Dealing with and Preventing Outrage

 Karthik Ramanna’s new book, The Age of Outrage, is going to be a welcome addition to those with corporate conflicts and public relation snafus. Ramanna provides a model for responding to and preventing incidents of outrage. He lays out steps, phases, scripts that can guide a leader or anyone trying to effect civil discourse and change. Providing examples in national governments around the globe, corporations, historical incidents and literature, the author illustrates how his methodology eases the outrage. While his book is hopeful, his Coda does delineate how much work is still needed in the 2020’s. 

As many who have experienced resistance to policies or decisions, mutual trust is key and foundational. His scripts can help move opposing parties closer to understanding each other and agreement if both parties are operating in good faith and without ulterior motives. If leaders of an organization or “rebel group” are operating out of self-interest—narcissists, and other toxic leaders who are motivated by short-term monetary or reputation gain rather than the organization’s/nation’s—this methodology may not work. Scorched earth/salted fields types of outcomes may be the goal of such leaders operating in win-lose attitude: if I can’t win, no one is going to win. 

For those who need a glimpse of a future hope, Ramanna’s book can be a methodology for those who might have to respond to outrage in their position.

Saving Face in African Time While Bowing to the Boss

 David Livermore’s 3rd edition of Leading with Cultural Intelligence is being published. Livermore is an expert in the field of cultural intelligence and gives us an updated framework for assessing our cultural quotient (CQ). He describes four dimensions: Drive (motivation), Knowledge, Strategy and Action. Lots of other cross-cultural books and articles deal mainly with Knowledge. This part is easy to gain if you’re interested. And it’s this interest, this motivation that Livermore realized was missing from some of his early efforts; he assumed everyone in a cross-cultural situation would want to know more and figure out how to adopt/adapt and execute in someone else’s culture, in order to be the most effective. Sadly this turned out not to be the case with some of his clients.

Even if you’re not working in international endeavors (or traveling to other countries), we all interact with many sub-cultures (north vs. south, rural vs urban, 1st generation immigrant vs established family history, socioeconomic status, generational, levels of industry experience, single industry vs multi-industry exposure, etc. and obviously ethnicities). Livermore provides some solutions to any of the fear, paralysis, blundering, blustering, over-exuberant responses we may be tempted to have in our daily situations.

I highly recommend this book and am appreciative of the publisher for letting me see an advanced copy of this edition.