Why Understanding Situational Awareness Is Important To Your Employees And Family

This recent article from Stratfor is instructive on increasing your situational awareness which is critical to your personal safety and our National Security. Please ask your employees and family members to read it and pass it on.

A Primer on Situational Awareness
June 10, 2010 0856 GMT
By Scott Stewart

The world is a wonderful place, but it can also be a dangerous one. In almost every corner of the globe militants of some political persuasion are plotting terror attacks — and these attacks can happen in London or New York, not just in Peshawar or Baghdad. Meanwhile, criminals operate wherever there are people, seeking to steal, rape, kidnap,

or kill.

Regardless of the threat, it is very important to recognize that criminal and terrorist attacks do not materialize out of thin air. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Criminals and terrorists follow a process when planning their actions, and this process has several distinct steps. This process has traditionally been referred to as the "terrorist attack cycle", but if one looks at the issue thoughtfully, it becomes apparent that the same steps apply to nearly all crimes. Of course, there will be more time between steps in a complex crime like a kidnapping or car bombing than there will be between steps in a simple crime such as purse-snatching or shoplifting, where the steps can be completed quite rapidly. Nevertheless, the same steps are usually followed.

People who practice situational awareness can often spot this planning process as it unfolds and then take appropriate steps to avoid the dangerous situation or prevent it from happening altogether. Because of this, situational awareness is one of the key building blocks of effective personal security — and when exercised by large numbers of people, it can also be an important facet of national security. Since situational awareness is so important, and because we discuss situational awareness so frequently in our analyses, we thought it would be helpful to discuss the subject in detail and provide a primer that can be used by people in all sorts of situations.

Foundations

First and foremost, it needs to be noted that being aware of one’s surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations is more of a mindset

than a hard skill. Because of this, situational awareness is not something that can be practiced only by highly trained government agents or specialized corporate security countersurveillance teams. Indeed, it can be exercised by anyone with the will and the discipline to do so.

An important element of the proper mindset is to first recognize that threats exist. Ignorance or denial of a threat — or completely tuning out one’s surroundings while in a public place — makes a person’s chances of quickly recognizing the threat and avoiding it slim to none. This is why apathy, denial and complacency can be (and often are) deadly. A second important element is understanding the need to take responsibility for one’s own security. The resources of any government are finite and the authorities simply cannot be everywhere and cannot stop every criminal action. The same principle applies to private security at businesses or other institutions, like places of worship. Therefore, people need to look out for themselves and their neighbors.

Another important facet of this mindset is learning to trust your “gut” or intuition. Many times a person’s subconscious can notice subtle signs of danger that the conscious mind has difficulty quantifying or articulating. Many people who are victimized frequently experience such feelings of danger prior to an incident, but choose to ignore them. Even a potentially threatening person not making an immediate move — or even if the person wanders off quickly after a moment of eye contact — does not mean there was no threat.

Levels of Awareness

People typically operate on five distinct levels of awareness. There are many ways to describe these levels (“Cooper’s colors,” for example, which is a system frequently used in law enforcement and military training), but perhaps the most effective way to illustrate the differences between the levels is to compare them to the different degrees of attention we practice while driving. For our purposes here we will refer to the five levels as “tuned out;” “relaxed awareness;” “focused awareness;” “high alert” and “comatose.”

The first level, tuned out, is like when you are driving in a very familiar environment or are engrossed in thought, a daydream, a song on the radio or even by the kids fighting in the backseat. Increasingly, cell phone calls and texting are also causing people to tune out while they drive. Have you ever gotten into the car and arrived somewhere without even really thinking about your drive there? If so, then you’ve experienced being tuned out.

The second level of awareness, relaxed awareness, is like defensive driving. This is a state in which you are relaxed but you are also watching the other cars on the road and are looking well ahead for potential road hazards. If another driver looks like he may not stop at the intersection ahead, you tap your brakes to slow your car in case he does not. Defensive driving does not make you weary, and you can drive this way for a long time if you have the discipline to keep yourself at this level, but it is very easy to slip into tuned-out mode. If you are practicing defensive driving you can still enjoy the trip, look at the scenery and listen to the radio, but you cannot allow yourself to get so engrossed in those distractions that they exclude everything else. You are relaxed and enjoying your drive, but you are still watching for road hazards, maintaining a safe following distance and keeping an eye on the behavior of the drivers around you.

The next level of awareness, focused awareness, is like driving in hazardous road conditions. You need to practice this level of awareness when you are driving on icy or slushy roads — or the roads infested with potholes and erratic drivers that exist in many third-world countries. When you are driving in such an environment, you need to keep two hands on the wheel at all times and have your attention totally focused on the road and the other drivers. You don’t dare take your eyes off the road or let your attention wander. There is no time for cell phone calls or other distractions. The level of concentration required for this type of driving makes it extremely tiring and stressful. A drive that you normally would not think twice about will totally exhaust you under these conditions because it demands your prolonged and total concentration.

The fourth level of awareness is high alert. This is the level that induces an adrenaline rush, a prayer and a gasp for air all at the same time — “Watch out! There’s a deer in the road! Hit the brakes!” This also happens when that car you are watching doesn’t stop at the stop sign and pulls out right in front of you. High alert can be scary, but at this level you are still able to function. You can hit your brakes and keep your car under control. In fact, the adrenalin rush you get at this stage can sometimes even aid your reflexes. But, the human body can tolerate only short periods of high alert before becoming physically and mentally exhausted.

The last level of awareness, comatose, is what happens when you literally freeze at the wheel and cannot respond to stimuli, either because you have fallen asleep, or, at the other end of the spectrum, because you are petrified from panic. It is this panic-induced paralysis that concerns us most in relation to situational awareness. The comatose level of awareness (or perhaps more accurately, lack of awareness) is where you go into shock, your brain ceases to process information and you simply cannot react to the reality of the situation. Many times when this happens, a person can go into denial, believing that “this can’t be happening to me,” or the person can feel as though he or she is observing, rather than actually participating in, the event. Often, the passage of time will seem to grind to a halt. Crime victims frequently report experiencing this sensation and being unable to act during an unfolding crime.

Finding the Right Level

Now that we’ve discussed the different levels of awareness, let’s focus on identifying what level is ideal at a given time. The body and mind both require rest, so we have to spend several hours each day at the comatose level while asleep. When we are sitting at our homes watching a movie or reading a book, it is perfectly fine to operate in the tuned-out mode. However, some people will attempt to maintain the tuned-out mode in decidedly inappropriate environments (e.g., when they are out on the street at night in a third-world barrio), or they will maintain a mindset wherein they deny that they can be victimized by criminals. “That couldn’t happen to me, so there’s no need to watch for it.” They are tuned out.

Some people are so tuned out as they go through life that they miss even blatant signs of pending criminal activity directed specifically at them. In 1992, an American executive living in the Philippines was kidnapped by a Marxist kidnapping gang in Manila known as the “Red Scorpion Group.” When the man was debriefed following his rescue, he described in detail how the kidnappers had blocked off his car in traffic and abducted him. Then, to the surprise of the debriefing team, he said that on the day before he was abducted, the same group of guys had attempted to kidnap him at the exact same location, at the very same time of day and driving the same vehicle. The attackers had failed to adequately box his car in, however, and his driver was able to pull around the blocking vehicle and proceed to the office.

Since the executive did not consider himself to be a kidnapping target, he had just assumed that the incident the day before his abduction was “just another close call in crazy Manila traffic.” The executive and his driver had both been tuned out. Unfortunately, the executive paid for this lack of situational awareness by having to withstand an extremely traumatic kidnapping, which included almost being killed in the dramatic Philippine National Police operation that rescued him.

If you are tuned out while you are driving and something happens — say, a child runs out into the road or a car stops quickly in front of you — you will not see the problem coming. This usually means that you either do not see the hazard in time to avoid it and you hit it, or you totally panic and cannot react to it — neither is good. These reactions (or lack of reaction) occur because it is very difficult to change mental states quickly, especially when the adjustment requires moving several steps, say, from tuned out to high alert. It is like trying to shift your car directly from first gear into fifth and it shudders and stalls. Many times, when people are forced to make this mental jump and they panic (and stall), they go into shock and will actually freeze and be unable to take any action — they go comatose. This happens not only when driving but also when a criminal catches someone totally unaware and unprepared. While training does help people move up and down the alertness continuum, it is difficult for even highly trained individuals to transition from tuned out to high alert. This is why police officers, federal agents and military personnel receive so much training on situational awareness.

It is critical to stress here that situational awareness does not mean being paranoid or obsessively concerned about your security. It does not mean living with the irrational expectation that there is a dangerous criminal lurking behind every bush. In fact, people simply cannot operate in a state of focused awareness for extended periods, and high alert can be maintained only for very brief periods before exhaustion sets in. The “flight or fight” response can be very helpful if it can be controlled. When it gets out of control, however, a constant stream of adrenaline and stress is simply not healthy for the body or the mind. When people are constantly paranoid, they become mentally and physically burned out. Not only is this dangerous to physical and mental health, but security also suffers because it is very hard to be aware of your surroundings when you are a complete basket case. Therefore, operating constantly in a state of high alert is not the answer, nor is operating for prolonged periods in a state of focused alert, which can also be overly demanding and completely enervating. This is the process that results in alert fatigue. The human body was simply not designed to operate under constant stress. People (even highly skilled operators) require time to rest and recover.

Because of this, the basic level of situational awareness that should be practiced most of the time is relaxed awareness, a state of mind that can be maintained indefinitely without all the stress and fatigue associated with focused awareness or high alert. Relaxed awareness is not tiring, and it allows you to enjoy life while rewarding you with an effective level of personal security. When you are in an area where there is potential danger (which, by definition, is almost anywhere), you should go through most of your day in a state of relaxed awareness. Then if you spot something out of the ordinary that could be a potential threat, you can “dial yourself up” to a state of focused awareness and take a careful look at that potential threat (and also look for others in the area).

If the potential threat proves innocuous, or is simply a false alarm, you can dial yourself back down into relaxed awareness and continue on your merry way. If, on the other hand, you look and determine that the potential threat is a probable threat, seeing it in advance allows you to take actions to avoid it. You may never need to elevate to high alert, since you have avoided the problem at an early stage. However, once you are in a state of focused awareness you are far better prepared to handle the jump to high alert if the threat does change from potential to actual — if the three guys lurking on the corner do start coming toward you and look as if they are reaching for weapons. The chances of you going comatose are far less if you jump from focused awareness to high alert than if you are caught by surprise and “forced” to go into high alert from tuned out. An illustration of this would be the difference between a car making a sudden stop in front of a person when the driver is practicing defensive driving, compared to a car that makes a sudden stop in front of a person when the driver is sending a text message.

Of course, if you know that you must go into an area that is very dangerous, you should dial yourself up to focused awareness when you are in that area. For example, if there is a specific section of highway where a lot of improvised explosive devices detonate and ambushes occur, or if there is a part of a city that is controlled (and patrolled) by criminal gangs — and you cannot avoid these danger areas for whatever reason — it would be prudent to heighten your level of awareness when you are in those areas. An increased level of awareness is also prudent when engaging in common or everyday tasks, such as visiting an ATM or walking to the car in a dark parking lot. The seemingly trivial nature of these common tasks can make it all too easy to go on “autopilot” and thus expose yourself to threats. When the time of potential danger has passed, you can then go back to a state of relaxed awareness.

This process also demonstrates the importance of being familiar with your environment and the dangers that are present there. Such awareness allows you to avoid many threats and to be on the alert when you must venture into a dangerous area.

Clearly, few of us are living in the type of intense threat environment currently found in places like Mogadishu, Juarez or Kandahar. Nonetheless, average citizens all over the world face many different kinds of threats on a daily basis — from common thieves and assailants to criminals and mentally disturbed individuals aiming to conduct violent acts to militants wanting to carry out large-scale attacks against subways and aircraft.

Many of the steps required to conduct these attacks must be accomplished in a manner that makes the actions visible to the potential victim and outside observers. It is at these junctures that people practicing situational awareness can detect these attack steps, avoid the danger and alert the authorities. When people practice situational awareness they not only can keep themselves safer but they can also help keep others safe. And when groups of people practice situational awareness together they can help keep their schools, houses of worship, workplaces and cities safe from danger.

And as we’ve discussed many times before, as the

terrorist threat continues to devolve into one almost as diffuse as the criminal threat, ordinary citizens are also becoming an increasingly important national security resource.

This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
STRATFOR delivers critical intelligence and perspective through:
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Analysis: Daily reports that assess key world events and their significance
Quarterly & Annual Forecasts: Rigorous predictions of what will happen next
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Intelligence Guidance: Internal memos that guide STRATFOR staff in their intelligence-gathering operations in the immediate days ahead
STRATFOR’s chief executive officer, Dr. George Friedman, is a widely recognized international affairs expert and author of numerous books, including The Next 100 Years (Doubleday, 2009), America’s Secret War (Doubleday, 2005), and The Future of War (Crown, 1996).
STRATFOR members include individuals, FORTUNE 100 corporations, government agencies and other organizations around the world. For more info go to www.stratfor.com.

Advice from a 93-Year-Old Veteran

Advice from a 93-Year-Old Veteran

May 31st of this year is Memorial Day in the United States, a day of remembrance for those who gave their lives in war. I visited my father this weekend, who is 93 and as lucid as a much younger man, and our conversations ranged from our family to his career as a psychiatrist to his experiences as a doctor in the US Army during World War II. He pulled out an envelope he had prepared and asked me to give it to one of my own children, who recently returned from a military combat deployment abroad. It contained letters he had sent home and several photographs of him during the bloody Italian campaign of 1943-1945, during which there were 320,000 allied casualties including 50,000 dead. It was the most lethal campaign in the World War II European theater.

My father considers himself extraordinary lucky: He survived several years of ferocious combat as a front-line medical doctor in Italy with the US Army’s 34th infantry division. While many others died, he survived. He survived landing at the beach in Salerno, Italy, while under fire; the second landing wave at Anzio, north of Rome, under worse fire; Monte Cassino, where, he will tell you grimly, his battalion started with 30 officers and was left with only five standing at the end; and finally being stuck on the Gothic Line near Bologna, during the horrifically cold winter of 1944 when the Germans pinned the allies—and his division—down for months in the snow. He eventually ending up walking (yes, on foot) from Rome to Turin with his unit while supervising a team of medics, getting awarded the Bronze Star for saving a man’s life during an artillery bombardment, and being promoted to the rank of Major. He is self-deprecating about his Bronze Star (“I don’t quite know why I did it—it was really stupid—running out of that church into the square where a soldier lay wounded, with artillery shells falling left and right, and dragging him inside…”); nearly incredulous that he lived while so many of his fellow soldiers died (“I’m a very lucky man to be alive today”); and proud of his service as a medical officer (“I took the Hippocratic Oath,” he told me once, “and so I never carried a sidearm even though I was required to”). While on the front lines in Italy, he noticed how the constant exposure to combat wore men down, and he wrote and published the seminal article on what is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he entitled, “Old Sergeant’s Syndrome.” 67 years later it is still quoted in psychiatric and sociology textbooks. The article earned my father promotion to the post of “Division Psychiatrist,” the first such appointment in history in the US Army.

He came back safely, as did recently my own son. But many made the ultimate sacrifice and did not return to their loved ones.

A sampling of assorted wisdom I’ve collected from my dad over the years;

On preparation: “There is no substitute for genuine lack of preparation.” (This was printed in a book on aphorisms and witty sayings).

On being careful about whom you mouth off to: “Never talk back to a General. I did, and I lost a cushy job riding a medical supply train in Northern Africa and was sent to live in a foxhole on the Italian front as a Battalion Surgeon” (true story).

On getting along in a foreign country: “You only need to know a few well-chosen words in a foreign language to get along. The first word I learned in Italian was ‘cipolla’ which means ‘onion.’ As we marched through the Italian countryside we would yell out to the farmers, ‘cipolla?’ and they would give us some onions that we would then chop up and put in our c-rations, which were so bland.

On your convictions: “Sometimes you have to act on your beliefs. I had tuberculosis in medical school, and so I was classified 4-F by the Army. 4-F is medically unfit for service. I read widely at the time, however, and I understood how evil the Nazis were. I was Jewish, too, which gave me even more reason to serve. So with help from my father, I made contact with the selective service board, and they arranged for me to sign a waiver in order to enlist.”

On giving people bad news: “If you know you’re going to have to deliver some bad news, tell people as far in advance as possible—this enables them to process it before the actual event. If you’re going to miss a day of work in a month, tell your boss immediately. He may be upset when you tell him, but by the time the day finally rolls around he will have already processed his anger and he’ll be just fine with your day off.”

On being careful about taking on others head-on: “Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk.”

On setting aside your worries: “At the battle of Monte Cassino, we were under constant artillery bombardment, and we slept in deep foxholes surrounded by sandbags. If your foxhole took a direct hit during the night, and many did, you would not wake up in the morning. So before going to sleep I would do everything I could to ensure I was as safe as possible: I would rearrange the sandbags, dig a bit deeper into the foxhole, organize my personal belongings, and so on. Then I would stop worrying and go to sleep.”

On getting one of my children to do their homework in 9th grade: “When you stop caring so much about their homework,” he told me at the time, “they’ll start caring about it themselves" (why didn't I listen?)

I personally hope we never have to fight a war with anyone, anywhere, again. In the meantime—spare a thought, meditate, say a prayer, or whatever you prefer—on Memorial Day.

From Andrew Sobel's Blog. Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on the skills and strategies required to build clients for life. Andrew's new book is All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships. For more info go to www.andrewsobel.com.

Review Your Compliance On Wage & Hour Issues With Your Attorney

This recent article from Advisen warns of the dangerous trend in employee Wage and Hour lawsuits:

The Threat of Wage-and-Hour Lawsuits

Wage-and-hour lawsuits have been an escalating threat to companies of all sizes over the past decade. Now outranking discrimination lawsuits, measured by both number of filings and size of settlements, these employment practices lawsuits have become an unforeseen calamity for companies across all industry sectors and a new challenge for risk managers. Alterations made to the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by the US Department of Labor (DOL) in 2004, originally intended to clarify definitions to make it easier for companies to comply, woke this sleeping giant as they sparked awareness among the plaintiff's bar. The DOL and certain state labor departments have stepped up enforcement efforts in recent years, and the DOL has ramped up its Wage-and-Hour Division under the Obama Administration. These elevated regulatory efforts not only result in more fines, but precipitate class action civil lawsuits by employees allowed under the FLSA and equivalent state labor laws.

FLSA rules, the basic federal rules governing minimum wage and overtime pay, appear straightforward on the surface. Digging in deeper, it becomes apparent that many of the rules draw blurry lines in the real world. Defining on-the-clock versus off-the-clock hours can be a challenge, and distinguishing exempt from nonexempt employees is much more complex than most realize. The FLSA was initially devised in a time when most of the American workforce was blue-collar, but much of the Act applies to the largely white-collar salaried workforce of today, and its application to these jobs is still being worked out in the courts.

Wal-Mart has been the target of over 80 wage-and-hour class action civil suits, and has agreed to settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Observers might not be surprised that most of Wal-Mart's employees are covered by the FLSA, and its 1.4 million US employees provide plenty of opportunities for lawsuits. Companies primarily employing salaried professionals, however, have been subject to large class action suits as well, and there have been eye-popping settlements, such as IBM, Siebel Systems, UBS Financial Services, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

Insurers have regarded wage-and-hour liability as largely an uninsurable risk because the incidences are perceived as resulting from deliberate and illegal acts, as opposed to negligence. Despite recent evidence of negligence being the primary driver in many cases, most insurers have shied away from covering this liability in their employment practices liability insurance (EPLI) policies. Companies are advised to develop compliance procedures regarding the FLSA, review the exempt status of each employee, and stress the importance of strictly following work-and-hour procedures in management training.

All The Best,
TPE3

Fraudulent Bonding Companies Increase?

Watch Out For Fraudulent Bonding Companies During These Tough Times

When the economy gets tough and construction company profits wane, surety companies tighten up their requirements. Contractors may find their bonding line of credit is reduced or gone entirely. As more contractors seek bonding credit, there can be an increase in the number of fraudulent bonding companies. This seems to happen in every economic downturn.

According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a Baton Rouge judge has ordered Infinity Surety of Louisiana Inc of Metairie, LA. and company principal George D. Black to stop doing business. The Louisiana Department of Insurance accused it of selling bogus construction bonds for public works projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said that Infinity Surety wasn't licensed to operate as an insurance company when it sold bonds to contractors bidding on government projects. Donelon said damage from Infinity Surety's actions is widespread. "They have been peddling their wares all over the state”, he said.

Infinity Surety provided the bond on a $51.4 million project by the Louisiana Department of Education for L.B. Landry High School in New Orleans on a bid submitted by Home Solutions Restoration of Louisiana Inc. and JRDKS Construction. The company also provided bonds on Home Solutions bids on a $5.4 million public works project for Davant Consolidated Building and a $6.9 million project for the Port Sulphur Consolidated Community Center, both in Plaquemines Parish.

Several construction companies also charge that Infinity's actions caused them to lose out on jobs when the bond insurance proved to be worthless. A joint bid by Benetech LLC and JRDKS Construction to rebuild the cabins at Bayou Segnette State Park in Westwego was rejected, the companies said, because Infinity didn't meet bond requirements. A lawsuit filed by the bidders says that at least 15 other public works projects are affected.

If you have doubts about the viability of a bonding company, give us a call and we will check it out for you. Also if you are offered a bonding line of credit that seems too good to be true, you might be right! Watch out and be careful!

Housing Overhang/Shadow Inventory Is An Enormous Problem To The Recovery Of The US Housing Market

The Good News Is That Dallas Is In Pretty Good Shape With Regard To “Shadow Inventory”


According to “Amherst Mortgage Insight” from Amherst Securities Group, investors may be premature in believing the housing market has bottomed and is beginning to recover. Amherst estimates there is a housing overhang in the US of 7 million units. They are talking about loans that are destined to ultimately default and liquidate, creating a huge “shadow inventory.” This is 7 times what the estimate was in 2005.

The Mortgage Bankers Association quarterly delinquency survey showed that at the end of the 2nd quarter of 2009, 13.54% of mortgages in the U.S. were in some stage of delinquency: 4.3% were in foreclosure, another 3.88% were 90+ days delinquent, 1.68% were 60 days delinquent, and 3.68% were 30 days delinquent. Only a small percent of the loans that are delinquent will actually recover; most will foreclose. The MBA estimates that of the 13.54% total distressed inventory 12.42% will actually liquidate. That’s 6.94 million units. With existing home sales totaling around 5.2 million units, the 6.94 million units of overhang is about 1.35 times 1 year of existing home sales! This number does not include those loans that will become delinquent next month and the month after.

The effect of the huge “shadow inventory” varies dramatically from city to city. The report has a chart showing the 20 cities it reports on with dramatically different results. It compares actually listings of houses for sale in the city to the total inventory of houses potentially for sale including the “shadow inventory.” The “shadow inventory” is made up of real estate owned by banks not yet listed for sale, loans posted for foreclosure sales not yet owned by banks, and all of the loans that have received notice of default.

The total inventory in a city is equal to the listings plus the total “shadow inventory.” The worst situation is in Las Vegas, Nevada . . . it had 16,765 listings with a total inventory of 69,614. The total inventory is over 4 times the houses listed for sale!

The 5 cities that had inventories that were 2 times or greater than the actual listings were Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Dallas was the 3rd best on the list with a total inventory equal to 1.17 times the actual listings. Dallas had an actual listing of 30,530 houses and the total inventory was 35,757. I think that means that we are likely to see a much quicker housing recovery in our area than in the more distressed parts of the U.S.

It appears that housing prices have stabilized because there is a seasonality aspect to housing prices. The favorable seasonal factors will disappear over the coming months and the reality of this 7 million housing overhang is likely to set in. This could further exacerbate the problem if it causes a further home price depreciation which could lead to an even higher volume of defaults.

(Go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/20351562/Shadow-Inventory-Report-Amherst-9-23-09 to read the entire report).

The Danger of Fame

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team and many other great books is one of my favorite thinkers. This is one of his latest thought provokers:

Fame

A few months ago, prompted by all the news about Michael Jackson’s troubled life and drug-related death and the similarities between him and Elvis Presley, I started to think about the dangers of fame. And when the travails of Jon and Kate (of the Plus Eight television show) became known, I sat down and wrote a first draft of an essay on that topic. But I got busy with other priorities and I set it aside. Well, with the recent revelations about Tiger Woods and his family, I decided it was time to finish that essay.

Now, I have no desire to indulge in any of these real life tragedies, and I have no right to judge the people involved—we all have problems. But I cannot help but think that their fame was related to, if not the biggest cause of, their problems. I get more and more convinced of this every time I go through the check stand at the grocery store and see how many famous actors, musicians, celebrities and athletes experience more than their fair share of suffering. In fact, I’ve decided that fame is actually a very good predictor of misery.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Fame is ultimately a lonely proposition, fraught with supposed benefits which always prove to be temporary and which seem to crowd out the only thing that really matters, which is love. When people who achieve fame begin to feel the emptiness of their situation, they can’t help but wonder what is wrong with them. Troubled by this, they usually seek to fill their emptiness with greater gusto than ever, starting a spiral that leads them inevitably to misery.

And yet, in spite of the overwhelming evidence of this pattern, there continues to be a universal and growing obsession in our society with becoming famous. This is apparent when we consider the proliferation of reality TV shows, celebrity gossip TV shows, talent shows and 24-hour “news” channels, not to mention all those newsstand magazines at the grocery store. In spite of all the evidence of its harm, fame is as alluring as ever. This is so astoundingly, insanely illogical that it calls for an analogy.

Imagine that a trendy and extremely expensive new car hits the market and that it is known to easily flip over and cause serious injury, even death, to its drivers in far greater numbers than any other car. Now, imagine people doing anything they could—borrowing great sums of money, mortgaging their homes, cashing in their kids’ college fund—to buy that car. And when they are asked why they would do something so self-destructive, they look at you like you’re crazy and say “Do you know how many people wish they could drive this car? Besides, that won’t happen to me. I’m a better driver than everyone else!”

That’s pretty much what so many in our society do when they see the undeniable pain experienced by people who achieve fame and still insist that its benefits are worth the cost. They ignore the compelling stories told by the handful of people who have lived through the nightmares of fame and warn against its dangers, and pay attention instead to those fame-addicted celebrities who keep getting up off the ground and coming back for more misery (e.g. Celebrity Survivor, Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Rehab, Celebrity Boxing, you get the point).

As humorous and innocuous as this may seem, it poses a very real problem in our society, especially when young people start to believe that fame is itself a goal, an accomplishment worth almost any sacrifice.

So what are we, as a society, to do? We can start by exhorting one another to avoid the temptation of fame and encouraging each other to value those things in life which prove to be real sources of lasting peace and joy. That may seem like a monumental task, I know, but I have one idea about how to get things started.

I would like People Magazine—and for that matter, all the other publications lining the aisles at the grocery store—to start printing a big disclaimer on its cover:

WARNING! THE PEOPLE FEATURED IN THIS MAGAZINE ARE NOT TO BE ENVIED OR EMULATED. IN FACT, THEY SHOULD BE PITIED AND PRAYED FOR BECAUSE THEIR FAME REALLY IS A TERRIBLE BURDEN AND SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASES THEIR CHANCES OF BECOMING MISERABLE.

I’m pretty sure the folks at People won’t like my idea. But maybe we can all do our best to remember it whenever we pick up one of those publications and are tempted to wish we were like the smiley and beautiful people we see and read about. Instead, maybe we will decide to thank God for the enduring gifts He gives us. Heck, maybe we’ll even put that magazine back on the shelf.

If you'd like more of Patrick Lencioni's wisdom go to http://www.simplewisdomproject.com/ and sign up for his emails.

“The Simple Wisdom Project is a source of perspective and common sense about topics relating to family, faith, and life’s daily challenges. We believe that much of the wisdom we need to live better lives has been forgotten or abandoned, and what we really need is to rediscover simple truths.”

Patrick Lencioni

“people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed”

Samuel Johnson

Consequences Of Not Confirming Financing Can Be Huge

Virginia Court Allows Owner To Stiff GC And Four Subcontractors For $13,000,000!

Sometimes when we ask contractors to confirm financing we get push back . . . "I know they are good for it" or "We've worked for this owner (or GC) a lot" or "I hate to ask that question - it is kind of an insult". Today it is essential that you get written confirmation of financing before starting work or you may end up like these guys.

According to the Construction Law Group Alert of Hirschler Fleischer (www.hf-law.com), construction began in July, 2007 on the $180 million condo project in Norfolk and was stopped 2 months later after the owner failed to get financing. The GC and subs filed suit for payment and owner said it had no liability to the GC, citing a provision in the contract stating that it had "no obligation or liability to the GC for any costs in the Construction Phase" in the event that the owner could not obtain funding for the project. The GC and subs argued that because the Owner had issued a notice to proceed, directed that work be continued, and approved payment applications they had waived that provision and were estopped from relying on it.

The judge ruled for the owner and directed that all 5 lawsuits be dismissed and ordered the mechanic's liens be released. The judge acknowledged that this decision would "cause serious hardship to some subcontractors and materialmen" on the project but that it was his duty to "construe the contract as written and not to produce a result some might find fair or just."

In making this decision the judge determined that the Owner had never represented that its construction loan had been funded and that the GC knew that the project could not be funded without the loan. Also the GC had failed to exercise its right under the contract to demand evidence of a construction loan to fund the Owner's obligations under the contract.

Moral of the story - Always demand evidence of financing prior to starting work on a project!

TPE3