It’s been quite a year.
I think 2009 has been a year that we won’t soon forget for a large number of reasons. Most of them not so great…though I think that the many unfortunate events of this year have inspired and spawned a lot of excellent ideas and movements.
I won’t lie. I’ll be extremely happy to close the books on 2009.
Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod
I would also be a very happy camper if I never had to hear any of the following words or phrases again:
- Authentic (If I hear this word one more time I seriously just might poke my eye out with a fork.)
- Social media
- Engage
- Thought leadership
- Ping me
- Recession
- Off the grid
- Personal branding
- Building community
- Tweetup
Seriously people.
Can we talk about something else?
After reading (and writing) thousands of blog posts on how to “build community,” “be authentic,” “be engaging,” etc…I think we’ve got the picture.
I want to talk about something meaningful and important. I want to talk about things that will make an actual difference.
For example; I hear a LOT of complaining about what’s happening with healthcare, though I have yet to hear anyone lay out a single, thoughtful proposal for a better solution. Do you have one? If so, I’d love to hear about it.
What about unemployment? Who’s got a solid, well thought out plan to get people back to work?
And then there’s age discrimination. As if that’s not a massive problem.
We have millions of baby boomers who are forced to delay or even forgo retirement in this country because they’ve lost their home and/or had to spend their retirement savings just to survive through unemployment or under-employment.
And I read yesterday that people in their 30s are now experiencing age discrimination.
WTF.
Next thing you know we’ll be discriminating against college students before they even graduate. Why don’t we just start hiring third graders.
NEWSFLASH.
We’re all getting older.
Together. With each passing day.
So what are we going to do about it?
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Stephanie – Love this post, and I have to agree with you on most of your phrases. We definitely need to focus more on solutions and less on posturing in 2010, and I put myself in that group as well. Have a really excellent New Year and fantastic 2010.
” focus more on solutions and less on posturing”
Steve,
Thanks so much for summarizing my thoughts so accurately and succinctly!
Happy New Year to you as well, my friend.
Stephanie
1. Add “expert” and “transparent” to the list.
2. Get involved because there aren’t enough new jobs coming to Michigan.
3. Continue to help when I can.
4. Not complain.
5. Quit making lists.
and I sort of like the word Tweetup. I think it’s still ok.
Oooh transparent. Good one!
And, who am I kidding. Like I’m really going to stop saying tweetup.
Enjoyed your post, Stephanie. On health care fix, we need: 1.) Alternative ways to pool health risk. Currently, our system relies too much on large employers to distribute coverage. However, risk pooling for health insurance coverage is tricky. By definition, the people in the risk pool must not have come together for the purpose of purchasing health insurance, otherwise you get all the bad risks. 2.) We must reform the individual health insurance market. Allow insurers to sell individual policies across state lines, for starters. 3.) We must build appropriate economic incentives into the health care system. Doctors have an incentive to over-treat when they know a patient’s insurance will cover it. Patients often opt for expensive treatments when less expensive ones would do as well. 4.) We must establish standards for evidence-based care. http://cli.gs/z5MPZH 5.) Quality metrics must be released to the public. Medicare must open its claims database. http://cli.gs/zGDXgu
Jill,
Ok, great comments. Not sure I understand it all because I am certainly no expert on the subject, but I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful comment.
And I could not agree more on #3. Huge problem.
To your healthcare example/question, I have come to believe that as long as healthcare remains a for-profit endeavor, there is a profound and inherent conflict of interest that precludes solutions. Unfortunately, a shift from that paradigm does not appear to be in our collective wherewithal.
This graphic from the January 2010 issue of National Geographic Magazine is the most striking illustration of this conundrum I’ve yet seen.
http://bit.ly/7Zmnxs
I’d love to hear from some of our friends in Canada on this subject….
*ahem*
They’re in the graphic.
From your mouth to G-d’s ears-I RT this post because: A) I luv this post, and B) I like your rapier wit and insight.
We have to stop pumping the buzz words, and start providing substance and meaning in our posts. We banty these words around so much, that they lose their meaning and original intent.
Brava for a great post my friend.
Your twitterpal,
@HRMargo Margo Rose http://hrmargo.com
Thanks so much, Margo!
Oh great. So glad I published a blog post this morning, you know, my “thought leadership,” on helping people “build community”… In it, I suggest that hosting “tweetups” is great example of connecting people and strengthening your “personal brand.”
But I am proud that you and I “engaged” our networks via “social media” and hosted one heck of a “tweetup!”
Ha.
How did I know this was coming…lol.
#punkATL
Oh wow. You read my mind.
Great post, Stephanie! You said what a lot of us are thinking. I hope that 2010 is the year the bubble bursts on all these phrases. I also hope that we’ll see more blogs pop up about things that matter. I hope 2010 will bring along some innovation and solutions to real issues. Shoot me if I have to read one more blog post about social media and all of it’s greatness.
Loved this post! And really loved it because it provoked a response post out of me. Good posts not only gets others talking but blogging, too! Here’s my lengthy response: http://bit.ly/8MwXee
Bwahahaha! You’re right. I’m so tired of authentic too… which is a shame because it was one of my favorite adjectives. Pioneer is one too, which could be used almost daily in social media. OK, so if not “media”, what would you rather hear? I would consider it, what ever it may be.
health care solution=tort reform or just hang all the lawyers
Best of Luck not hearing these in 2010! You better get some earplugs! I actually said one of my least fav this past week and did not know how to punish myself. Ha Ha!
My healthcare shortlist:
1) Educate the public on what insurance should be. It is meant to cover a catastrophic event, not to pay for a trip to the doctor every time you have a cold. This will eliminate excess when healthy people understand it makes sense to pay $75 to see a doctor out of pocket in order to save $500 a month on insurance premiums.
2) Untie healthcare from employers. Give everyone the CASH in their salaries to go on the open competitive market to buy a plan. Creates more competition and competition lowers prices.
3) Society needs to come together to make the hard decisions about end of life treatment and when its appropriate for society to stop paying. Its a very difficult topic, but it will bankrupt this country when such a large percentage of healthcare is paid in the final week or two of life hooked up to machines with an inevitable outcome.
4. Stop the lawsuits like John said above. You should not be able to sue a doctor unless it is obvious negligence (operated on the wrong eye). Doctors now run every test in the world just to cover every possible angle. Medicine is not a perfect science.
The theme with all of this is fixing the SYSTEM, not just giving everyone a blank check to pay for services in a broken system. Once these problems are addressed, so much excess will be purged from the system that the costs left for basic coverage for the healthy uninsured plus the costs to insure the “uninsurable” with be negligible compared to the current monstrosity about to be signed. Just my 2 cents!
I posted a blog entry in Oct. ‘08 regarding health-care and what we’ve decided to do about it:
Why We Don’t Have Health Insurance…
It comes down to personal responsibility. (Read the comment from james3v1 for a possible solution to Joe Brown’s dilemma above. Other burden-sharing options could be created around other like-minded “communities.”)
As for age discrimination and unemployment: Until our government practices sound fiscal principles (and we ALL weather the pain of the correction [read: Depression] that results), unemployment will continue to fluctuate with the money supply.
The age discrimination of which you speak, is a symptom of inflation. But realize that inflation doesn’t mean “rising prices/wages;” those are a symptom of inflation. Inflation, literally, is an “increase in the money supply” (which, in the USA, is controlled by the Federal Reserve System). An increase in the supply of money simply devalues all of the currency that is at large. Dollars are no longer worth as much as they were, so companies demand more of them for their products; employees demand more of them for their salaries.
When employees demand more (not because they’re greedy, but because the government has devalued what they they’re earning), employers lay them off in exchange for workers who demand less (not because they’re less greedy, but because they don’t have the financial obligations—yet—of their older colleagues).
Hope that helps.
Can we add ‘Please Advise’ to the list? That’s one of those that, when used incorrectly as it so often is, makes me want to poke my own eye with a fork.
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