pleasure center and the hormones.

Female: And not be sick?

Sandra Cabot: Well, they have …

Female: Can it help our immunity?

Sandra Cabot: Yes. Endorphins actually make us feel happy. So, if you have a good laugh and if you’re happy, that will actually make you happier. So, it’s like a snowball effect.

Jonar Nader: I’ve heard the expression fake it until you make it. But I …

Helene Grover: Yes, exactly that. Your body will do all the things that Sandra just said.

Female: So, up the immunity.

Helene Grover: Yes.

Female: Help us, you know, because …

Sandra Kobo: And also, relieves pain.

Female: Okay.

Helene Grover: Absolutely.

Sandra Kobo: So, if you – if you boost up your neurotransmitters like your endorphins, your serotonin, these going to have a big effect on reducing your pain and inflammation. So, that’s helping the immune system.

Female: Jonar, if we take it from laughter and happiness on the other end of the scale, we’ve got angst, anger. What’s your view on anger and what it does to us, our bodies, and its purpose?

Jonar Nader: Well, I’m more interested in why someone doesn’t laugh. I mean, it’s interesting that we try to help people to laugh and understand the benefits of laughter but I – I go back to the root cause and say, ‘What is it in your day that’s stopping you from feeling happy, from taking control of your life, taking control of your career?’ So, I’m into the root cause. And of course, sadness to me is a very important part of life. So in fact, when someone is sad or angry, I think that’s the best planning. You know, people say, ‘You need to plan. Put your goals on paper.’ The best time to think about those …

Female: But is anger good for us as well?

Jonar Nader: Oh yes. I think it’s great for us because what anger says – now, you know, if anger is something that you can analyze, not something that controls you. So, if anger happens, you stop and say, ‘This is great. The alarm bells have gone off. Now, is the time to assess why.’ Not go down pub and you know, laugh it off but to say, what triggered this? Because this is not the trigger that I will allow into my life. And then take the decision from there. But often, we are told, ‘If you’re angry, say nothing and hold back and be quiet and don’t upset anyone.’

Female: Well that’s a – you’re very familiar with it Helene. As a laughter therapist, you talk to a lot of corporations.

Helene Grover: Yes.

Female: If you’re angry, how to control it. Is that good? Controlling anger, good or bad?

Helene Grover: Well, what Jonar is saying is totally valid. I think it’s very true. We have to analyze, rectify – look at it and see where it’s coming from. But sometimes that can take too long. Go home and do it. Sit down and before you go to bed …

Jonar Nader: Now, you lose the momentum.

Helene Grover: Yes.

Jonar Nader: You know when you write an email to your boss and you want to say, ‘I am sick and tired of you touching me in this way.’ or whatever you want to say to your boss. If you stop and let sensibility come into play …

Helene Grover: Sure.

Jonar Nader: … it’s a good thing because you have to check your legals on that. You have to make sure you’re not going to regret it. But once you go home, you’ve lost the momentum and the courage. And I say to people, ‘If you’ve written an email in anger, just read it one more time and send it because when you get home, you will not have the guts to do it.’

Helene Grover: But sometimes …

Female: You might be fired but I mean …

Jonar Nader: Well, you know, and so be it.

Female: So, you’re saying use anger.

Helene Grover: Yes. I was just saying that sometimes to get you to even – to do that point, to reanalyze that email, have a bit of a laugh. Do something silly. Do something that’s going to trigger your brain into a different type of thinking and then it will facilitate the looking at it more practically.

Jonar Nader: Yes, of course. I mean …

Helene Grover: Be silly first.

Jonar Nader: Be silly first.

Helene Grover: Yes.

Jonar Nader: Look, I’m silly all the time. No one takes me seriously.

Female: What’s your view on anger?

Sandra Cabot: Well, I think anger is very good and I think particularly for women, it’s good to recognize your anger and feel it and express it. And you know, the chemicals that are released in your body from anger were totally different to when you laugh. And that’s what Jonar was saying. We need both and it’s character-building. See, a lot of women when they get angry they suppressed it and then it turns into depression. Repressed anger will become depression.

Jonar Nader: Well, success is about getting things done and people say, ‘I don’t have time.’ So, I have a concept called living by halves. Halve everything that you think is not adding value to you so that you have the time to double anything else that creates value to you.

Sandra Kobo: Like a diet, really.

Jonar Nader: Well …

Sandra Kobo: Well, I’m sorry. Here is your diet.

Female: Diet for the soul.

Jonar Nader: You keep thinking food.

Female: Hey listen, it’s a terrific …

Sandra Kobo: You got to make a good book …

Female: … discussion this morning and I do appreciate Dr. Sandra Cabot, Jonar Nader, and Helene Grover joining us. So well, a very good discussion and maybe again, we can get together.

Sandra Kobo: Yes.

Jonar Nader: Thank you.

Female: Thank you. Okay. Did you know that a person – by the way, a person who studies laughter is called a gelotologist?

Helene Grover: So, I’m a gelotologist.

Female: Yes.

Helene Grover: Yes, oh Helene Grover, gelotologist.

Female: Okay. Next up on Mornings, details on how to win our Sony package and later the sounds of the African drums.

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Transcript of ABC TV Sunday Spectrum, recorded in Canberra 13 April 2003.

Power. There was a time when we trusted those in power, believing that they knew best and we relied on their judgment. But now the complexity of modern life leaves many confused, anxious and directionless. How can we possibly feel in control of our own lives?

MR PAUL COLLINS: There was a time when we trusted those in power, believing that they knew best and we relied on their judgment. But now the complexity of modern life leaves many confused, anxious and directionless. Today on Sunday Spectrum, we ask – who’s really in charge here?

Hello, I’m Paul Collins. There seems to be an organisation or institution ready to exert power and influence over every aspect of our lives. Our governments have the power and authority to make laws; the Church exerts its influence on our spiritual and moral code. Many believe the media and big business to be the ultimate driver of world affairs. In the face of these powerful bodies, how can we possibly feel in control of our own lives? How can personal power bring its influence to bear on our relationships, our workplace and even on the society in which we live?

In a moment, I’ll be talking through power, control and influence, how it’s acquired, how it’s protected and how it’s used. This morning’s panel – Federal MP Bruce Baird, business consultant Jonar Nader, Anglican bishop George Browning and social researcher Kate Reynolds – but first let’s consider how power and influence is part of our day-to-day lives.

NARRATOR: At the apex of our democracy sits the Parliament, the most powerful body in the land. In principle, the Parliament exercises its power at the behest of the people, yet many Australians are unhappy with how the country is being run.

MR ROBERT CUMMINS: It’s simply that people generally have a low level of satisfaction with institutions in their society.

NARRATOR: Bob Cummins is part of a research team that produce the national well-being index, an indicator of how Australians feel about their lot in life, from public affairs to private relationships.

MR ROBERT CUMMINS: There are a number of aspects of ourselves that lie right at the heartland of how we maintain our well-being, and relationships is one of the major ones. We’re naturally a social animal, and so we need relationships. Most people need at least one good intimate relationship.

NARRATOR: The conclusion – on a personnel level we’re pretty happy overall but feel a sense of powerlessness over the institutions that surround us. For social psychologist Penny Oakes, power can be exerted in two ways, either through influence or coercion.

MS PENNY OAKES: I think power is good. People need to feel that they have some power over their lives. A huge amount of manipulative power goes on, particularly in political systems and business systems involving things like very non-transparent processes of governance, manipulation of the kind of information that we are allowed to share and we are not allowed to share, which really restricts our feeling that we’re making informed decisions about things.

NARRATOR: Of course, power struggles are now just confined to the boardroom or the Cabinet room. Our relationships rely on a shared sense of identity and an understanding of the appropriate use of power, influence and control. Counsellor Mary Pekin deals with relationships in crisis.

MS MARY PEKIN: There’s a power that you exercise over other people that can leave them feeling silenced, diminished, worthless – you know, lots and lots of words like that. Now that power is going to be really unuseful, poisonous to a significant relationship.

MS PENNY OAKES: I think a sense of control over one’s outcomes and what one is able to achieve in any social situation is absolutely crucial. And a state of affairs that people find seriously aversive is not having that sense of control, feeling that their choices and their actions really end up being at the whim of someone else who has power over them rather than a matter of their own choice.

NARRATOR: But how do we determine our own personal power? Where does it come from? And how can we develop it?

MR ROBERT CUMMINS: A sense of self is absolutely essential to our sense of well-being. It’s absolutely at the heartland. If we lose the sense of ourselves, if we lose the sense that we’re important people, that we’re better than most other people – all of these wonderful things that we think about ourselves – then our well-being suffers quite severely.

MS MARY PEKIN: Most of us don’t really get much of a chance to think about our own personal ethics but, if you ask people, mostly we’ve all got our own personal ethics that really determine what the effect of our behaviour will be on other people.

MS PENNY OAKES: I believe very strongly that power, to put it in the simple sense of power, is a very, very positive force. I think it’s vital. We can’t move our lives forward; we can’t achieve the things we need to achieve in life without a sense of power.

MR PAUL COLLINS: I’m going to be begin with a little bit of the Bible this morning. Three of the gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – all say that people who heard Jesus “were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as someone who had authority, not like the scribes”. Now, Bishop George Browning, not to suggest for one moment that you’re in any way like the scribes -

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: Thank you very much.

MR PAUL COLLINS: It’s a pleasure. Given that they base their power to teach on their religious and institutional position, is the gospel really making a kind of a distinction between a prophetic Jesus, a guy whose authority comes from himself, and those who merely use their power in an institutional sense?

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: I think a distinction between authority and power is useful. The most obvious contemporary example would be Nelson Mandela, who has authority because he’s been through the fire of imprisonment himself and in his own being he carries authority not just with his own community but with the world. And I think the same applies to the Christian gospel, that Jesus has authority partly because of the quality of his words but more particularly because of his life and what happened to him and the effect that it had upon his followers.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Does this mean that institutional power is a bad thing?

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: No, at some point I might try to push the difference between power and energy because I think that an institution , if it exercises power by sucking it out of other people, then it’s a bad thing. But if an institution uses its power to give energy to those for whom it’s responsible, then it’s not only a good thing but a very necessary thing.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Bruce Baird – I suppose in some ways I immediately have to apologise as I did to the bishop because you’ve exercised power institutionally also. You were Transport Minister for seven years in NSW and you’ve been through the seering process of being a backbencher – they say it’s seering at any rate. How does power work in a democracy? Given the way that government works in Australia, do we actually have a democracy, do you think?

MR BRUCE BAIRD: We do, but very much the power has been centralised into the executive in terms of the parliamentary scene and there’s less and less power to backbenchers, although backbenchers can organise themselves into groups and start a lobbying process. I’ve watched them be very effective and I’ve been part of the one or two that have been successful too. But there are other people who’ve been very effective. If you look at the Allan Jones, the John Laws, newspaper columnists and the lobbyists that we have right across the country – they influence power in various forms and certainly a radio commentator with some profile has far more power than your average parliamentarian.

MR PAUL COLLINS: But in a way though they depend on institutions also. They need the media to be their mouthpiece and certainly lobbyists need the money that’s behind their lobbying. You say they have power, but do they have much influence, do you think?

MR BRUCE BAIRD: They certainly have. If you take somebody such as Allan Jones or John Laws, their statements on various issues can change government policies. I’ve seen it at the State level and I see it at the federal level.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Are pollies really scared of them?

MR BRUCE BAIRD: I think it’s that they can influence public opinion. If you’ve got a very big audience – Allan Jones has got half a million people in Sydney – if you constantly come out with a policy line which is different from the government’s then people say, “How strongly do I want to feel about this and do I want to get back into government?” So I think they choose the latter.

MR PAUL COLLINS: I’ll looking forward to this. He’s giving me ideas. I wonder if I can become the Allan Jones of Sunday morning. Jonar Nader, you have an interesting view of leadership because you kind of see it as a ‘visualisation’, I think that’s the word that you use. That is the leader visualises the future for the organisation. Does that mean that real leaders are busy kind of carving out a new path rather than exercising power over people?

MR JONAR NADER: I need to first define how I see power. My function of power is to generate momentum. Bishop George was talking about energy. But then we get into democracy. I don’t think you can share energy or you can share power because, the moment you do, you dissipate it. So in essence the function of power for me is to generate momentum.

The next step is to understand that the more you share it, the less you have it. So there is a danger with that sense of democracy – in fact, I don’t believe that we do have democracy at all because one minute you say there’s democracy and the next minute you say a radio personality can swing it, which means we have influence.

MR BRUCE BAIRD: ‘Influence’ – he finally doesn’t have the say and also their power is also derived on which of the senior politicians that they can have. If they don’t have the PM, the Leader of the Opposition or the Treasurer, then their own standing falls. So I’ve seen some of the key people trying to ensure they get these people on.

MR JONAR NADER: Back to your question of vision, I liken vision to the notion that it comes from the word “to visualise”. If a leader is expected to not only see in one’s mind where it’s going but to also negotiate with everyone else who doesn’t see where that person is going, you end up slowing down. So for me, power is about propulsion so that you can overcome the obstacles. But it strikes me that in our type of democracy the person who is the most powerful is not the person at the top but the person who can create an obstacle, and usually that could be a small-wing group or a minority group. So you find it’s one little bureaucrat somewhere in council who can say, “No, you can’t build your catholic church or your building or you mosque,” and you go, “Why?” and they’ll slow you down. So for me propulsion is vital and therefore momentum.

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: I like that expression because in some ways it’s a spiritual or religious way of looking at things. I actually think creation is imagination. God creates, God imagines – like God imagines human beings and from that comes the energy. I think that leadership in today’s world, from a religious point of view, is to mimic God, is to imagine what is possible and to create that forward momentum as a result.

MR JONAR NADER: That’s why I still maintain that you cannot therefore negotiate that, because the moment you negotiate – I mean, I remember years ago I had to put some lobby in our group to get a roundabout in our community to slow down certain traffic hazards. You wouldn’t believe the ambulance had to have a say, the truckies union had to have a say, the fire brigade – every single group out of the woodworks. It got to the point where, three years later, nothing happened and this is where hesitation leads to destruction.

MR PAUL COLLINS: I really need to come back to you. It seems to me you have a very elitist view of power, but let’s put that on hold for a moment.

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: No, he isn’t because he said the ones that actually exercise the most power are the blockers. That’s not elitist.

MR PAUL COLLINS: No, that’s true. You two ought to talk to each other more happen.

MR JONAR NADER: I don’t know why we’re getting on so well.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Kate, you’re caught here with all these talkative men. Do you believe there really is distinction between authority and institutional power? I suppose connected with that is the whole problem of powerlessness, how people experience an impotence really.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: I think this is kind of related to these points and I’ll see if I can get the gender balance right here. You can talk about propulsion and energy but ultimately you need a followership. You can’t just drive forward. Presumably you’re trying to enact change or you’re trying to change a state of affairs – get the roundabout through or whatever it might be – and to do that you need a followership. You need people who are going to come along with you. To get that, I think you need a degree of participation; you need to have influence. Influence is about authority. It’s about people sharing the vision; it’s about people wanting to go with you on the journey; it’s about people with you wanting to enact change; and to do that you need to have a shared sense of connection with these people in power to get that sort of momentum happening. But I agree with you – if you have authority and you have influence, you can achieve quite a lot. But if you rely on command and control, which is how we’d like to define power or the way we do in the work that we’re doing at the Australian National University, if it’s command and control, then you’re not going to have those people willingly join in with you.

MR JONAR NADER: I don’t at all agree with that.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Why don’t you, because this gets to this elitist thing, you see.

MR JONAR NADER: You talk about power and control and I could almost feel a sense of negativity. If I were to interview you, as I have people, and if I say to successful people, “Do you have power?” they hesitate. “Are you successful, George?” We’re somewhat modest about success and power. If I were to say to you…

MR BRUCE BAIRD: It’s a very Australian thing, though. If you asked Americans, they’d have very different views. “I’m fantastic at what I do. I’m the world’s most elite athlete in this area.”

MR JONAR NADER: That’s right. But you talk about command and control in a sense as if it’s a negative thing, as if to say that’s bad. I put it to you that the most important things in life – not necessarily good or bad – the most significant things in our history have come about from people who did not negotiate, who were able to do what they wanted to do.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: When you say ‘influence’, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to negotiate or you have to spend a lot of time bringing people with you. You can have legitimate authority, which is because you’re in a position of power, and people accept that position – they accept the norms, values and beliefs that you’re espousing in that position of power – people will actually let you, you know, go forward and command and control.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Can I just get in because we want to run our insert piece. But, before we do, I want to ask you this, Bruce, and can you answer it briefly – how do you do what Kate’s talking about? How do you get people on side with you? How do you get them to follow you, to vote for you?

MR BRUCE BAIRD: You’ve got to give them a sense of the vision because just to lay down the law is not enough. They have to have a sense of what’s in it for them; or alternatively what they don’t want to be in it for them – the nimby syndrome.

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: Is what’s in it for them the same as a vision?

MR BRUCE BAIRD: Well, it can be. Hopefully you can lift people to beyond that into what’s in it for the community.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Just at this point, I want to look at some specific power relationships, starting with power and influence in the workplace. Let’s hear once again from social psychologist Penny Oakes.

MS PENNY OAKES: The carrot and stick approach, the coercive power approach will always be limited because it leaves the vast majority of people powerless. The increasing tendency for the CEOs of major companies to award themselves massive salaries, which I think by definition cuts them off from their subordinates, makes it impossible for them to be perceived as ‘one of us’ and therefore to exert influence-based power. They almost create a situation in which they have to rely on manipulative coercive power in order to get anything done. It doesn’t surprise me at all that people feel relatively dissatisfied at all with their powerlessness under those circumstances compared to their relative empowerment in closer relationships, which are based on values and not coercion.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Jonar, I’m dying to ask you, and I know that Penny Oakes can’t respond, but do you agree with her?

MR JONAR NADER: No. There is this notion of perceived power – for example, people think that the Queen is powerful or that a minister is powerful. What people don’t realise is that the department that runs the minister, not the minister that runs the department; and it’s not the CEO that runs the company, it’s some other force.

MR PAUL COLLINS: But that’s not true all the time. I know of some very powerful ministers that have bureaucrats quaking in their boots.

MR JONAR NADER: They are the powerful ones.

MR BRUCE BAIRD: I can remember a particular project, a project up to the Parramatta River, and I had all the bureaucrats and boards totally opposed and I called them all together and said, “We’re going to do it regardless.” Now you can travel on the Parramatta River and it’s the Minister who made it happen. So it doesn’t always work but I know what you mean. They’re particularly powerful nevertheless.

MR JONAR NADER: I don’t say the CEOs are powerful. In fact, in essence they have the power to destroy. They might have the power to enact the limits given to them by the board, but in themselves they don’t have power because they are employees – albeit they get $20 million, et cetera.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: I think they play a really important role and it depends on how you think about their role in the institution in terms of shaping what the norms, values and beliefs are that make one organisation distinctive from another. They are there to portray the vision to actually bring people on board to the objectives of a particular organisation or department. I think that is a very important role for them, and they exert a lot of power in terms of the way they can influence an organisation and what it’s going to be about, what defines it.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Jonar, you can get this in because I want to find out how they do it in the Church.

MR JONAR NADER: Interestingly, before the break we were speaking about getting people behind you – and, look, I’m not dictatorial. However, the moment you say, “We need to get people behind me,” you’re admitting you don’t have power because a powerful person doesn’t care who is behind them.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: You’re admitting a very subtle understanding of human behaviour and that you realise that no one individual can actually achieve things – it takes collective action.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Why I’m kind of half going at Jonar is because I actually agree with him. I think when I look at, say, the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, the reason why change has failed is because we tried to get everybody on side.

MR JONAR NADER: Consensus does not work.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Consensus didn’t work. It was an elite that needed to see the vision and run with it.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: Consensus is not the same as legitimate authority.

MR BRUCE BAIRD: It’s also a question of the leadership and whether people identify with that leader, even though they may lay down the law. If they’re seen as being one of them and no sense of hubris – a successful model in Australian politics is those who appear to be just like your ordinary Joe Blow – if you go State or federal, the more removed they are from the average guy in the street, the less chance they’re going to survive. I think that’s also important to mention.

MR PAUL COLLINS: I think George is modelling a kind of humble leadership in here because you haven’t had a chance to get in with these talkative ones. What does leadership in the Church mean? It seems to me that bishops are really in the spotlight – and by that I mean the shooter’s spotlight more than the television spotlight.

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: Power is relevant, I think, when it has an effect on your life. If it doesn’t have an effect on your life – with profoundest respect, any power the Pope has or doesn’t have doesn’t affect me because I’m an Anglican, if I could put it that way. I think we need to realise that everybody exercises power.

MR PAUL COLLINS: How?

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: A baby exercises power by crying and trying to influence the parents in terms of the way it’s picked up, put to bed, washed and everything else.

MR JONAR NADER: There’s a question of power and empowerment, and I don’t think anyone can empower you, no more than I can say, “You’re no longer scared of spiders,” in the sense that I can’t decree power upon you. But I think the question is – are we empowered? And I don’t think as a democracy we are. We are not empowered.

MR BRUCE BAIRD: I think an interesting model was the Gandhi approach with this passive resistance to authority where people caught the vision, they had a charismatic leader and they followed just impassively – they were all empowered.

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: I would like to come back to what I was trying to say – the most significant power in a person’s life is through their relationships. That is far more significant than an institutional power. I think the reason why the Church is often in the limelight negatively is because it is perceived to interfere in areas of personal relationship by the way in which the priest, the bishop or the lay person actually misuses their opportunity or their privilege in terms of individual lives.

In anybody’s life – their partner, their children, their parents, their friends – the power that is exercised within that circle is far more significant in the end to them than the power of the PM or the bishop. But the Church, in my view, exercises power appropriately when it’s modelled upon the servant model of Jesus. When it actually abandoned servanthood, then it is always – and without exception – using power badly.

MR PAUL COLLINS: We’ve talked a lot about power, but I want to bring up powerlessness.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: I didn’t get a chance to comment about that before.

MR PAUL COLLINS: You didn’t and you’ve written a lot about this. It really seems to me that there are a lot of those blockers – that is, nasty little people who get into organisations and block things happening – and I’ve met a few of them in my time. But there are also people out there and I’m now looking down the barrel of the camera out in the world there who are very angry and feel deeply powerless. What are we to make of all this, Kate? You’ve done all the work on this.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: There are two levels at which you can think about this issue. One is the personal power aspect, and I think there were some notions of that in the introductory piece. When people feel like they’re achieving their goals, we certainly know that that’s linked to well-being. Personal power is very important if people are going to be having healthy, happy lives, I guess.

But personal power is not just about the individual, you can also see it as being about – increasingly people are becoming more influenced by the organisations in which they work, maybe because work is becoming more central to the social networks and social connections that people are having. I think there’s a sense in which people need to be empowered in the organisations and the institutions within society. Perhaps people feel less empowered now than they did previously. And that sense of powerlessness that comes from that can actually lead to disengagement where people are not actively engaged in what’s going on around them.

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: But that’s a use of power, isn’t it? Passivity is one of the greatest uses of power that you can actually…

KATE REYNOLDS: If it is a deliberate choice, but quite often powerlessness is forced upon them because they do not have any sort of ways to interact.

BISHOP GEORGE BROWNING: But don’t you think at the end of the day in some respects powerlessness is a misnomer, because you could say that the terrible acts of terrorism that are happening in the world today have come out of a situation in which people have felt powerless or they’ve felt so much pain that they then have reacted in this way and are exercising enormous power.

MS KATE REYNOLDS: And they have to resort to the kinds of powers that are perceived by many to be illegitimate because there is no other vehicle for them.

MR BRUCE BAIRD: You certainly find in the community today a lot of agro people who are very concerned about the councillors not doing something or the State or Federal Government. You meet them at community meetings where they can get very intense because they feel no-one is listening to them, we go on regardless, et cetera. So it’s not uncommon.

MR JONAR NADER: You have a group of people who feel no-one’s listening to them. When I’m teaching in a classroom, if it’s hot or cold and I say, “Should we lose the window?” Half the class says yes and half the class says no, and I always get into trouble. Now I just do what I think I should do and I open it or close it, and no-one says anything. So when you consult, you end up with faction groups and that’s what slows you down.

You know how we say power corrupts – this notion? I don’t believe that power corrupts either. I think certainly corruption is powerful, and that’s why people seem to steer away from power. But in itself it is better to have power than not.

MR PAUL COLLINS: Jonar, you get the last word. That’s our program for today. Thanks again to our panel. I’ll be back again next Sunday. I hope you’ll join me then. Goodbye for now.

Here is the transcript:

Female Speaker: The social observer, philosopher, author and lecturer, Jonar Nader has spent years studying people and their habits and he knows some tricks to surviving in the corporate jungle and he joins us now.

Jonar Nader: So I used to get up from a meeting and say, ‘Excuse me. I have an appointment with life. I am going, not putting up with this nonsense.’

Female Speaker: What? Are you nuts?

Jonar Nader: I almost got caught.

Jonar Nader: Because in the future, I can tell you, money will be linked to performance.

And what next? What will be the next big thing?

The idea about being a futurist is not that you’re this clairvoyant. My friend’s father was a clairvoyant and his mother was a contortionist and as a result, he could foresee his own end.

Jonar Nader: My father said to my mother, ‘You know, we have been married 36 years. And not once have we agreed on anything.’ She said, ‘Thirty-seven.’

Female Speaker: His new book Z is a fictional novel about the worst act of terrorism the world could ever see.

Jonar Nader: Even if I were the president of the world for 10 years, I still could not think of a way to generate peace. I finally did.

Half of the world is in conflict. Half of the world is at war. And I see it as a war on our destiny rather than a war on terror.

You must be forbidden from working anywhere, touching anything if you don’t know what it feels like, what it tastes like. You know, what’s on the menu? Chicken. What does it taste like? I don’t know. I just work here. Well, find me someone who doesn’t work here so I can find out.

Jonar Nader: In the future, companies who put us on hold will have to pay for our time.

And I think there should be two types of managers, the manager that says, ‘Any problem you have, come to me. I’ll fix it,’ or the manager who says, ‘Look, any problem you see, go fix it and I’ll back you up.’

Terminal.

Jonar Nader: They say the bottom line is the most important thing in companies. And I say no, no, no. Then they say, oh, hang on. You know, the triple bottom line is the most important thing. Oh, yes? What’s that? I say, the triple bottom line is you have to take care of profits, you have to take care of the environment and you have to take care of society. That’s called the triple bottom line. It’s being taught all over the MBAs at the moment. I say, that’s still useless. Talk to me about the triple top line. It’s your staff, your quality and your customers.

Teamwork is a lot of nonsense because it doesn’t work. What I want are teams that work.

See, I don’t think you can share energy or you can share power because the most you do, you’ll dissipate it. So, in essence, the function of power for me is to generate momentum. There is this notion of the perceived power. For example, people think that the queen is powerful or that a minister is powerful. What people do not realize is that in fact, it is the department that runs the minister, not the minister that runs the department.

Do you know how we say power corrupts? You know this notion. I don’t believe that power corrupts either. I think certainly corruption is powerful and that’s why people seem to steer away from power but in itself, it is better to have power than not.

Male Speaker: Jonar, you get the last word.

Female Speaker: Stick around, would you?

Jonar Nader: Yes, sure.

Female Speaker: Thank you.

Female Speaker: Jonar Nader is a digital age philosopher. For the past 22 years, he has maintained a dual career as an expert in both technology and management and presents to both kinds of audiences.

Jonar Nader: Are you actually delivering on your promise?

Female Speaker: For example, he was the opening speaker for the IT Summit and the CEO Summit. Sometimes, Jonar wears two hats at the same conference as he did for the Institute of Company Directors where he gave two keynotes, one about leadership and another about technology and the future.

Jonar Nader: So, is it good to always have a bit of dirt in the bottom drawer? On someone.

Male Speaker: How does it come down for you, Jonar Nader?

Jonar Nader: Well, I’m glad you’ve asked me this question now that I’m a consultant…

Jonar Nader: Because I’m making a lot more money now.

Jonar Nader: Whenever I see a bad employee, my first impression is, ‘Who is his boss?’ And so, I would like to know why that happened and spend my energy there because …

Male Speaker: Well, you were his boss…

Female Speaker: Whether he’s humorous or controversial, Jonar delivers tantalizing messages.

Male Speaker: The irrepressible Mr Jonar Nader.

Female Speaker: He’s known for his captivating after dinner speeches like the one he presented at the Australian Business Awards.

Jonar Nader: So, what’s going to be the most important thing for your business is your brand. And when I say brand, I don’t mean just only your logo or your brand awareness of brand image or brand building or brand recall or brand values. As important as they are, the single biggest important thing about brand is the brand bet. That means what the customer is prepared to bet on.

The issue is I know that we all know how to make a cake and we all have flour and we all have sugar and we all have eggs and we all have an oven and we probably have the ingredients sitting right now at home. But how many of us can actually make it? The process of knowing is not good enough.

Female Speaker: Around the world, tens of thousands of people have attended Jonar’s presentations. He’s popular with professionals in finance, law, science, technology, manufacturing and sales.

Jonar Nader: I don’t want to hear any more terms and conditions and conditions apply…

Most people don’t learn a new word after the age of 18. Their vocabulary stays the same thereafter. Most people don’t have a new dream beyond, you know, whatever they’ve been – now, that’s it, mate. You’re going to be a plumber the rest of your life.

I say to kids, don’t worry about what you are going to be when you grow up. How you’re going to live as you are living.

Female Speaker: Jonar Nader is the author of the best-selling book How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People. He has also written a book of modern wisdom called How to Lost Friends and Infuriate Thinkers.

Jonar Nader: If you stand up and rise and say, ‘Look boss, you know, I really don’t think this is the way we should be doing it,’ then others will get – gain energy from you because it usually just takes the minority to create something big.

Female Speaker: What’s your view on anger and what it does to us, our bodies and its purpose?

Jonar Nader: If anger happens, you stop and say, ‘This is great. The alarm bells have gone off. Now is the time to assess why.’ Not go down the pub and, you know, laugh it off but to say, ‘What triggered this? Because this is not the trigger that I will allow into my life.’

Customer service isn’t just about being nice to people. It’s about product knowledge, knowing your industry inside out, knowing everything about everything you can possibly know. If you don’t get out of the way because selling is as much a profession as nuclear physics.

Are you actually delivering on your promise? And if we do that, the rest will take care of itself.

Any executive who has a ticker tape of their stock price or to be sacked on the spot. Your job is not to check the stock price. It’s a check about Mrs. Smith the last time she paid you good money to buy her husband a nice something rather that just doesn’t work and when she calls to complain, you say, ‘Oh, wow. Well, 20 minutes on hold. Your call is important to us. And please bring it down. It might take two weeks to repair it. Theft!

Today on Wall Street, people are just running around for bottom line figures. And what are they doing? They’re really only cheating themselves because Wall Street is a joke and the sooner it blows up, the better.

So many corporations are failing today because there is a them and us attitude. We might think we’re making profits but they’re all manipulated. The real profit comes when people are actually satisfied, happy.

For me, success is not what you amass. It’s what you …

And if you hate your boss, do not treat your boss badly. If you don’t like what you are doing, all the more reason to do it better so that you can climb out.

You know, and who gets promoted in corporate life today? The backstabbers who know how to do it well enough.

Male Speaker:

Jonar Nader: You know, the creative people. Where do they end up?

If I put this on my head, people will go, ‘What’s this guy on television got this on his head for?’ Because the visible things, everyone is an expert at. They can see that’s wrong. But can they see that someone is a back stabber, a manipulator, a hound, a con artist? Can they? I don’t think executives and people in an office environment can see it.

Female Speaker: Jonar is also the author of the best-selling illustrated Dictionary of Computing and the technology writer for Butterworth’s Legal Dictionary and the Student’s Legal Dictionary. He also serves as an expert witness to the legal profession.

Jonar Nader: Unfortunately, the internet will have to collapse before it rebuilds itself.

Male Speaker: It will be exciting, real funny up here.

Male Speaker: That’s a must for everybody.

Male Speaker: Jonar C. Nader.

Male Speaker: Jonar: Stiff!

Female Speaker: Jonar’s last assignment as a corporate executive was at IBM where he led the consumer division in 18 countries. He’s the co-founder of both the Information Technology Society and The Leadership Foundation funded by McKinsey and Company and Qantas. Programs have been held at the Royal Military College and at the University of New South Wales. As a guest lecturer at tertiary institutions, he conducts his courses on technology, leadership, management, advertising, marketing and politics.

Jonar is a coach to high profile executives. He gives thousands of radio and TV interviews worldwide. His articles are published in some of the most respected business and IT publications. As a magazine editor and writer, he has worked for motor racing, art and fashion magazines and has held exclusive interviews with the likes of Stuart Devlin, jeweler to Her Majesty the Queen.

Jonar has interviewed the biggest names in art and design including Count Faber Castell and fashion gurus such as Jean Muir, designer to the late Princess Diana. He has interviewed many fashion giants including Count Zegna, Lagerfeld, Missoni, Kenzo and the late Gianni Versace.

Female Speaker: As the chairman of Logictivity, Jonar Nader guides CEOs and boards to engineer a successful future. To learn more, please visit Logictivity.com and find out how the world’s only post-tentative, virtual surrealist can rearrange your molecules.

Here is the transcript:

Paul: I’m lost. What the hell are we talking about here?

Paul: He is the author of How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People, How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss, and this book, How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Lovers. He calls himself a corporate and social warrior, dedicated to teaching others how to live a zestful and enchanting life. And Jonar is here with us this morning. Jonar, good morning.

Jonar Nader: Paul, good morning.

Paul: I have been losing friends and infuriating lovers all my life.

Jonar Nader: Yes. You know, often people say to me, ‘Oh, I could have written that book.’ Any book I write, they say, ‘Oh, I could have written that book.’ Because yes, we all experience these horrible …

Paul: But that’s the knack, isn’t it. You got to write about things that people experience.

Jonar Nader: Absolutely.

Paul: This obviously isn’t to teach people how to lose friends and infuriate lovers because people don’t really heart of hearts want to do that. They want to avoid that. So, this book really about avoiding that.

Jonar Nader: You know, it’s about understanding the opposites of your life. Because all our lives we’re taught how to win friends and influence people. How to be patient? How to be tolerant? And we all want the good things in life. And if you want goodness, you have to know what evil and terrible and horrible things are. So, if you want honesty in the workplace and you don’t know how dishonest people fiddle the books, you’re going to lose. If you want peace in your country and you don’t know how to fight, you’re going to lose. So, if I wrote a book about how to fight, they’d think, ‘Oh, we don’t want to teach people how to fight…’

Paul: So, you teach people to recognize evil in themselves and others I suppose?

Jonar Nader: Yes, and a lot of it is intangible and that’s the trouble. I mean, isn’t it fascinating that later somebody said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know my husband was a serial killer.’

Paul: Yes, yes.

Jonar Nader: You lived with him for 20 years. So, the question is how do you recognize it before it hits you because everybody is an expert after it hits. So that people would look at this in the question of relationships, do you think the world advanced so much? We have every gadget under the sun and yet, we come down to this question of relationships and divorce rates are and they are huge. People go to bed crying. And you think why haven’t we sorted this out yet? How intelligent are we? And it all starts because of the truth that I believe that love is blind. And when it’s blind, you don’t see.

Paul: Jonar, how do you know this? Have you had a love wracked life? Have you?

Jonar Nader: You know, often people say, ‘Do you write a book because it’s biographical in some way?’ I know this because I have dealt with so many people and I started out in corporate life thinking the problems were with leadership and management. And true, that’s a big problem. Then we got into the question about the problem in your life is that you haven’t got a direction with your career and your education. And then when we sorted that out, all my clients started saying, ‘Well, I’m still unhappy.’ What’s the matter now? Oh, and it all really comes down to the bottom line…

Paul: So, all those other things really were not the issues?

Jonar Nader: Oh, they were issues but weren’t the core.

Paul: The core.

Jonar Nader: And I couldn’t unravel it.

Paul: So, what is the core?

Jonar Nader: Well, it’s A) your maturity. I don’t know how people continue to mature. I think most people stop maturing. They think when they reach 18, that’s it. And they go to the gym to get the muscle right. They go to the botox person to get the hair right and the face right. Where do we keep going on a weekly basis to get the heart right? You really must understand the question. If you don’t understand the question, you’ll never understand the answer. But people are searching for answers and don’t know what the question is.

Paul: What is the question?

Jonar Nader: Well, the question is…

Paul: I’m lost! You’ve dug a hole and pushed me in. I’m lost. What the hell are we talking about here?

Jonar Nader: Do you see what I’ve done? I’ve created a vacuum and now you want to know.

Paul: Yes.

Jonar Nader: Yes. And the answer to …

Paul: Gosh you’re clever.

Jonar Nader: Yes. Unless you ask, I can’t tell you. And now that you’ve asked, I can tell you. The answer really is in the question of relationships, due diligence. Ask yourself. What does my bank want from me when I ask for a $100,000 loan? And check the paperwork that the bank wants from you.

Paul: Now, this is interesting that you said this because you think marriage is illogical. If you read this book, you actually think marriage is illogical. That we do it – we just don’t even think about it. We’re just doing a stupid thing.

Jonar Nader: Well, I love the idea of marriage except that we don’t really know what we’re doing because you are starting to fantasize about the house on the hill and picket fence and you love the person’s look and feel and touch and so on. But you don’t even know what’s behind it. And do you know that that person is a gambler? Oh, only later when your whole house is corrupted. You go, ‘Well, I didn’t know he gambles. I just thought he went out.’ So, when are we going to sit down and say, ‘Excuse me, we will get married. Are you a gambler? Because if you are, say no, I don’t want to marry.’

Paul: Because this comes back to the due diligence thing that you brought up before. So, what you’re saying is – because you use – in the book, you use the example of the house for instance. We do a lot of due diligence before we buy a house but the person we’re buying it the house with, we know nothing about them, do we?

Jonar Nader: No. And have you ever asked their ex for an interview? I mean, would you ever say to a lover, ‘Excuse me, with whom were you in love before and I’d like to meet them?’ And they go, ‘Oh, no don’t.’ You go, ‘Well, if you’re going for a job interview, they ask you where did you work?’

Paul: References. Give me some references.

Jonar Nader: Yes, absolutely. And with the …

Paul: But people are never going to do that.

Jonar Nader: Well, but look at the divorce rate. Look at the agony. Have you been in a household where people are tearing each other apart and they go to work and school and everyday they wish they were dead?

Paul: But having said that – I mean, and yes you can point those things out. But people are never going to do due diligence on a lover. I mean, you’re never going to meet someone and you say, ‘I’m becoming attracted to you but before I take this any further, could you give me a list of former lovers?’

Jonar Nader: Well, first of all, you probably can’t do it because you’re blind to it. When you’re in love, you’re blind. That’s why you have family. That’s why you go …

Paul: So, the family do it for …

Jonar Nader: Well, look at the traditions were there. We have all these horrible traditions of wearing white and standing there and the priest says, ‘Does anyone know any reason or course why these people shouldn’t be joined together?’ And you say to the priest. ‘You mean now? You’re asking me this?’

Paul: Yes. Is it a bit late?

Jonar Nader: Yes, I don’t think they should get married.

Paul:

Jonar Nader: I’m just here because I got invited.

Paul: Yes, I’m waiting for the free meal.

Jonar Nader: I mean …

Paul: All right. No, you make a good point. And actually, this is why – this is why the whole matchmaking thing often works very well and people say, ‘It’s incredible they’ve never met but they get on so well and they’re married forever.’ It’s because someone else has done due diligence.

Jonar Nader: Well, your parents should, your family should – but the law doesn’t allow it because you have this Privacy Act. So, you need to sign a privacy release up-front so I can really check if you are bankrupt …

Paul: God, you really are sucking the fun out of lover, aren’t you?

Jonar Nader: Do you want to be my friend or don’t you?

Paul: All right. So, that’s the book. How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Lovers. Now, I hadn’t intended to talk so long about the book because let’s face it, people can buy the book and read it for themselves, can’t they?

Jonar Nader: Correct.

Paul: It will be on sale in the next few days if it isn’t already. You have a fascinating life and I wanted to spend most of the time talking about your life. You are described as an author, a journalist, the lecturer, philosopher, futurist, consultant and a corporate and social warrior. How do you have time to come in here and talk to me?

Jonar Nader: It’s because I’m so efficient. I do everything only once. So, I don’t fuss about. And I know what I want and what I’m doing…

I grew up in a war-time situation, you know, in Beirut where death was just five minutes away and people were popping and dying all over the place.

Paul: So, how has that shaped you?

Jonar Nader: It made me love every minute of everyday and I realized that maybe I won’t be here tomorrow. And when you live with the sense of now is wonderful and now is beautiful and I may not be here tomorrow, then when someone is wasting your time and wasting your life, its actually – it’s a wonder I’m still alive, not because of the war but because of the time I speak up in the street when I see something or someone doing something. I say, ‘Hey, what’s this about?’ So, when I say, I’m social warrior, I’m actually is sticky-beak busy body. I’ll defend the lady who’s bag is stolen.

Paul: You’re proactive.

Jonar Nader: Yes. I mean, I run after bag snatchers and every security person says, ‘That’s stupid. He could have a knife.’ And I go, ‘Well, if we don’t do something, we will continue to be overtaken.’

Paul: Yes. Jonar, thank you very much for coming.

Jonar Nader: Thanks Paul.

Paul: It’s just one of the many books that you’ve written. How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Lovers. So yes, you could go out and buy it. If you’ve been enamored buy Jonar, then you’ll be enamored by his book.

Jonar Nader: Thank you very much.

Paul: Thanks for joining us.

Female Speaker: I am so enamored by Jonar.

Paul: I know. He’s amazing. But don’t go over the top. We don’t – we haven’t done due diligence. We might be a crazy freak, you know. We haven’t – we haven’t sorted that out.

Female Speaker: I don’t care, I like him.

There are two videos below. The second one is of a higher quality for those with high-speed internet connection. The first video is 8 Mb. The second is 15 Mb. Video length is 4 minutes and 51 seconds. Further below is a transcript of the video.

Here is the transcript:

Gregg Toyama: What would you think that people would expect from a real estate agent after you see some of the statistics that we produced, that 75 percent of people said they would use the same real estate agent and yet, 15 percent actually do?

Jonar Nader: Yes. I’m not sure how honest people are. It’s like at a restaurant when you go and they say, ‘How was your meal, sir?’ And you say, ‘It was very nice.’ You actually want to say more than that but you just leave it be. You walk away. People don’t like confrontation and they don’t like to embarrass anybody. But the other interesting statistic that follows from that was, what are you looking for in an agent? And do you recall what most people said they wanted?

Gregg Toyama: They wanted honesty.

Jonar Nader: Yes. And I was looking back at the old archives of some of the early founders of real estate agencies and I just love the fact that way back in 1800s, they said, ‘Come to our real estate agency where you get integrity and honesty.’ You know, I traced that because in Auckland, I heard this statement which I thought, ‘How could it be that honesty is what people are looking for?’ And here’s the way I describe it. You and I are walking down the street and you see a bakery. And you say, ‘Jonar, just a minute.’ And I say, ‘What are you going there for, Gregg?’ And you say, ‘I need some bread.’ Fair enough. We would go past a barber or a hair salon. I say, ‘Gregg, where are you going now?’ You say, ‘I need a haircut.’ And then you go past a real estate agent. I say, ‘Gregg, what are you going there for?’ You say, ‘I need some honesty.’

It doesn’t work, does it? You don’t go in there for honesty. So therefore, the question is, ‘What is it that people are looking for when it comes to real estate?’ And so, what I did earlier today and we’re doing now in Auckland was to show that if we can really understand what people need first, you know, I don’t think the customer is always right. I don’t think the customer knows what to look for. Because let’s suppose we invented a new product called an alarm system for your house or a virus checker for your computer, do you think the average person knows how a virus checker works or how a firewall works?

So, can you imagine a software company sitting down with a customer saying, ‘What are you looking for in a virus checker?’ They go, ‘What’s a virus?’ They don’t even know. And you’re asking a humble mum and dad, ‘What are you looking for in a real estate agent?’ How do they know? What they need is an expert to tell them when they’re likely to be conned, what are the spins, what are the tricks of the trade. And so, what we need to do as professional people at Harcourts is to really understand. Hang on a minute. If I were advising my mother or my sister, what would I tell her to watch out for? And if we can articulate all of those and share them with our clients and say to our clients, ‘Look, we’re not in this game for the short term. We’re here for the long term.’

So, of course you expect honesty and integrity but that shouldn’t even be uttered. I mean, the moment you utter these things, they become dubious and doubtful. It’s like going to a job interview and you say, ‘Here’s my resume. I’m a doctor and I’m honest.’ Yes. Why did he make that point? ‘I know I was in jail but I’m not really a thief.’ I mean, you start raising questions. So here’s what we need to be looking for in a real estate agent. We need a real estate agent who can demonstrate that they have a good database of clients on the books so that when I come to you and list my property, you can say, ‘Look, I’ve already got people primed up because every weekend, I have open houses.’ Every weekend, I meet 20, 30 people and I go and visit other homes. So when I say to you your house is worth say, 600,000, I’m not saying that because there’s some database in Australia that sort of tells me that because three of units left of you and seven houses right of you sold and so, I’ll give you the average and say your house is worth – so when an agent says, ‘Your house is worth 600,000,’ I say, ‘On what basis do you arrive that?’ He would say, ‘Well, left of you or right of you.’ I say, ‘Have you been to those houses?’ No. Well, you haven’t seen the view from there. You haven’t seen my parquetry floor. You haven’t seen the quality of my fittings. So, you’re just lumping me into a statistic, are you?

So what we need from a real estate agent is someone who knows that time is precious and time is money and that they’re going to get on with it. And also, who has a network. I mean, it’s well and good that I’m dealing with you as my agent but I want to know you have a team of people around you so that if you’re busy or not there, that they are just as keen to look after me. The last thing I want to hear is, you know, come to Harcourts, come to Harcourts. And then they say, ‘Oh, sorry. Gregg will call you back.’ No, I’m calling Harcourts. Are you Harcourts? Well, take the call.

And that’s the way that I think business succeeds when if we are selling a brand that the brand means something and so whether Gregg is there or not or if Mike is there or not, the brand survives because, you know, Cartier has survived beautifully after Mr. Cartier and same with Gucci after Mr. Gucci. And a good brand should be true whether you’re in Christchurch or South Australia. It should stand true.

Here is the transcript:

Jonar Nader: Another reason I think we are doomed is that we are not paranoid enough. And I worked with a lady who once said to me, ‘Never trust anyone with a project if they are not paranoid enough about what can go wrong.’ I so agree. I am a control freak. I have my own t-shirt that says, yes, I am a control freak but only when I don’t know who is in control and I immediately have to take over. We’re not paranoid enough. Here are some photos I have taken with my mobile phone. You walk into a restaurant and they have this bowl and it says, ‘Win free dinner. Place your business card here.’ The biggest rising theft is identity theft. All you need are five bits of information and I can pretend to be you and have your credit card delivered to me and on it goes.

So I would never put a business card in a bowl at a restaurant because anyone can just pick it up and now, they know your name, your extension and then I’ll just steal something from you.

I was on the flight from Sydney to Hamilton Island and there’s only one airplane that flies there now. So I have to sit in this airplane and they don’t have movies and anything. You can pay $5 and get a DVD player. It was holiday season. I was there for a conference. I sat in the back seat. There are hundreds of people. And I could see they started serving, serving, serving, serving an hour later she had reached me, the hostess asked, ‘What would you like?’ I said, ‘I’ll have a DVD player, please.’ First, I had never done this before. And she said, ‘That will be $5.’ I said, ‘Fine.’ And then she said, ‘Can I see your drivers licence?’ And I thought, ‘Do I look under 18 to you?’ Was there any Adult Content on the DVD? She said, ‘No. People have been walking away with them.’ I said, ‘At 30,000 feet!’

Jonar Nader: I’m the only who has asked for one. She said, ‘I need your driver’s license.’ Now, being who I am, the security freak that I am, my driver’s license, everything on my driver’s license: you have a specimen of my signature, you have a photo, you have my date of birth, you have my home address, you have a driver’s license number, end of story, end of ID. So I wrote to the managing director of the airline. I said, ‘Look, I’m not sure you should be doing this. We cannot train the public to hand over such vital information.’ And he wrote back a hideous response that said, ‘Oh, you know, it’s just our policy.’

He just didn’t get it. He didn’t get what I was trying to say to him. And banks do this stuff and credit card companies do this stuff. You know, in the last week, one of the largest banks called me and said, ‘Hello, Mr. Nader. Before I can speak with you, I need your password.’ I tell them and I tell them. I say, ‘You must cease that practice. You cannot train people that it’s okay for someone to call you and say, I’m from the credit card company. Give me your password.’ I just can’t believe it’s still going on and I wrote a letter to the head of that big credit card international company, non compos mentis. I just cannot believe it. I’m sitting here screaming, thinking – I could tell you stories all day long and it’s just so amazing that we are not paranoid enough about what can go wrong.

The other reason that I think we fail in organizations in the line of terrorism is that there’s this ‘them and us’ situation. There’s an ATM at a shopping centre that has been chock-a-block for 18 months. I just cannot believe. I walk past it every single day, every single day and I think someone, somewhere, somehow will say this is my responsibility. Now, not that I care that it’s full. I really don’t care that it’s full. I care that 20 people can work at this bank and walk past it and they say, ‘Oh, I’m just a teller.’ ‘I’m just a controller.’ ‘No, I’m just a bank manager.’ So I wrote a letter to this bank because I love playing games and I said to them in a fake name and everything – ‘I’m an insurance expert,’ which I’m not. I really don’t know if this is true or not but I wrote a letter. I said, ‘I’m an insurance expert and if a customer puts a cigarette in there and your bank catches fire, you’re responsible and you might not be covered under insurance. The very next day, they cordoned the area with danger signs and witches hats.

Jonar Nader: And within three days, they removed the thing altogether.

Jonar Nader: We just don’t get it. I walk past cameras, wherever I look, I look at cameras. I’m the most suspicious person anyway so I’m always looking and oh – and, this cord was within anybody’s reach. You could just walk past it and pull it. So what’s the point in that? I saw this just in the building opposite my building. I said, ‘Anyone can just grab this.’ And they said, ‘Oh, yes, thank you.’ So they fixed it. Look at how they fixed it. They tucked it in a little bit.

Jonar Nader: My mother, bless her soul, she has so many problems medically so she was just at the hospital, a major, good hospital, brilliant hospital. And I walk around, she is there for weeks and weeks and, you know, I’m caring for her but nothing just – so I just walk around doing audit and …

Jonar Nader: … I saw these cameras everywhere. And I thought, I know what’s going to happen and sure enough, not that I’m a clairvoyant but within a matter of two weeks, the security cameras were stolen. It was obvious to me and i was only there for two weeks. I can’t believe it. That one is in a lift. I can’t understand it. Someone took the camera home because it’s useful. You can use the camera. Why do we bother? So I’ve been telling people for years that you cannot place cameras unprotected. So they finally listened. So I saw this and I said, ‘Fantastic.’ But behind the metal casing, you can see the hole, and all you need is a pair of long-nose pliers and snip. And not only that, they didn’t inspect what they were doing. Do you see the number there? This is camera number 338 sector T1. I sometimes wonder how in Mission Impossible, what’s his name Tom Cruise knows everything within seconds. I think, oh, that’s so unreal. I can map out the entire casino for you. The installer left all the marks behind.

Jonar Nader: We just fill the order. Well, this is a marina and we’ve got to protect it. Okay. Foot on block, foot on bin, foot on cabinet, around, and over. With a baseball bat, you can kill the cameras. And there you have the yachts of the world for you. I mean, what’s the point? A friend of mine drives this yellow Porsche. Mont Blanc this, Cartier that, Prada this, Boss that, he’s a real target for anyone looking for someone to mug. His building was sick and tired of people parking in the wrong place so they said, this is it, if you don’t have a sticker on your car, your car will be towed away. So now my friend walks around the city, drives around the city telling every would be anybody, I am in apartment 611, I park in C3, a 611 in the Blue Concept building which everyone knows about in Melbourne anyway. So, come and get me. How is that for stupidity? How is that for security? They just don’t get it.

Now, apply this to your business. How many people do things and say, I just work here’. The postman says, ‘I just deliver the mail,’ – never mind and there’s no one home and a lot of stuff there like credit cards and vital information. No, ‘I’m just the Postman,’ ‘I’m just a cleaner.’ No wonder we have floods. Who is responsible? The drain is full. Who, out of 10,000 people who work at Council can say ‘I’m responsible’? No, I’m not responsible. We have this notion that if we measure it, it will get done. Yes, deliver the papers and if you deliver the paper, you get the money. So the guy could deliver your paper and I think, ‘When is he going to stop?’ No one is home.

Jonar Nader: But I can imagine I’m delivering your paper so I’m delivering your paper. You’ve got to know the rules and we don’t know the rules so please send your people – cross-pollinate and send them from there to there, send them to meet the customer, get them to talk to experts. You cannot sit in the office and say you understand and thus, risk your business. You’ve got to get people out and feeling and touching and teach people how to cook the books and teach them how to hack into systems so that they can see it when it’s happening in front of them. This is the gents on level one of the Regent Hotel in Sydney in George Street which is now called The Four Seasons. And that lock is fine. You walk in and that’s fine. Look at the lock. Look at the lock, that’s fine. You can lock it but on the inside, you cannot have that. That is a risk because if someone walks in and they don’t know you’re still in there and there’s a fire, you’re stuck in. You cannot have an egress in this fashion. They just don’t know. How can they not know? They own the biggest hotels and properties in the world. They don’t know the rules? No.

You’ve got to get staff members engaged and everybody has got to know the rules. You can’t say, oh, I’m just – I’m just. You don’t understand. People don’t understand. Look, how many people leave the door open when it says, fire door, do not obstruct. They don’t understand. So here’s the thing. People have to believe, understand, accept and adopt consistently. If they don’t believe what you’re saying, understand it, accept and adopt it, then we’re not doing it consistently. We have told a million people a million times, don’t smoke, they still smoke. Don’t drink and drive, they still drink and drive. Don’t speed on wet road, they still speed. Shut the door – do not – this is a fire door, they still open up. Why? Because they don’t understand. They don’t understand. They don’t listen. Every shop I walk into there, they have cameras. But they don’t have a clue because here’s the control panel. It’s on the top shelf. You just press stop and go do all the thieving.

Jonar Nader: I have thousand of photos. Absolutely unbelievable. We give too much away. We tell them at the airport what could be a good thing to use to gain an upper hand.

Here is the transcript:

Jonar Nader: The age of zero, one or two, her parents put her in the swimming pool and she grew up with water all her life. There is no point in her recollection as to when she learned to swim. So this young lady who is bright and intelligent, she literally has avoided her brain to even comprehend that humans might not be able to swim. And when she hears that some people have drowned in calm waters, she just has this explosion in her head. She says, ‘But how could they drown? All they had to do was–’ and to her it’s like walking. And this difference between not understanding that some people can’t swim and not comprehending at all just how anyone could drown is what we face when we are trying to talk about terror, terrorism, fraud and risk. It’s not so much that people don’t understand it. It’s that there are influential people, important people, policy makers and leaders. They not only not understand it but more like my 35-year-old friend just cannot even comprehend and it makes it really difficult to do anything about it.

And my young nephew who is now 16 as brilliant and as bright as they come, his father purchased for him a new computer for high school. And he was showing this to me and I said to him, ‘I hope you will not plug this into the internet and start downloading rubbish because you know what happens, it will grind your machine down. You will get viruses, spyware and all sorts of things.’ He said, ‘Oh, I know. I know.’ He knew all about the dangers of downloading Christmas cards and happy birthday downloads. He said, ‘No, no. I’m going to keep this PC clean,’ because the other one at home that he has is just a mess.

And then three seconds later, he said, ‘Let me show you this.’ And he clicks and he has got this application that makes the screen sound like a chainsaw and the cursor wherever it goes, it sort of gives you the impression that the glass is cracking. I said, ‘What’s this?’ He said, ‘Oh, a friend gave it to me.’ I said, ‘But, you just told me you’re not going to download rubbish.’ He said, ‘No, no, no. He gave it to me on a USB stick.’ I said, ‘Do you know what this application does? It sits in the background capturing every single key stroke you type from every love letter to every password to every bank account and when your friend is ready and when he’s near you, through his mobile phone and through infrared or bluetooth, it sends the data to him either by phone or email or through the air.’ He had no concept, no idea. Talk about vulnerability.

And we could say, ‘Oh, he’s 16. What would he know?’ Well, what did these savvy investors know about Mr. Madoff who today was being trialed and he said to people, the most savvy investors, ‘I’ll give you 48 percent return on your investment every year,’ and took 50 billion US dollars. So you could say, ‘Oh, the 16-year-old child didn’t understand the risks of downloading USB stuff, games, applications.’ Well, did the world’s most savvy investors understand? Even before Madoff, we had the same copycat situation prior. Like you didn’t know? So you tear your hair out. You didn’t know? Fascinating question.

So, if you have never been conned and if you don’t know how to con, you walk the streets oblivious to the fact that it is happening right out there in front of you and it can happen to you.