The elevator that lifts you up can also bring you back down!

Here we are approaching year's end, and rather inevitably, during some quieter moments in and around the various feasts and festivities, one finds oneself taking stock of life and career and one's level of success, and how lucky/unlucky one feels about it all. Of course, the only real viewpoint is how lucky we all are, compared to so many, even if it's human nature to find something to gripe about - but sticking with the positive is always going to take us further in the end. 

As nauseating as all the currently-in-vogue "paying it forward" and "teachable moment" armchair (make that chaise longue!) psychology psychobabble on the TV is, there is a lesson in there - somewhere - you just have to dig it out from within the often self-serving "How great I am to be sharing my wealth-wisdom-winning ways with y'all" self-promotion. Generally speaking, the celebrities or "winners" who do it on the quiet are the ones whose motives I trust (the most), while anyone having a bright light shone on them in primetime for all they do for others, apparently out of the blue, well ....you know. 

But as much as it gets people all watery-eyed and weak at the knees to see some rich, famous celebrity helping others "below" them, those very same people often go into work with a stellar focus on only helping themselves and their own career, even at the expense of others and being willing to trample over those "below" them as they see fit or deem necessary. There's an apparent disconnect here, as if somehow it's okay for a celebrity to care for those beneath them or thank the paying public who got them there, because they have made it and are untouchable now, so of course they can afford to give something back!

I don't think that's the point, at all. Each of us is (or can be) our very own (minor) celebrity; one who has made it to a large extent, and who probably does owe some people for where one climbed to today (irrespective of current job title or remuneration level), and it's not because one is not all the way there yet that one should exhibit no gratitude. Yes, it can be a dog-eat-dog world in the typical office or workplace, but it's not because others behave like dogs that you have to do the same to survive. On the contrary, the exact opposite stance may even help you stand out more and rise above the incessant, meaningless barking. 

But it is deemed somewhat acceptable to scratch and scrap one's way up the ladder, to fight to get to the top, and then one is expected to suddenly undergo a personality transformation and begin to go all warm and cuddly with a new-found desire to "give back" to others? This is extremely unlikely to happen in the corporate world. Those who trample people on the way up, are those who are gonna be an even bigger pain in the ass, once there. Conversely, those who got there the right way  (based on actual merit)  and the kind way (some would argue that's just a pipe dream) are much more likely to remain that way, once they achieve their success. 

One does hear the argument that celebrity X or executive Y did not get to  where they are today by being Mr. or Mrs. Niceguy, so one must stay laser-focused and ruthless on the way up, in order to get there, and then of course it's easier to breathe and think of others once you have reached your own individual goals. This is all fine and dandy, but it will take you years to climb that ladder, and you will have passed through the working lives of many, many others by then; frankly, if you are known as a total b**ch (or worse!) after 5-10 years of ladder-climbing, there will be almost nothing you can do to change that perception around town, later. It sort of gets written in metaphorical stone on your real career headstone, and for some it later becomes the tagline on their career gravestone, as they tumble back down the big game of snakes and ladders that is business and life. Or even the business of life!

The cool quote from actor Kevin Spacey (yeah, that other Kevin! ;) caught my eye recently and it works well in relation to today's topic, both in terms of comparison and contrast to what is being discussed. Yes, it is an extremely endearing thought and gesture to send the elevator back down, of course! However, at the same time, unlike ourselves,  having reached his level of success and wealth, it is unlikely that he will ever need to use that elevator down again. But that is almost never the case for the typical individual in the business world, where "fame" and power can be much more transient in nature. 

Thus in our case, and with the way the economic crisis impacted the business world after 2008, it is not uncommon to find ourselves back inside that elevator once more, going down, and you can bet that the doors will open on every single floor between the top and the ground floor, with a mass of instantly recognisable faces crowding the doors to have a good, long look at you on your journey down. It is not likely to be a pain-free process, and the level (or lack) of vitriol mixed with pure pleasure on those faces will be a direct measure of how you rode the elevator up in the first place!

Depending on just how high you may have risen, it could well be one extremely lengthy metaphorical descent back down to where you began your journey - on the ground floor, looking for a job. The metaphorical journey down may be a lengthy one, but being called into human resources and walking out with a box full of your personal effects can be over in what feels like a few seconds, simultaneously hitting the ground floor with as heavy a thump as the metaphorical elevator hitting the ground beside you. Yes, that's you inside that elevator, walking out on the ground floor in a state of total shock!

I personally don't believe there is anything to be gained by scratching your way up, and you actually get more out of people by encouraging them to help you get the most out of your tasks, while in turn helping them do so in return. One climbs based on merit and talent, not due to being loudest, scratchiest, or the type who spends more time doing politics than doing their job; the latter type always gets theirs in the end anyway, when people realize that they don't actually have the skills necessary to do the bloody job. 

It costs little to be a little more giving and a lot less selfish by collaborating with colleagues rather than being in endless competition for attention and promotion with them, and it can pay huge dividends in terms of what people really think about you, and will be willing to say about you, when your name comes up in both everyday conversation and in terms of being a promotion candidate. While again, there are those who would say nice guys/gals finish last, I prefer to think of it in terms of nice guys being finished (i.e. out of a job) last. 

As much as I admire Kevin Spacey's quote, I might just add-in that on the way up, it's not a bad idea to hold the doors open a little longer on each floor to allow a few others to jump in with you, or simply to take a few minutes to chat with the people that you meet on the ride up - it can make a massive difference not only to the likelihood of having to take that elevator down again, but also to how people react to that coming back down to ground - and a little extra cushion can go a long way on a darker day! 

Resolving to avoid the trap of end-of-year resolutions!

One of the biggest mysteries known to mankind is where does December go? One second we are in late November beginning to come up with ideas for presents for loved ones, then it's back to business, last minute end-of-year deadlines and the usual round of office parties and social events. We wake up and it's suddenly December 20th, with everything else to be done in two or three days, as the pressure gauge begins to hit the red zone. 

It's totally imaginary, of course, but we always seem to lose a month in December each year, just when we probably need some extra time the most, but there are only 24 hours in a day and there's nothing much we can do about that. In any case, I discussed the "Christmas craziness" at work in last week's post, so naturally this time we come to that other perennial of the festive season and end of year - resolutions for the next 12 months!

I have never, ever been a fan of New Year's Eve, even when younger. There's something I find actually counter-productive about it, and I think it's due to all the fuss that's made over it and how one is expected to party like it's 1999, and put aside any/all of the resolutions that one felt better for having made earlier. People resolve, then go nuts, then wake shell shocked in no fit condition to resolve anything, with the Christmas dream over and the cold, hard reality of January 1st staring them in the face. The day is built up so much, that just about any day coming after it simply has to feel like a downer, right?

It seems we don't learn from our mistakes, and so we continue to make futile resolutions that are so easy to make on December 30th or 31st, but so difficult to stick to , even by January 3rd or 4th! Clearly, it's the easiest thing in the world to proclaim one will stop smoking in 2015, then head out to a massive party with extra smokes in store to make up for all the smokes one will miss next year, and suddenly mere days into the new year, one is, well, smoking again - or smoking still, may be the more accurate way of putting it. 

I don't know why us humanoids insist on setting overly ambitious goals for ourselves, when it's been proven that it doesn't work, instead of setting more reasonable and attainable goals and sticking to them. I mean, how often do you hear someone exclaim that they are gonna quit smoking, in comparison to how frequently you hear someone state that they are going to smoke less? If one could do something less for a few years in a row, who knows, it might be more easily dropped - permanently - rather than failing repeatedly at the cold turkey approach. 

Putting aside bad habits in our personal lives, I think we can benefit from a similar approach in the workplace. Why resolve to make massive changes in particular aspects of our work performance which tend to slip away frighteningly quickly upon facing the horrors of the office in the first week of January? It would be much more productive to examine honestly what things we were good at and did well at, and commit to focusing on doing more of that, and correspondingly facing our weaknesses and commit to them manifesting less in our day at the office. If we set the impossible goal of pleasing everyone all of the time, then surely we are destined to fail. Conversely, if we are determined to please more people than we did last year, then that may well become reality. 

The whole new year resolution and new year party thing seems to be a case of putting off till tomorrow what can be done today, and it's always better to do it today. One doesn't need to wait till December 31st each year to try to improve ourselves; if we mean it, it can be started today, even if today is in summer of autumn. The sooner we begin to act on having thought it or even said it, the more chance there is that we do mean it and will execute it, thus increasing our chances of actually succeeding at it!

There is an added advantage to taking a more ongoing project management-style approach to our resolutions and will power - one doesn't awaken at  midday on January 1st feeling like one did die in 1999, with all sorts of added pressure on one's shoulders from what one promised the wife or husband, kids, friends and colleagues just the day before! Now that surely makes January 1st a much less depressing affair, converting it into a day that requires a lot less resolve and one filled with significantly more optimism and less regret from the night before.

Keep it real, keep the improvements realistic, and don't be overly hard on yourself for not (yet!) being the perfect you - this is my recipe for a healthy assessment of the past year and being primed to eagerly face the new year ahead. But luckily that's still two weeks ahead of us, and for now it's all about some serious R&R after a quite spectacular year. So on that note, this is NVNG signing off for 2014 - I will no doubt be back in touch in early 2015 - and until then, happy holidays!

How to make Christmas craziness (feel less like) work!

It's that time of year again, the one beloved by many and dreaded by others, but it's as inevitable as the first snow of winter - that would be the one that hit us hard this week in Montreal- and yes, we are talking about Christmas! There's nothing like Christmas to get everyone into a furious frenzy over end-of-year craziness at work, the manic madness of the last-minute shopping sprees and the political pressure of the office party with its microscope.

Most folks vocalise at some point or other during the year that it's just nuts and why do we put ourselves through it, and this year is going to be different, but then, boom, it's the festive season out of the blue once more, and into Santa's grinder we all go; out we come at the other end as frazzled, frizzled and fracked versions of our normal selves. The question is - why?!

Even though we find out way too soon that there's no Santa Claus, and it's all a myth, it seems we cling on to the need to have a big blowout at year's end even as adults. It might be a healthy way of sort of writing off a tough year, in a haze of shopping and partying, or it might just be a throwback to when responsibilities were non-existent and we didn't have a care in the world. Suddenly, activities that are totally taboo the rest of the year, like Monday night at the pub and Wednesday evening cocktail-fueled karaoke, become the norm and it's acceptable to show up at the office like you barely got three hours sleep - because you did!

So for a week or two each December, people get to stuff their faces like there's no tomorrow, drink enough to make them wake wishing there had been no tomorrow, and then repeat until the reality of the dreaded January 1st or 2nd comes-a-knocking. The highlight usually being of course, the annual office party, where, perhaps due to the fatigue from everything else that's going on, people are at their weakest and the drinks kick in even faster than usual. Cue the beahviour that the smartphone and camera-carrying voyeurs simply love, as they sip on their mineral water and ice. 

It's all a bit silly, of course, but if we are trying to have a brief return to lighter days, then it seems that Christmas serves its purpose, but it can kinda get in the way of work. Thus on the one hand there is that end-of-year craziness and (often) imaginary deadlines at the office, then there are various office/networking parties to attend, then there's late night shopping, and then it's back to work to repeat it all again - increasingly the worse for wear. 

I am not a big believer in the end-of-year myth, and I am not talking about Santa Claus! It's the adult end-of-year myth. The fallacy that  I am referring to is that somewhat inexplicably, perhaps actually as a way of limiting the self-indulgence of the staff, after either a bad year or even a great year, suddenly everything must get done by December 22nd. Tell me whenever one week of extra work has changed things forever in a company and I will show you the eighth wonder of the world - and that would be me. But it's a habit most bosses find hard to kick - that last chance in the year to kick some butt, often because they are behind on their own targets. 

But at a time when people are already frazzled, extra pressure gets piled on, and the tension and tiredness in the workplace turns it into a real pressure cooker, which actually leads to a greater need to blow off the steam with unceremonious vigour at the free bar later in the day. I think both management and staff play a role in all of this, with the responsibility being shared to differing degrees depending on where you work. It takes two to tango, and only one to ruin the dance completely.

First off, if after what appeared to be a rather productive year (in the employees eyes) and a stressful degree of pressure is applied to meet "urgent" deadlines before the holidays, well, someone higher up should have been monitoring progress and performance earlier and addressed it. You are highly unlikely to be popular when you suddenly wake up in the first week of December, realising you are way behind, panicking, then transferring that panic onto the staff. This is just weak management - pure and simple. 

Ditto (in a related but less obvious way) for the staff. There's not much point in blissfully ignoring what goals you were set in your evaluation six months or a year ago, and then suddenly being forced to face them in early or mid-December. And it's totally naive to think that after a rather lacklustre year, if you are seen running around like a chicken with its head cut off, arms full of folders and fury, that the boss is gonna actually notice it and take it into account for your yearly bonus. He or she is probably too busy with the free champagne as well!

If we all take more responsibility for what we are meant to achieve each year, and this includes both ends of the workplace spectrum, management and staff, then guess what - we all get to actually enjoy the run-in to the holidays with no nonsense or cosmetically added pressure and stress piled onto our weakening shoulders. The idea being that we already are probably not at our productive best by mid-December when various distractions kick in, so take care of business the other 50 weeks of the year and then you can ease off on the gas a little for the last week or two at work. This is the way to acknowledge a good year by the team, and it may just do wonders for team spirit and morale that it's the boss kicking staff out of cubicles at 3pm and letting them do some early shopping before the pub at 6pm. 

Who knows, it may even be a way to actually look forward to the approach to the holidays and the annual shutting down of business and professional life until the new year. Yes, yes, things are different if there is a multimillion dollar deal that needs closing, or a huge order that must go out, but this is the exception and not the norm at Christmas. Unless of course, you work for Canada Post or Amazon, in which case the holidays come the day after December 25th! :)

The new MUHC - putting the "super" into superhospital!

Like a teenage growth spurt, the construction project that we have all marveled at as we drove along the highway in recent years has materialised before our very eyes into a vision of considerable beauty - we are of course referring to the huge hospital complex known as MUHC (or CUSM in French!). I might vouchsafe that it is not only beautiful in terms of its concept, scope and ambition, but that it is as beautiful by design and makes one incredible impact visually, whether passing by on the 20 or up close and personal with it.

The latter was rather remarkably possible last Sunday when the Glen site was opened to the public and allowed us to get inside and dig deep into the heart of this beast of a building (as far as we were allowed, anyway!) and see what all the fuss was about. I can inform you that it didn't disappoint and actually made for both a very informative and fun day out, via the various tours that were on offer - these included tours of the Cedars Cancer Centre, the RI-MUHC, as well as a behind-the-scenes tour and a general tour.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

My guest and I (the specialty tours were sold out, and tickets were like gold dust on the big day!) had the luxury of having access to the tour of the new research institute (RI-MUHC), which will comprise some 500 senior researchers and 1,200 graduate students, postdocs and fellows all pursuing work that is designed to strengthen the "bench to bedside" ethos that is a fundamental of the new institute. As a scientist, there is nothing like seeing a brand new untouched suite of laboratories, one module of which is shown above, and all that shiny new big equipment adjacent - it's a bit like a chef seeing a brand new kitchen and itching to get working in it, but additionally it brings back memories of when I was actually doing the experiments at the bench myself! 

However, it's not all about science, and given that 1% of the reported $250M spent (of which around $65M went on ultramodern equipment) must furnish artistic installations in such buildings, well, dotted around the place, inside and out, you can see some rather unique pieces. These include "Prendre le pouls", a giant stethoscope sitting outside on the cafeteria terrace by Cooke-Sasseville, Linda Covit's "Havre", out front, and "Lustre", a stunning hung model of hemoglobin (made by Montreal artist Nicolas Baier) comprising some 4,500 pieces that have a huge presence in the atrium entrance to the RI-MUHC. 

  

                                   

Such pieces, along with the refreshing color schemes used in the various main sections of the hospital are a very nice touch and will lighten the mood in what surely will be some darker days that represent the reality of daily life in a major hospital. The giant 8 metre high stethoscope is particularly poignant in that the headset turned towards the hospital and the chestpiece directed out towards the population is meant to represent the doctor-patient relationship, and how important listening is in that regard. For sure on the day of the tour, that stethoscope must have heard the beating hearts of an eager and excited few thousand hearts that passed by it on the walkway into the building. 

As fun as the tour was, upon hitting the patient facilities one did realise the full gravity of what will be going on there once the doors are officially open, and patients from the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal Chest Institute and Shriner's Hospital (and more) all become residents in spring next year. There is a state-of-the-art emergency department, 14 operating rooms, 15 intervention centres and some 346 single-patient adult rooms (500 including children) that are designed to make the patient  as comfortable as possible.  

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The new operating rooms looked eerily empty but no doubt will soon be ready to be truly operational (sorry!), the single-patient en suite rooms were bright and cheery with natural light beaming in from seemingly every window, and the chic red signature of the clinical specimens lab gave a definite impression of serious business - not least by way of the totally 2015 pneumatic system that is set to deliver samples from emergency or operation rooms from afar with turnaround in many cases inside an hour! The pneumatic system was up-and-running in a Singapore hospital and apparently a team from MUHC went there to assess it and then bring it on board in Montreal.

All in all, it was a fascinating look inside a fascinating new superhospital for Montreal, and it surely crystallises for many what was originally only a concept, if not just a dream, and one seemingly so far away from becoming reality. But it's here, it's now, and by very early 2015, research begins at the brand new RI-MUHC and we are as delighted about that as anyone - maybe more actually, because some of the research projects in AmorChem's investment portfolio are about to be housed in that gorgeous new facility - and if that further inspires and facilitates translation of research from "bench to bedside" then we are all smiles about that! 

      

Waging war on cholesterol - from the laboratory to the clinic to the courtroom!

The war on cholesterol continues unabated with the new star target (PCSK9) having been the subject of a hotly contested race in the clinic over recent years, but now, perhaps inevitably, that drug development contest looks like it's going to be further contested - in a courtroom - before a single dollar has been made by anybody. 

To many it appeared that the war on cholesterol and the cholesterol (drug) wars were already far behind us, following the phenomenal success of the game-changing drug class known as statins - a class which achieved the panacea (nirvana?!) of unquestionably benefiting people's lives and health while simultaneously raking in billions of dollars to their manufacturers - eventually making them the most successful drugs in history. 

However, while they have been spectacularly successful, not everyone responds well to statins and there are some fairly serious side effects which affect patient compliance, so the door was never entirely slammed shut. Or, looking at it the other way, the spectacular success of statins and the riches they brought in were sure to keep pharmaceutically-minded researchers on the hunt for the next HMG-CoA Reductase, which is the target against which statins were discovered. 

That dream became reality with the discovery of the PCSK9 class; PCSK9 is a proprotein convertase that binds to the LDL receptor and targets it's complex with cholesterol for degradation, thereby reducing receptor quantity at the cell surface. This can lead to reduced cholesterol uptake which is an identified trigger for cardiovascular disease leading to heart attacks and strokes. A lot of hope for this new target crystallised into drug candidate reality when preclinical studies underlined that PCSK9 was a tractable target that did indeed lower cholesterol levels when inhibited.

Two of the players who are ahead in the race to market a PCSK9-targeting biologic are Sanofi/Regeneron and Amgen; pharmaceutical companies that have each completed Phase III clinical trials and have applied to the FDA for approval to market their drug candidates. It's a neck-and-neck race and the pressure mounted on Amgen with the announcement by Sanofi and Regeneron this summer that they were intending to use an extremely valuable FDA (rare pediatric disease) priority review voucher in connection with the Biologics License Application (BLA) submission for their Alirocumab. 

These priority review vouchers are worth their weight in gold to drug companies because they save time, and time is big, big money in the pharmaceutical world. Even if it simply means that you get to market six months earlier than your nearest competitor, that can make a massive difference to roll-out sales and early adoption by the medical community and patient segment. No doubt this has played a part in the recent issuance by Amgen of a lawsuit claiming that Sanofi-Regeneron are infringing on Amgen patents (# 8,563,698, 8,829,165, and 8,859,741) which detail and claim monoclonal antibodies to PCSK9. Amgen's own Evolocumab is the subject of another BLA tabled at the FDA, and they aren't going to take the possiblity of being second sitting down. 

Amgen wants an injunction to prevent the manufacture, use and sale of Sanofi and Regeneron's Alirocumab, so this is serious business - for both parties. In any case, statins have not disappeared, and they are still big business themselves, so it is not likely that PCSK9 therapeutics will dominate the market anytime soon. In fact, analysts think it will be a rather slow roll-out, with PCSK9 inhibitors used in only a selected subset of those at risk of cardiovascular disease, with a more global adoption only likely after a trouble-free introductory period. 

Why change something that's working well, will be the argument for many practioners and patients alike, and if you are on a statin with no side effects experienced, then I can see the point. But it is tempting to consider that with the doses perfected over time, the combination of a low dose statin with a to-be-determined safe dose of a PCSK9 inhibitor could be the magic bullet and might eradicate heart disease for the majority. 

We are not there yet, of course, and there is an important aside to that potentially attractive proposition in that it will only further contribute to the burgeoning population vulnerable to and suffering from age-related CNS disease. This is going to reach a pandemic-type scenario by 2050 and the lack of pharmacueutical success in this disease class is of real concern to us all - old and young alike. We are almost all either heading towards the vulnerable age group, or have loved ones living in that age group, and the abject lack of any transformative therapeutic for Alzheimer's disease, dementia more generally, Parkinson's disease etc. is (going to be) a major problem for society. 

The prevalence of CNS disease is a symptom of medical success in other key conditions that used to be a death sentence, and now we need to be focusing on some of these diseases that we are all going to face in one capacity or another in our lifetimes. The cost to the healthcare system of age-related CNS disease is a staggering one, and one which is exponentially rising; investing some of the future costs into higher priority research today is going to be essential in making any progress. 

The pharmaceutical companies who have raked in billions on statins or those about to on PCSK9 inhibitors could do well to reinvest in age-related disease areas that those drugs help us live to see. While that is perhaps an apparently ungrateful way of looking at it, pharmaceutical companies can (must) be persuaded to reignite their interest in the currently "unpopular" CNS disease segment, especially given that it will represent a massive market by 2050 and such companies don't have any problem printing money when they get it right. 

But, if they get to print their money, and we get to finally have a transformative, disease-modifying CNS disease therapeutic, well, that's a big win-win and I think we can all live with that. In the meantime, we can all focus on developing better PCSK9 inhibitors and that does include us, because AmorChem has a small molecule PCSK9 program in our own portfolio!

Valeantly making money, even in failure - now that's good business!

I am sure I am far from being the only one who sighed with some relief when the most current hostile takeover soap opera known as "Valeant vs. Allergan" came to a close with the entry of another player into the fray - a white knight who slapped an unbeatable offer onto the table. New Jersey's Actavis put an end to the never-ending shenanigans with a crisp $66B bid for Allergan which effectively sent Valeant Pharmaceuticals scurrying off with it's tail between its legs. 

This saga had been going on for the best part of a year, since the initial lowball offer of around $45B in April by Quebec-based Valeant for California-based botox maker Allergan, and it got nastier as things developed. Valeant has been on a roll of acquisitions of late, topped by the 2013 acquisition of global eye health company Bausch & Lomb for a healthy $8.7B - Valeant's biggest deal to date.

Valeant CEO J. Michael Pearson is nothing if not aggressively ambitious and he has not been shy in stating that he intends to make Valeant one of the top five global drugmakers by 2016, by market cap. While his presence at Valeant has grown the company considerably in value, they are not yet in the same ballpark as the current top five players, and Pearson saw Allergan as a key acquisition that would help them get there. 

But Pearson is known to wield a big axe in terms of cost cutting and fat trimming from overstuffed companies, and in fact it's part and parcel of his acquisition process; this is no doubt one aspect that had Allergan concerned, and it wasn't helped with the alliance of Pearson with one Bill Ackman of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital. Ackman had surreptitiously acquired a 9.7% share of Allergan using a joint fund with Valeant, making him the largest shareholder, and thus perfectly positioned to orchestrate a (hostile) takeover. 

Allergan pushed back from the get-go, even increased offers did not do the trick, and they put a poison pill into motion to push back the raiders of Valeant; but Ackman et al. simply responded by steering the deal into truly hostile waters via manoeuvering to replace the majority (or all) of Allergan's board. He wanted to take it to the shareholders in the hope that they would force Allergan CEO David Pyott to come to the table for a realistic conversation - one that never happened in the end. 

Although Pyott appeared to keep a much lower profile than either Ackman or Pearson, he did ensure that there was a healthy smear campaign against Ackman in particular, with accusations not only of accounting anomalies but actual insider trading by Ackman and Pershing Square. Lawsuits were inevitable and they did come, and it truly appeared that this deal was going to get even nastier and likely to drag on well into 2015 - undoubtedly getting in the way of Pearson's grand plans for 2016.

In the end, all's well that ends (not) well, for basically everyone involved! As it happens, the $66B deal with Actavis turns out to be a very lucrative one for Ackman's hedge fund, which will rake in over $2B on this deal. Not bad for a few month's "work", eh? (Canadian term intended!). But perhaps more intriguingly, in return for the $75.9M that Valeant pumped into the joint fund that allowed Ackman to acquire his majority stake in Allergan, Valeant in fact now stands to receive some serious pocket money - to the tune of $473.2M. That will put them around $400M up on this entire non-deal (for them), which is hardly a kick in the teeth. 

Business as usual when you are in big business, some might say. Of course, the one laughing all the way to the bank (his own) is Bill Ackman, with a $2B+ payday for having at least appeared to be ravenous for the Allergan pharmaceutical menu. If one were to be cynical, one might suggest that it was actually a brilliant manipulation to draw other (less toxic) buyers to the table, and that Ackman had less interest in Valeant acquiring Allergan than he had in driving up the price of their acquisition by a rival - delivering him a more rapid and extremely profitable exit.  Only he knows whether that was the case or not. 

The far-from-lowball offer of $219 per share from Actavis did hit the sweet spot, Valeant pulled away from the table, and Actavis acquired Allergan for $66B. So Allergan and Pyott did very, very well in the end. As did Pershing Square and Ackman. As did Valeant and Pearson. All's well that ends well, and rather amusingly, sometimes all's well that doesn't end well, and everyone heads off to the bank with something to show for their troubles. Now, that is what you have to call good business! 

Blue Mondays? Time for some changes!

 

I read something this morning about singer/songwriter and activist Bob Geldof (Sir Bob, to be correct) reincarnating "Band Aid" and also reconnecting with old band mates for a reunion tour of the Boomtown Rats, his contribution to the punk/new wave scene in the late 70s and early 80s. I am not a huge fan of such reunions as they often have more to do with nostalgic "cash-in" than any relevance of that nostalgia to today, or to the contemporary art form. 

However, Sir Biob has done a lot of good with his celebrity, even today, as he nucleates "Band Aid 30" to help tackle the current Ebola crisis in Africa. And sometimes a song resonates for an entire lifetime, bringing me back to the massive BR hit, "I Don't Like Mondays" which reached #1 in an unbelievable 32 countries - a staggering achievement for a bunch of musical scallywags from  Dún Laoghaire ("Dunleary"), a small seaside town in County Dublin, Ireland.

For us schoolkids the song hit home with us for very fundamental reasons - the imagery in the video of kids forced out of bed and into a prison-like classroom at school made us feel like they were singing about us!  Interestingly, the song was released decades ago and related to disaffected schoolkids and their desire to "shoot the whole day down" - a premonition becoming increasingly prevalent in American schools today.

As bad as that "imprisonment" feels when young, the idea in life is that we grow up and out of that situation, yet the harsh reality for many it seems is that school is simply replaced by work when we do grow up, and thus our love for the weekend and dread of Monday morning pervades almost our entire lifetime! Doesn't this seem quite absurd? Who would want to live that life? What would be the purpose of that life? 

Even though it appears ridiculous as a concept, how many of us truly jump out of bed with some fire on a Monday morning? Well, okay, let's refine the question a little - when one first wakes up at 6am on a chilly November morning, no one can blame us for feeling groggy and desirous of another hour in bed. But once up and once showered, our feelings about it should have come around considerably - ready to hit the streets and take the day!

I can imagine that some are ready to argue that it is easier to feel like that if you are a minor celebrity or own your company or do something apparently very interesting for a living. Or, if you make tons of money doing something, no matter how trivial, well it's all more fun. But it's actually not about the money, at all. Generalising somewhat, those who chose to stay on in school and get more degrees actually wanted to, and those who left school early to get a regular job and start "living" did so out of choice (often), also.

We truly are the outcome of such choices, even if they can be tinged with regret later on. But irrespective of the level of sophistication in our work, the key is doing something that we at least like, if not actually love, and being paid to do it for five days a week is a bonus. Nevertheless, anything becomes routine after a while, and everyone seems to have a boss, but these are mere facts of life. We have to get over it, and get on with it. Or, if one is truly unhappy about one's life, then the only thing that will change anything, is, well......change!

Most of us might escape change for a long period of our lives, but inevitably change is gonna come-a-knocking. People fear change for both rational and irrational reasons, but sometimes the only way to face change is to dive into the deep end of it, and see how you actually cope with it. And guess what? We can often shock even ourselves by not only how we cope with it, but how we actually begin to thrive in it!

Unquestionably, compared to waking up in a hospital bed or uniquely challenged in ways that so many have to face daily, those of us with the capacity to jump out of bed and into the shower, unaided, are completely blessed. We simply need to be reminded of it, more often. More importantly, we need to remind ourselves of it, much more often. Write it on your bathroom mirror and face it with your face, every single morning. Get those words off the mirror and onto and into your forehead, and carry them with you out into the world.

Most of us have so much to be grateful for, yet we find small things to moan about instead. It's human nature, but if so then we must fight our nature! Start counting the things that make this world and our presence in it so remarkable, and emphasise them more, and dwell on the  negative a little or a lot less. It's often only by relegating the negative things to where they belong in terms of priorities that we get to see more clearly the beauty of the things above them on the list; suddenly they don't seem to matter so much.

Get out there, and make a difference to your circumference, every single day. It doesn't matter whether it's a brilliant new idea in engineering or a work mate calling you brilliant because you helped solve a little problem they had or the fact that some junior person draws inspiration from you - as long as you project positivity and resolve, even in the face of adversity, you can make a difference and change someone else's viewpoint even without knowing it. It's also true that you can make your employer look at you very positively when one of your major attributes simply happens to be that positive attitude in solving issues and getting things done. A smile can go a long way on a tough day!

There will be enough time later for sitting by a warm fire with the pipe and slippers, and retiring to bed early. For now, it is time to say "I don't hate Mondays!", and get out there to change lives (including your own), and if necessary, lay the bricks for a reconstruction of your own life and slowly build in the change that you need to get your life back on track and on the up-and-up. It's a cliché of course, but one interlaced with truth - anything might be (I won't say, is) possible, especially if your bust your butt attempting it!

It really is in our own hands, each and every one of us, and the only sure thing is that if we do nothing and change nothing, then we are unlikely to succeed in constructing a better tomorrow. However, if we get off our rears, and at least try, most days, then we are stacking the odds in our favour and our chances increase - and trying our best is basically all that we can ask of ourselves, right?! We are all allowed a slow or bad day, but it is the accumulation of many more good days that lays the foundation from which a new future gets constructed. 

Oki doki, it is time for this boy to try to put together a steaming masterpiece involving the new "Bolivian Black Bean Breakfast Blend" that was just imported by my caffeine supplier, and word is that I will be jumping out of bed for days to come after just one large cup - even if this morning it looks like the streets I will jump out onto tomorrow will be streets of white! 

Happy Sunday to one and all. 

If you can't beat 'em, don't join 'em - just get a billion people to follow you!

Even those sleeping through modern life and wishing it was still the "good old days" are forced to face the reality that this must be 2014, upon hearing the rather confounding news bite that Facebook, a social media site that many consider nothing more than a recreational annoyance, is currently considered to have greater cash value than that venerable bastion of finance, JP Morgan Chase. I had to read it twice to make sure it was not some kind of early Halloween joke!

It's only a couple of years ago, following the financial crisis/fiasco and its aftershocks,  that JP Morgan lost the position of being the biggest US bank to Wells Fargo, based on their respective market value. I doubt that Jamie Dimon liked the idea very much, but given what I said above, well, being second to a Wells Fargo is one thing, and being second to some hoodie-wearing kid CEO and his nerdy gang of tech geeks is quite another. Ouch! 

This came about due to Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp earlier this year for what also appeared erroneous at first or a misplacement of a decimal point; I thought it must have been $1.9B but no, I read it right, and it was in fact a staggering $19B. Unquestionably, and no doubt particularly to those dreaming of the good old days, this just looks like Monopoly money - gone crazy. Having said that, monopoly is the right term, because that's where such value is derived from: Facebook burying MySpace as the place to display a social scrapbook of your life, for example, gave them the monopoly over hundreds of millions of "member" users, and an ostensibly cherished, but occasionally ignored yet attentive target audience.  Ditto Twitter, as the place to present your 140 character howls at the moon, where it can be read by nobody, a few hundred, or even a few million, depending on who you are. 

Why their WhatsApp was in such demand was not only that it presented Facebook with a golden opportunity to dominate the smartphone messaging world in years to come, but once again, the company brought with it its real currency - some 450 million users (and a coveted database), growing at a rate of 1 million per day. That's one hell of a potential advertising audience, in and of itself. Placing a monetary value on such huge member numbers is far from easy of course, not least due to various social media services agonising over exactly how to monetize their offering, but I think we can just say that if Facebook valued it at around $20B, then it currently stands at around $20B! 

Don't get me wrong, there probably is something wrong in a world where a company offering a WiFi text messaging app can be valued that highly, but they have been spectacularly successful at growing their user base for a company that's been around a mere five years and yet has half a billion people using that app. A large part of the business model if you are in social media is dominating the space and being totally user-friendly in the brave new smartphone world and wars, and no one could ever accuse Mark Zuckerberg of a lack of ambition or little desire to dominate. So he bought WhatsApp at basically any price. 

Apparently, Facebook jumped ahead of JP Morgan due to their issuance of new shares to fund the acquisition of WhatsApp, and because the markets hadn't dented Facebook stock for any additional dilution, its market value rose. In a recent estimation, Facebook was calculated to be worth $224B compared to around $221B for JP Morgan. I can imagine Mr. Morgan himself rolling in his grave, if not actually causing Team Dimon to begin worrying about meeting an early (financial) grave, themselves! Of course, there was a degree of outrage (old), bemusement (middle age) or amusement (young) depending on the demographic involved, but the facts are the facts are the facts - Facebook is tops!

This development solidifies the stranglehold grip that the tech giants now have over financial markets, with not only Facebook, but additionally, Apple, Microsoft and Google all worth more than the veritable JP Morgan. In fact, if you take the #1 example out of that gang of four, Apple is today worth more than JP Morgan and Wells Fargo combined, and that just about says it all. Although it has been difficult to assess what the real value of some tech companies may be, in various cases they at least offer technologies that Joe Public understands and can play with; unlike extremely complex financial "instruments" such as derivatives and credit default swaps that were at the heart of the mortgage-backed securities crisis (fraud?) that almost toppled the US banking system, period. 

Add on top of that the various scandals that came to the surface after the crash, including those where JP Morgan itself was under the investigative spotlight, and you can kind of understand why people might sooner put their money where their mouth truly is - their smartphone (and its manufacturer) - rather than in the hands of an erstwhile financial giant now under investigation by Uncle Sam. JPM has already paid billions in fines arising out of the financial meltdown that began in 2009, and this week they revealed that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into their practices in foreign exchange business. 

One school of thought that's hardly new is that Jamie Dimon, as capable a banker as everyone seems to claim that he is, while being the boss, simply has too much power: that is the problem. For sure, the roles of CEO and Chairman should be split at an institution the size of JPMorgan. It is not in their interest to have one person in control of all of it, who then basically turns around and says it is too much bandwidth for one person to oversee, as his excuse for a monstrous loss in the billions that made the news in 2013. Some heads did finally roll over that repeat performance however, which comforted essentially no one. 

Back in 2013, even with 40% of shareholders supporting a split in roles as discussed above, Jamie Dimon got to keep his double job, as both CEO and Chairman. Some were appalled that Dimon should be allowed to wield an unnatural amount of power and control over the financial giant by retaining the titles of both CEO and Chairman of the Board, simultaneously. But it was not shocking to most. Even if it was expected that firebrand Lee R. Raymond (formerly CEO of Exxon Mobil) would have done more to reign Dimon in, and maybe even push for his removal as chairman, so far this has not happened. Again, hardly shocking - it's business as usual at JPM! 

Shareholders also voted in approval of Dimon's compensation for the prior year, a "healthy" $23.1M. Cough. But criminal investigations by both the FBI and the Justice Department have kept the heat on and the champagne warm, and it probably doesn't taste quite as sweet as it used to, today.  The public's tolerance for high finance shenanigans has waned since 2009, even if the governmental slaps on the wrist seem to be nothing more than actually enabling. It's all about power and money, and the theoretical abuse of the same. Perhaps not quite the "Power, Corruption and Lies" of New Order fame, but for sure there seems to have been a healthy dose of all three in the financial world over the last several years.

So, you know, much as I wouldn't want Mr. Morgan to be literally turning in his grave (none of this is his fault, after all!), there is something highly entertaining if not quite righteous about a Facebook having a greater market cap than a JP Morgan, in 2014. The fact that advertising revenue at Facebook was up almost 65% at $3B for Q3 2014 alone, and that around half of that came from smartphone revenue, well, it seems that monetization is being achieved and the big banks better get off their rear ends and attempt to compete with a company that can get an ad seen by a billion people a day on some piece of technology in their hand on a bus or a train - an inconceivable proposition in the original good old, bad old days of the JP Morgan patriarch.

It is 2014, and social media and technology have revolutionized life (and even love!), work and business. The gang of four are evidence of that, and a messaging app that sold for $20B emphasizes that beyond discussion. It's all about the offering, and how users in the world derive form, function and freedom from that offering, and until the big banks offer something tangible on even a yearly basis, well, I think we will be hearing of them being overtaken by "those bloody kids" on a more regular basis!

The Devil always finds work for idle hands to do - even in the workplace!

Recent events here in Canada have underlined the fact that even though we normally tend to lag behind big brother USA in terms of international disdain, gun violence and terrorist attacks, it only takes a single bullet to evaporate any complacency one has over that state of affairs. The chickens are indeed coming home to roost, and things may well have changed forever, even north of the border. 

It remains a staggeringly disappointing reality of our very existence that humans simply cannot get along, even in supposedly civilised times. Whether it's international or domestic forms of conflict, it seems that humans just can't (or often don't want to) get along, even when the stakes are extremely high. I mean, we seem to have a very hard time making a go of even marriage in modern times, and it's incredible how vicious that form of conflict (divorce) can often be, even when it's someone with whom we were once madly in love!

No surprise then that a particularly regular source of inter-human conflict and coincident stress comes from where we spend a great deal of our daily existence - the workplace! I have had a few discussions of late with colleagues complaining about this person or that one in the office; people seemingly intent on derailing daily lives if not even going so far as to jeopardise one's actual position in the workforce. The latter point being simply inexcusable, of course. 

The question of how to deal with toxic people in the workplace is rarely one that comes with a straightforward answer, nor should the significance of the situation be trivialised - it can be serious business indeed - and an inappropriate response to it can often do the "victim" more damage than the perpetrator. But that's the idea, right? Every situation can be as unique as the distinct people involved, and sadly there are no golden rules to follow or quick fix solutions. There are a few key points one should bear in mind though when dealing with conflict or outright toxicity in the workplace:

• Let's get one thing right out into the open, right away, shall we? Toxic individuals in the workplace are to a man or woman almost unquestionably, wait for it, unhappy! Show me wonderfully happy people who routinely become monsters in the workplace and I will show you a fish that rides a bicycle. Those who come into work with an agenda that involves disrupting other people's work and lives are rarely happy and in fact are usually downright miserable. Misery Inc., in fact. To even consider letting them get inside of your circumference of normality and daily contentedness is a mistake - they must be kept at arm's length at all times. The guard must always be up, because you need that job and the stakes are definitely that high. 

• The absolute #1 priority has to be to put yourself first. It is perfectly okay to be selfish; as selfish as the person who insists on taking out their bad day on you, or who tries to spin you into their own web of discontent with management or the top clique at work. Rather than going out of one's way to listen to their endless complaints or devious attempts to get one to join the conspiracy, it is perfectly acceptable to state that one doesn't have time and that one needs to get back to work. It's one thing to lend an ear, and quite another to be expected to be the bottomless sink for all their tales of woe. 

• One needs to spot toxicity when and where it arises, and frankly the solution that works best is to have as little to do with it as humanly possible. There is (or should be) no place for personal conflict in the workplace, and it can be very disruptive to both individuals and the team alike. Once someone presents a clear and present danger then someone needs to step up and speak up with human resources, particularly if other colleagues are willing to endorse such action. To do what is most commonly observed, i.e. nothing at all, is to allow the toxicity to fester and begin to seep across the floorboards into other offices where it will spread with great ease. It's a bit like Ebola - better nip it in the bud early rather than trying to sort it out once three quarters of the offices are infected with it!

• Of course, avoiding/ignoring conflict is way more easily said than done, and often one needs to interact daily with someone who has us in their sights, and seems hell-bent on disrupting our work life. Toxicity comes in more than one form, and can be harder to spot when it's served up with a warm smile and giggle to accompany the put-down or outright insult, such that others nearby think that the instigator is all sweetness and light, while you are the unstable one who overreacts all the time. The fact that such toxicity does exist in the workplace is almost always a sign of a lack of (true and clear) leadership, but that is a sad fact of life that is almost insurmountable, I'm afraid!

• Once you have spotted a toxic persona, you need to spend as little time in the day around that person as feasible, and if you can, deal with him/her in public as much as possible, and avoid the closed doors at all costs. If you limit private exposure to the problem person, you tend to also limit their attempts at derailing your day and your work. The devil finds work for idle hands to do, and while that person may not be focused on their work to the extent that they should be, this is no excuse for you to do the same - turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, and get on with the job at hand. It's a workplace, not the high school playground.

• All of this is all well and good, but what if the main personality clash or problem at work is a superior, or God forbid, even the boss? I could be tempted to say that it's not easily possible for the boss to be classically toxic, because they were selected for due to a variety of positive attributes, but can it happen? Well, yes, it can and it has if I consider various testimonies I have heard over the years. So, the conundrum is what to do when there are personality clashes with a superior or the boss?

• It's funny how far one can go on the back of a solid work ethic and some great work! Irrespective of how one feels about the boss, perhaps even disliking their attitude a lot of the time, there is little they can truly moan about when your production is firing on all cylinders. They still might not like you, you might truly dislike them, but if you are doing a great job then it's not easy to put you down. Focus on the work, not on who may directly benefit from that work, and I bet you go up on the popularity ratings, sooner or later. One has to play smart, and truly liking that person is not a job requirement for producing what they expect from you; so zip it and get on with it and let good days become great weeks that turn into extremely productive years. It's hard to imagine that this won't pay off one day or another. 

• As sage as that point no doubt is, frankly if you have an ongoing clash with a superior or the boss, while it is smart to smile, get your head down and get on with the work, it is also smart to get your resume, LinkedIn and other social media profiles updated and aligned with your personal brand and value proposition for the inevitable job search ahead. I say "inevitable" because if you are feeling used, abused or under-appreciated at work, it is unlikely that you are happy, and this will almost certainly end at a perhaps unforeseen crossroads - the one where you choose to move on, or you get moved on. Life is too short to stay unhappily in a job, and if you see the writing on the wall then take control of your situation and do something positive about it while you are still in a job. It goes without saying that finding a new job is always easier when you are still in a job, and not out there in limbo with so many others. 

In the end, it's all about the work, and if someone does try to stop you from getting it done then it's time to confront them about it and put an end to their nonsense, either by clarifying your refusal to deal with their BS directly, or if that does not do the trick then by going to human resources or an appropriate superior to rectify the problem. Resolution between two individuals is always the best solution, rather than involving the organisation, but it's quite rare I feel. As simple as attempting resolution sounds, it still does not help much with how you feel about the conflict or the stress that it brings to your day, but you must try to remember that this is the goal of the toxic persona - to get inside your head and heart. 

It is mandatory to recognise that, and to minimise the impact of their unhappiness on your happiness. However hard they try, they cannot take away who you are, and it is because they are often envious of who you are that they try to crack through your shell - but you have to be resolute in the face of that. Don't let their weakness, insecurity and envy become your problem. Think of it this way - you already are miles ahead in the race because when you get out of bed first thing each morning, you already have something huge to celebrate - the fact that you ain't them! 

When does a bowl-a-soup potentially become E-bol-a soup?

As any real virologist knows, it doesn't take too much human Brownian motion to turn a minor news item about an outbreak in a far-off country into a full-blown national crisis. In fact, it only takes some long distance Brownian motion by one human to wreak havoc on the population of an entire country - a lesson learned in devastating fashion by the dissemination of the AIDS virus in North America in the eighties. 

In 1984, epidemiologists at the CDC identified a certain Gaetan Dugas as the index case or patient zero for the entire AIDS pandemic, and even though that has become a somewhat controversial conclusion since, the data illustrates the deadly capacity of one peripatetic infected individual to potentially infect a nation. Why are we talking about this today, I hear you ask? Well, unless you have been living under a rock it has to be blindingly obvious that we are of course thinking about the mounting fears over another very nasty little virus - Ebola. That this viral particle can essentially liquify a sophisticated organism such as us humans with a mere 7 genes is both shocking and incredibly humbling.

And let's be specific here - the spread of AIDS primarily necessitates intimate (sexual) contact between humans, the spread of Ebola does not! As much as the authorities downplay the threat, with even Barack Obama doing his best to encourage the nation to sit back and forget about it, inevitably the virus has made its way from Africa to the United States. A shocker, not. It's interesting how Obama can make very much of one hidden threat, ISIS (or ISIL as he calls it), readily cranking up the hyperbole on how dangerous that particular enemy is to American life, yet downplaying worry over an even more insidiously hidden threat, a little virus we call Ebola. 

This laissez-faire attitude has spilled over even to the medical profession itself, and this came to light in an excruciatingly embarrassing incident this past week via the dangerous actions of a medical loose cannon who works for the NBC news division - Dr. Nancy Snyderman. She is the Chief Medical Correspondent at NBC, and regularly is on-air on key shows such as NBC's "Today" and "Nightly News with Brian Williams". Not totally unlike many an MD one has come across at some point or another, Snyderman can come across as sanctimonious, supercilious and dare I say even superficial when dealing with medical affairs, and when spouting advice to the great American public. 

I honestly find the bulk of what she typically says to be scratch-the-surface common sense; rarely does it ever exceed what I would expect from a science grad intern who had researched this disease or that one for even 30 minutes on the Internet. When someone on the opposite chair or panel asks a really scientific question (make that an unscripted scientific question!) the polish peels off rapidly, and the cracked veneer reveals an extremely basic general scientific knowledge. While that may be fairly typical for many general practitioners, I hardly think it is appropriate for a CMC at a huge network and news franchise such as NBC.

Yes, yes, I can hear the whispers that I am perhaps being a little harsh, but you know, everything that I have said (and more) is backed up by her staggeringly unsophisticated and even unprofessional actions upon returning from filming in Liberia. Snyderman and her crew returned from reporting on Ebola in Africa, having been in direct contact with an infected colleague, cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who is now being treated for Ebola in Nebraska. NBC announced that the entire crew would enter voluntary quarantine (21 days) upon their return, which is precisely what should have happened. 

Now, it's one thing about how to police or enforce a voluntary quarantine when it's Joe Public, but when the ringleader is a very public, high profile MD then we have nothing to worry about, right? Wrong! Rather than assuming that because it is Nancy Snyderman, we can all breathe easily and not be in fear of taking our last breath due to Ebola, it appears that the contrary is the case. In other words, because it is Nancy Snyderman, the state of New Jersey is at heightened risk of being infected!

Shockingly, it transpires that the supposedly quarantined MD was spotted out and about in New Jersey, incomprehensibly even being seen outside a Hopewell restaurant (the Peasant Grill) picking up some soup. Are you kidding me?! You are an incredibly wealthy TV MD and yet can't find a way to get your hands on some soup without putting the lives of an entire state at risk? Her careless, carefree, dangerous and uneducated actions appear not only to be amazingly arrogant, but border on almost being criminal. Yes, I think potentially exposing people's lives to a deadly virus to be an action that is at least semi-criminal in nature. 

Her very presence outside the Peasant Grill goes against any recommendation that any serious medical professional would advise. The fact that the New Jersey Health Authority had to step in and enforce a mandatory quarantine for an NBC CMC for violations - well, it is almost certainly a reason for termination. If for no other reason, simply due to a total loss of credibility for the role as well as for the network, while she remains in that role. She can coldy hand out her warnings to the American public, yet what's good enough for them is not good enough for her, because she knows more, so she doesn't have to take precautions against spreading a deadly virus such as Ebola?!

It reminds me of a medical hubris we have all seen from one MD or another, during out lifetimes. Getting a lecture on not smoking, or the evil of eating too much junk food, and then you see the off-duty doc standing against the side of a McDonald's restaurant, smoking after devouring their Big Mac! Somehow, dealing with cancer and heart disease every day almost endows one with a feeling of invincibility to it, because it happens to them (patients) and not us (doctors), right?

That's all well and good, when you are not putting anyone else at risk. But what Snyderman did was unforgivable for any medical professional, never mind one of the most high profile public doctors in the country who speaks to millions of people regularly on the "Today" show. Synderman's ongoing arrogance even in her "apology" caused the pot to boil over completely, and the media ripped into her with fervour. America gets over the sins of major celebrities but when they apologise vaguely, that is something that brings out the backlash - big time. Think Paula Deen or Lance Armstrong, whose careers were effectively halted or even terminated by such arrogance in the face of public outrage - and let's be clear, nothing either of these two examples did ever put an entire state's (and then country's) lives at risk!

"As a health professional I know that we have no symptoms and pose no risk to the public, but I am deeply sorry for the concerns this episode caused," Snyderman said. 

I bet that reassured the nation! Not. Note that she did not confirm whether or not she had violated the voluntary quarantine. But what conceit to state that simply because she has a degree in medicine, she can be confident that there are no Ebola virions circulating in her veins or in those of her colleagues, when in fact, she has no idea if that is true or not. She exhibits astounding personal and professional hubris that is simply not in keeping with her high profile (and exceptionally high salary) nor her role as an information source and key influencer. 

Then again, why am I surprised? This is the same woman, who, on a recent episode of "Today" ridiculously claimed that the regime in Saudi Arabia was fairer to working women than that of the USA! That would be the same Saudi Arabia that requires women to have a male's permission to work in the first place, and the one that bans women from driving, and the one that enforces a strict dress code on women, right?! Cough. Splutter. Or did she actually mean the "alternative" Saudi Arabia, that other one, the one that exists only in her own head? 

The extent of Snyderman's arrogance is not even so much depicted by her dangerous, careless action in heading out for take-out, but is rather truly underlined and emphasised by her woeful excuse for an acknowledgement or real apology, afterwards. Thankfully, in spite of her incredibly risky and arrogant lapse in judgement, New Jersey is alive and well, and the threat has been contained. She will be free soon enough to go out and about and roam everywhere she wants, just like before. 

However, whether she will remain aligned with and attached to the estimable NBC brand is another question entirely, and I think that NBC has been put into a corner that there is only one way out of - if it does want to move forward with any credibility in the medical affairs arena. If social media are any barometer of what the nation is thinking about this sad state of affairs, and they are, then NBC must surely know what is expected from them now by way of a real response, in place of that condescending insult from their Chief Medical Correspondent. 

Don't let your smartphone make you look stupid!

With the prevalence of smartphones and social media in our society today, and given the release of bigger, better (in principle) iPhones in recent weeks, I have been chatting to various friends and colleagues about the use of these devices in the workplace - with a particular focus on business meetings. 

Although smartphone etiquette seem patently obvious to me, it appears that there is much confusion about what is correct and what is not, no doubt due to the fact that there actually is no unified set of guidelines never mind actual rules for either social media or smartphone use. Things have moved incredibly fast in communication technology, and we are more or less all in a position now to be bombarded with communications and information at every minute of the day - even when at work, and even when in meetings with other people.  Quite when or where people felt that all of this streaming communication became equally important as work, at work, is not obvious to me. 

One reason why there is confusion or lack of clarity in various organizations is that the CEO may very well (typically?) be anything but au fait with the latest trends and technologies, and the fashion in which younger employees choose to use their devices becomes almost a way of life for the entire team. In a business form of role reversal, it somehow became the kids teaching the parents what was appropriate and the sheep should all follow them. Right? How about no?!

The parent and kid analogy is actually quite a relevant one because how many parents have had to fight with their kids over the use of their smartphones at the dinner table? The kids get told that they can put it down for an hour while the family eats and talks, and their world won't fall apart in the meantime - so put it down or turn it off. It all would make sense, if that is how their parents behaved at similar sit-downs at work. 

The sad thing is that the parents (typically?) don't adhere to their own rules, when it comes to the workplace. They scream at their kids to put the bloody thing down, but then at work stride purposefully into meetings clutching their smartphones as if the world may stop turning at any moment, and/or, the world outside the meeting relies on them so heavily that if they do not communicate with it then that might be the reason that the globe stops revolving! 

There simply seems to be a lack of education and/or sophistication in how people behave with their smartphones when it comes to business. The older generation did not grow up with such devices, and there are no rules for using them, so it has become a bit of a free-for-all. After talking to various levels of personnel in various different areas of business, four main classifications of smartphone abuse at work were the most commonly observed, and they fall into the following groups that I categorise as:

• The busy bee - this might well be the CEO or team leader who does shoulder a higher level load than many, and who feels that they need to be online at all times. While it can well be the case for an outfit that has physical operations on which the business depends, or products out there in the marketplace that are at critical stages of roll out, in most cases a supposedly "lost" hour in a meeting will change absolutely nothing. I might vouchsafe that what in fact is being lost is that hour interacting with team members - an essential component of mutual respect between management and subordinates. But at the very least, if your face is going to be buried in the phone for a solid hour, the phone should be silenced, so as to not distract anyone from the purpose of the meeting - and if that is not acceptable, because there are critical things to attend to - the answer is simple: stay out of the meeting if the phone is more important than the content of the meeting on that day! It is much more considerate and polite to do so, when your presence will be nothing more than distraction. If you really are (and it is entirely possible) that busy, then stay out of meetings better handled by other management, and get on with your own demanding business.

• The image builder - there is some crossover with the novice in this department, in that the image builder will abuse the phone in ways that can be typical of a novice, but the difference is that the image builder does it consciously with intent. Like the busy bee, they insist on bringing the smartphone into each and every meeting and displaying it on the table proudly, but refuse to ever silence its annoying/impolite clanging. In some cases, because it is about image and not content, the image creator's phone misbehaves simply because its owner doesn't actually know how to change the default settings! However, one major difference between the busy bee and the image creator is that the former does pick it up and read each incoming communique and often types replies, while the latter simply leaves it ringing incessantly for all to either marvel at ("Oh my God, he gets so many texts and emails, he must be way busier than I thought!") or roll their eyes at ("God, can you just turn the bloody ringer off at least?!"). I could come up with various hypotheses as to why such types get a thrill out of a phone apparently getting a message every 73 seconds, yet never one that merits actual reading of it - but I think it's better left unsaid, or left to each reader's own imagination! It goes without saying that your common-or-garden image builder also will often have the hottest new phone available, but rarely uses it to even 5-10% of its capability.  It's a bit like forgoing the SUV and getting into the cockpit of an F-35 Raptor for the daily commute to work! Prior to the evolution of smartphones, the other way the classical image builder used to operate was to routinely (I mean, like, 99.99% of the time) show up late for meetings. The implicit message being that unlike everyone else, I am so overloaded and every minute of my time is precious, therefore I will always be last to arrive at meetings. Uh-huh.

• The novice - a bit like service providers themselves, we all get a grace period when we first enter the smartphone world. Many providers will forgive or reduce a large roaming bill when you first run into that particular problem, or if you didn't realize that texting to the USA was not included, they will adjust your first bill, and so on.  Ditto for smartphone abuse in meetings for the novice, of any age. These days the true novices are rarely young, because the young eat these devices up at a rate of a new model every 9-12 months! However, one can quite routinely see an aging, greying executive who might be a seasoned professional but whose organisation has finally forced the dreaded iPhone on them, and here they are in middle-age desperately trying to catch up and keep up. Some of the older novices are very prone to smartphone abuse, having just caught up to 2014 after many years of refusing to jump onto the bandwagon, and now use it the way they see their kids use it at home. However, the critical thing that must happen is that the novice has to be told early on (how) to either silence the bloody thing or don't ever bring it into a meeting again. This is neither the high school cafeteria nor the Facebook locker room - it is a business. 

• The kid - this is usually the intern or most junior person in the organization, but, wait for it, in direct correlation, he/she could be the one who is most on top of all of the latest devices, apps, and social media trends. Quite often this allows them a kind of smartphone supremacy, and we all must do our best to copy their smartphone ways, right? Nope. While they might get away with smartphone fixation even at the dinner table at home, their work parents need to nip it in the bud from day two, and do them a huge favour by refusing to let them dictate their habits onto an entire workplace. One friend did tell me about an intern who would let the phone buzz incessantly on the boardroom table, even during presentations by renowned senior scientists, and to me that represents just about the greatest height (i.e. low) of arrogant rudeness, at worst, or simply a clear lack of class and manners, at best. If you are a boss and you let this go, well, you are going to get just what you are asking for - a room full of people mistakenly thinking that they have a right to be aware of every single communication that arrives at work, even if that's a selfie of one of their Facebook friends in a wet T-shirt. There is no intern or junior employee (barely in their twenties) who is important enough to justify endless buzzing on a table. One wouldn't let them cut in and routinely interrupt senior personnel having a discussion at a level beyond their experience, so why would it be tolerable for their smartphone?

It all comes down to common sense and good manners, and maybe this is just a personal opinion but I regularly feel that good manners not only went out of fashion but actually blew right out of the window in recent human evolution over the last decade or two. However, while there is little doubt that social media and smartphones have ironically made us more anti-social in public, people need to be reminded that this is not acceptable in the workplace. A good general rule for any team meeting is that all phones must have their ringers turned off and vibration mode should only be acceptable in one's pocket, or, if this just doesn't work - then no phones should come into meetings at all, unless they are being solely used to take notes. Anyone crying that this is an outrage should be reminded why we call it "work", and forced back down out of their fantasy land of self-importance, with their feet (and phone!) firmly planted on cold ground with a solid thump.  

I totally understand the need to have a phone on hand if the wife is pregnant, or the husband is in hospital, or the kids have a huge exam or you are waiting for news of a multi-million dollar deal - but how many days a year is this the case for most people? Trust me, (tearfully) leaving the smartphone on the desk and going into meetings unburdened can actually be a very liberating experience; it even serves to remind us of how much personal freedom we have lost by clinging to these devices! And who knows, by unchaining our wrist from the phone, we may even be more appreciated by clients and colleagues alike, for giving them our undivided attention - now that would be something we can call progress!