10 Challenges/Strategies for IT and Firm Leadership

Don't tell me the challenge without a strategy to overcome the obstacle. That is one of the differences between those who are accountable and those who avoid accountability.

From the perspective of someone who has been involved in firm management and technology over the past 25 years, IT leadership has become both increasingly important and difficult. The challenge is to take something relatively complex and rapidly changing (technology) and simplify it for the end user. This is happening at increasing speed, yet too many firms and specifically partners still look at technology as a cost center, rather than as a way to increase revenue, improve client services and ensure that their services and skills remain relevant. If your firm is experiencing commoditization and fee pressure in some of the traditional services (tax and accounting), you should take the time to read and discuss this article with your firm's leadership.

I am frequently asked what the one distinguishing factor between the leading firms and those that are struggling with the return on their technology investment is. The answer is simple -- leadership -- but elusive for too many firms. Firm leadership does not have to know how to build the watch, but they do need to know how to tell time. They also need to value planning, people and processes.

Too often the response to my question about firm technology is, "It's good and we are stable." That tells me that the firm probably is in the maintenance mode and not focused on new revenue opportunities and innovation.

Let's look at 10 obstacles and relevant strategies for chief information officers or IT leaders to get a seat at the management table.

1. A lack of leadership.
2. Attitude and lack of relevant IT knowledge.
3. Culture.
4. Complexity of IT.
5. Cost/investment.
6. Efficiency and production focus.
7. Integration and incumbent vendors.
8. An "or" rather than "and" strategy.
9. Behavioral versus technical.
10. The existing business model.

We will summarize each of these obstacles and offer strategies to overcome them.

1. Leadership. The higher the level of trust within a firm, the less time and expense it takes to implement strategic projects. Synergistic leadership is required from the CEO, CIO and sales leader in firms of all sizes.

In the past, most firms have selected a CEO or managing partner, then a director of tax and director of auditing and accounting. While leadership is needed from the technical areas, firm management must have a synergistic relationship with technology and business development (sales) in today's environment.

2. Attitude/lack of relevant IT knowledge. Most all accountants have an opinion about IT and often those with the strongest opinions have the least amount of knowledge about firm systems. Firms that view technology as a strategic asset, rather than overhead, have had a competitive advantage. Today, firm leaders must also be focused on revenue production and innovation.

3. Culture. Accountability at all levels is a must and it starts at the top of the firm. As Simon Sinek points out, "why" is more important than "how" or "what" you do. Do members of your firm have a sense of purpose? Passion? Leadership tells us "why," while authority tells us what goals to achieve. Most firms have grown because of passionate leadership with a "why" that people want to follow. Firms with only the "what" and "how" tend to stagnate.

4. Complexity. Technology is complex to the majority of people, yet they desire to operate as though it were simple, often ignoring security and privacy issues. Speed equals innovation times simplicity. The challenge is for leadership to simplify complexity, but the existing economic model of hours times dollars is in direct conflict with the simplification strategy. The customer determines value. Value is not determined by the effort or complexity.

5. Cost/investment. Recent and historical metrics show that firms are spending approximately $10 per chargeable hour and 6 percent of net revenue. This further equates to approximately $10,000 per full-time equivalent annually. My former firm was the first to implement a technology surcharge over 25 years ago. Today, most firms are ignoring this investment in pricing services, as well as in the costs of mergers and acquisitions.

6. Efficiency and production. Most firms originally invested in technology with the belief they would become more efficient and productive. For the most part this has already happened, and now the only way to continue to increase efficiency and production is through improved workflow and process improvement like Six Sigma, where errors are driven out of the process at the lowest possible level. Most accounting firms still drive out errors at the highest level (manager and partner) and then create inefficient loops in their processes. This is especially true in compliance services. The new services are in the areas of performance and strategy. These are higher-valued services (by the client) and require less time to provide value if the provider has accurate and timely accounting information. This happens when firms utilize the cloud and collaborative accounting systems. Speed up the cycle time on client projects and you will improve the margins.

7. Integration and incumbents. Integration has been the buzzword or Holy Grail for the past 20 years. In today's consumer-driven IT cloud-based environment, it is impossible for firms to operate with a single vendor. The future will require orchestration, rather than control, on the part of IT leaders to manage resources and multiple vendors. Integration is easier and occurs with less friction in the cloud than in client/server-based systems. This phenomenon is known as the cloud ecosystem.

8. An "or" rather than "and" strategy. A strategic challenge for firms is to decide what services to continue to offer, discontinue and develop. It is extremely difficult to discontinue a service in most firms. Tom Hood refers to this as the "Sow, Grow, Harvest and Plow" approach. Several criteria should determine your decisions:

• Market trends;
• Client needs and wants;
• Segment profitability; and,
• Available talent and resources.

While this strategy sounds simple from a business perspective, in reality there are generally political implications in most firms. It often takes outside counsel to make the tough decisions.

9. Behavioral versus technical. The higher you go, the more the issues are behavioral than technical. CIOs are expected to be chameleons and play multiple roles, often similar to the managing partner.

Some of those roles are:

• Visionary leader;
• Communicator;
• Team builder;
• Project manager;
• Savvy business expert; and,
• Savvy IT expert.

The challenge for many IT professionals is whether they desire to remain in a technical role or grow into a firm leader. If they want to be successful IT leaders, they must get outside of the firm and participate with peers to share successes and failures, as well as access expertise not available within the firm.

10. The Existing Business Model

The profession's existing business model of hours times dollars is not sustainable. Therefore firms should focus on value and client-centric services. This requires improved communications upfront, as well as ongoing communications with a client service representative. Typically these conversations are more successful if conducted by someone other than the person delivering the service. Delivery partners often are too busy to take the time and fail to package and price services appropriately. Under the new model it is more of a team approach than that of a rugged individual.

The challenge is to operate as a multi-disciplinary firm (accounting, technology, human resources, training, legal, strategic planning, succession planning, CFO services, M&A, etc.) These collaborative services are much easier to offer today in a cloud-based environment where the information is real-time and accurate. Too many accountants have been spending time "cleaning up and correcting" accounting information during the busiest time of the year (after-the-fact type services), rather that providing high-level advisory services.

The old business model provided value by aggregating data from paper and digital systems, resulting in a very compressed busy season for compliance work. The new model leverages the digital aggregation of data into timely decision-making knowledge and focuses on planning, people and processes. It also spreads the work over the entire year and automates the compliance work in a way that firms can share resources among offices, and allows employees to work from any location at any time. Adequate bandwidth is the key and often employees have better bandwidth at home than in the office, where bandwidth is shared among many users.

CONCLUSION

Firms need technology leadership at the management table as they make important strategic decisions regarding industry trends, services, staffing, delivery processes and pricing. Firms and CIOs of the future must overcome these obstacles and increase value from the client's perspective.

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A Billion Dollars Isn't Gratifying. You Know What's Gratifying? Helping Humanity Thrive.

My business partner Dustin Moskovitz and I have been astoundingly fortunate: after helping build Facebook, we have more than enough money to provide for ourselves and our families for the rest of our lives. Instead of retiring on a beach, we're building another company called Asana. Some people ask us why we're still working so hard. The answer is that, for us, building technology was never about personal wealth in the first place. Work is a way to contribute to making the world a better place. Facebook was always about making the world more open and connected. And now Asana is, to our knowledge, the best contribution we are capable of making.

In my experience, contributing to the world is vastly more important than wealth, even to my personal happiness.

Dustin and I started Asana in 2009 because we saw a huge untapped opportunity to help humanity thrive -- by using technology to radically improve the ability for teams to work together with less effort.

Asana builds software that enables teamwork without email. Philanthropy probably conjures images of non-profits and soup kitchens, not communication software. But at Asana, we are making work less painful, which not only improves people's lives at work, but also empowers those teams to make their greatest contributions to the world.

Because let's face it: in general, working in teams sucks. McKinsey reports that knowledge workers spend 30% of work time on email alone, and another 20% hunting down information that someone else at their company already knows. That means over half our jobs isn't even real work; it's the soul-sucking work about work. Despite endless meetings and status updates, confusion is rampant in most workplaces. What are all the steps left on this project? Who has the ball on what? Lack of clarity leads to stress, duplicated effort, and an often depressing inability to achieve teams' initially-exciting goals.

Most people assume it has to be this way. But we don't agree. Some of these problems are of leadership and culture (which is why Asana has a team devoted to publishing the best lessons on how to achieve great teamwork). But a lot of these problems are of communication technology -- email's just too disorganized.

We built Asana because we believe humanity deserves better than email. We're excited that teams that transition from email to Asana tell us they feel more calm, clear, and effective.

But what's most exciting is to see teams do great things with these new coordination powers. We get to help Airbnb revolutionize travel, Uber revolutionize transportation, and Quora share the world's knowledge, to name a few famous examples.

But we also get to help less famous organizations help humanity thrive. Nyaya Health provides health care to Nepal's rural poor. It's a complex operation: hundreds of volunteers across two continents. We're thrilled with how Asana has impacted the quantity and quality of care they can provide. Their CEO sends us photos of children who would otherwise still be sick, if not for Nyaya's improved teamwork communication.

There are so many vital and exciting projects that teams of people are working on. Frankly, I wish we could work on all of them. I'd love to connect people through software, find the cure for cancer, solve global warming, make government more efficient, and create art. While I can't do all of these things at once, Asana provides the opportunity to play a role in each of them. Because no matter what mission in the world you think is important, it takes a team to make it happen. I hope that by helping all teams achieve their goals, Asana can play a meaningful role in helping humanity thrive.

The things that money can buy haven't contributed a fraction as much to my happiness as the satisfaction I experience from contributing to the world. If you work in any kind of organization, I hope that Asana will not only make your job suck less, but that it helps your team make its greatest contributions to the world, that you do great things, and that you enjoy the satisfaction of helping humanity thrive.

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The Number One Mistake Managers Make

We enter this world as children and to stay alive and thriving we ingest, more like absorb the environment of our birth. Whatever we experience is all there is and we take it in without conditions. And that’s our first experience of authority, an authority that knows how to keep us alive because we cannot do that for ourselves.

 Another aspect of those early years is that we spend a great deal of time looking up at those who are taller than we are. And we learn to follow; not necessarily by choice but by default. We unconsciously accept them as guides and leaders and we give our allegiance to them: again not by choice but by default. That’s a condition of being alive on this earth. We are new. We need to learn. If we don’t we likely don’t do well or may even die.

 Our task is to conform, albeit with occasional resistance and perhaps rebellion. We comply and act in accordance with what is deemed appropriate. We do as we are told. We take the lessons we are given even to the point of imitation.

 In conforming, complying, and imitating---all of the behaviors that merge us with our surroundings and are described as learning to develop ourselves---we go way beyond just taking all of that in. In fact we become it. We are an expression of all that’s come before.

And You Become a Manager

And then some of us, you for example, become employed and because of your abilities you are elevated into the role of being a manager and suddenly, and in almost all cases without preparation or training, you are the one people look up to. Not physically but psychically. You are the authority.

You may have learned management techniques from a book or a program. You may have been mentored by someone who has managed for a while and can “show you the ropes.” But those ropes are most often technical, external-facing. They are concepts about communication and org structures, company policy and, if you’re lucky, company politics. But the most important element of being a good or even great manager has been overlooked. That is helping you assume, own, and be comfortable with being the authority.

All of your life, and largely unconsciously, you’ve viewed authority as something outside of you. Why not? That’s what it’s been. Until you found yourself in a situation of management there was never any reason to question the locus of authority: that is, outside of you.

As a manager you are an authority managing people who are unconsciously still looking outward for the source of command, the source of direction and guidance, wisdom and power. And if you haven’t recognized your new state of being and haven’t acknowledged your new emotional status you may be still operating from your own unconscious orientation of looking outside yourself for that someone you can, if not must, follow.

If so you are now a member of a group of people all of which are unconsciously looking around for the leader. And that includes you. Is it any wonder why management can be so hard?

The number one mistake managers make---and since it is fundamentally unconscious it’s important to be compassionate with ourselves and each other---is to not become aware of, integrate, accept, and own your own authority.

What Does This Mean?

1 --- Place the locus of authority within yourself and create yourself as a new identity. This does not mean you have to be alone. You can confer with other managerial colleagues and share your internal experiences. Express what you need so you can build and grow your own sense of authority.

2 --- Think through what authority means to you. After all you are the one who has to live your version of it. What do you want your authority to look like, to feel like, and the emotional impact you want to have. Because no matter how you exercise your authority you will have an emotional impact. It’s important to monitor the outcomes of your behaviors, that is how people relate to you and follow you.

3 --- Many managers have difficulty accepting the fact that people will follow them and they are uncomfortable with that idea. You can’t get around that fact. As an authority you are a leader. It’s important that you be at home with being a leader with followers. Once again it is a shift from looking up to being the one people are looking up to. This does not mean you can’t learn from those who are more advanced and more experienced. But when you operate from your own authority you will not be conforming or complying but learning, integrating, and developing your interpretation, your expression of doing what you’re learning about being a manager, a leader, an authority.

4 --- Moving from looking up to being looked up to is a shift in identity, a transformation of who you are---not just as a professional but who you are in your own soul. As you make this change you will see and relate to the world in ways you have not yet imagined. Discoveries will happen, not because you are exploring new landscapes, which will also be true, but because, as Marcel Proust so elegantly said, “you will be seeing with new eyes.”

Jim Sniechowski has published his first novel, Worship of Hollow Gods, at Amazon.com. In Worship of Hollow Gods Jim bears witness to the world of a sensitive, nine-year-old boy, subjected to the underbelly of his Polish Catholic family in working class Detroit. The year is 1950. The family gathers for a Friday night family poker/pinochle party. The outcome reveals a world no one ever talked about then and are forbidden to talk about now---the unspoken, the impermissible, the reality beneath every family’s practiced facade---and what lies beneath when the front has been ripped away. Worship of Hollow Gods is available now in Kindle and paperback for at http://tinyurl.com/hollowgods

James Sniechowski, PhD and his wife Judith Sherven, PhD http://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabulous. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing. They are always succeeding.

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The Definitive Professional Publishing Platform@@

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The valuable Influencer posts and the wide range of professional content from millions of publishers that we currently aggregate on LinkedIn are powerful, but only the tip of the iceberg. Combined, our members have extremely valuable and varied experiences; however, their knowledge and expertise has not yet been captured and shared.Starting today, LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. Now members have the ability to follow other members that are not in their network and build their own group of followers. Members can continue to share their expertise by posting photos, images, videos and their original presentations on SlideShare.

Social Media Is Turning Into A Sales Driver – Which Platforms Work? – Infographic@@

newbies,pro,entrepreneur profit for life visit https://t.co/KuilT2g6km simply like or follow @cyrustmybjaz29 @weebly pic.twitter.com/RGwQRwd16e
— Armida Colarina (@dhangcalacday79) March 15, 2014

Over the past years I have always claimed that social media should be a sales driver. When I started doing so, I received a lot of heat from the “experts”. Then, the common opinion was, social media is good for brand awareness and other more or less unmeasurable marketing activities. Especially big brands had, and still have, major problems to determine ROI’s in their activity on social. There is no doubt that social media is good for brand awareness and even for the activities that are “unmeasurable”, however, lots of marketing dollars have been spent, and still are, for a lot of hot air. Now, more and more, social media is turning into a sales driver. However, many business owners still have many questions on how to increase sales on social media. Which platform is best? How to approach it and a few others are on the plate every day. Shopify has created this infographic to show which social platforms are driving the most sales. Have a look and find out which platform might work for you.

How LinkedIn Works: The Ecosystem – Infographic@@

The Ecosystem of LinkedIn includes how LinkedIn works and what you should really know. What’s the difference between endorsement and recommendation? What about job search, personal or company profile, groups and connections? Below is the infographic that will simplify LinkedIn for you. Are you an employee or business owner? If so, you should have a profile on LinkedIn. Enjoy.

forrest of the trees visit https://t.co/IiHKeY8NEY @tumblr @LinkedIn @cyrustmybjaz29 @jorgensundberg @ITChefSoftware pic.twitter.com/QVdxmZgHHI
— Armida Colarina (@dhangcalacday79) March 15, 2014

Infographic: In 2014, content is the emperor@@

Content marketing is no longer king—now, it’s the emperor. Content is the no. 1 digital marketing trend to watch in 2014, and this infographic from InfoGraphic Design Team (via AllTwitter) does a great job explaining exactly why. Two significant changes in Google’s search algorithm (remember when we explained Hummingbird?) will continue to make creating outstanding content the spoke in the wheel of your digital marketing strategy this year. What other digital trends do you need to make sure your team stays on top of? The SEO value of your social footprint, understanding the importance of quality images and, of course, mobile. Can we say it again? Mobile will only continue to grow and is a major driver of your omni-channel strategy. And B2B marketers take note: These trends apply to you, too. As Bryan Kramer so famously put it in his slogan that went viral early this year, “there is no more B2B or B2C, there is only human to human (H2H).”

The Best Advice: Don’t Confuse Productivity with Work@@

One afternoon a co-worker and I sat mulling over the opportunities for growth and improvement that we had the ability to pursue in our respective roles in finance and marketing of the organization where we worked. As we spun dreams of “what could be” we talked about how pursuit of those dreams would lead to tangible gains for the business.

We talked about how it would be to work in an organization that – just by fulfilling its mission – made the greater community better. We talked about the benefits that change could bring about for both the employees and customers of the organization. We envisioned just how big it could become.

After the better part of an hour had passed, I stood and said regretfully, “This is great, but I should really get back to work.” She looked up at me and said these memorable words; “Don’t confuse productivity with work.”

"Dream no small dreams, for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dreaming the dreams we dream for what our businesses can become – envisioning how to transform our organizations into the best versions of themselves – this is how an organization goes from ordinary to extraordinary. It’s just as much part of the work of building a business as are the tasks we must do to keep the doors open, the register ringing, the web traffic moving, the pipeline filling and the sales selling.

Even the act of sharing the possibilities with one another was important. It made the dream grow in proportion and yet seem more reachable, all at the same time, because we both saw how it was possible.

Without the dreams, minus the vision, productivity is just so much work.

Your business is more than the tasks that need to be completed today, this week, this month, this quarter, this semester, this season, this year. Sure, tasks have to get done, but equally important is that the mission and vision of your business get done in the process!

Sonos might finally have a proper competitor - and it’s Samsung@@

What’s wrong with Sonos? Sonos is awesome, but there’s no denying it’s had its own way in the multi-room music market for way too long. That looks set to change in 2014, with a whole bunch of big cheese brands trying to muscle in on the territory, and of all those we know of so far, Samsung’s is sounding especially sweet. What’s Samsung got planned, then? The range starts, fairly unsurprisingly, with a couple of all-in-one music players, the M5 and M7. These will cost £230 and £330 respectively and can be used solo or combined in stereo pairs. But then it gets more interesting, because Samsung’s soundbars, home cinema systems and even TVs are also getting in on the act. You can even link the HW-H750 soundbar to two M5s or M7s to create a completely wireless 5.1 surround sound system.

Do they link up to each other? Not quite. You’ll need the little WAM250 Hub (price TBC), which connects to your router and controls all of the players dotted around the house, and it can handle different tunes in every room or combine the lot in a perfectly synchronised party mode. And what about all my existing audio gear? Don’t worry, it can join the party too! The Link Mate WAM270 (price TBC) can be used to plug in your older hi-fi components. It features optical and coaxial digital inputs, a set of analogue inputs and is capable of handling Hi-Res audio up to 24-bit/196kHz. How do I control it all? There’s an app for that. Control is all handled via a free iOS and Android app (oddly – and coolly – you can use this to play music stored on someone else’s phone, as long as you’re sharing a Wi-Fi network) and you can combine music from your PCs, NAS devices, and apps such as Deezer and Spotify, all in the same on-the-fly playlist. And speaking of Spotify, Samsung says its system will be the very first to handle Spotify Connect multi-room. So, Sonos should be scared? Yep. Samsung’s clearly studied Sonos in stalker-like detail and seems to have nailed just about everything that makes it great while adding a few neat twists all of its own. Colour us excited for the launch at the end of April.

The Unexpected Profit Engine@@

It’s so easy to credit the usual suspects within a company for generating profits: product, sales, etc. Yet almost no one includes customer service as a superstar, tagging it instead as a “cost center,” obvious code for a time and resource suck that’s required but not elevated or appreciated in the great pantheon of corporate revenue drivers. But within most standout companies, customer service teams are typically the “little profit engines that could.” Why? At my company, I always say if you’re a) helping our prospects or customers use our products or b) generating more insight about our customers and market for our team, you’re getting the job done. For us, it’s no question that customer service does these two things. In addition to liaising directly with customers, our member services team is an insight powerhouse, synthesizing the feedback they receive into a comprehensible and usable picture.Unsure of the best price point for our product? When we price test, our customer service team hears the feedback. Not clear if the product is a good fit for the market? Customer perspective is one big signpost for us. Everyone calling in with the same question? Sounds like an opportunity for some rapid iteration to me. I can’t overstate how valuable these conclusions, underpinned by actual customer interactions, are for our product, engineering and sales teams. Member services is often our earliest leading indicator for new initiatives in our business. A member services team helps grow the business by virtue of taking excellent care of your customers. They do the obvious: answer questions, listen to concerns, resolve problems, explain a lapse or lag. They do what’s practical: walk customers through how to use your product, help them log on, troubleshoot. They do what’s useful: upsell a customer or connect that person with the relevant team. Internally, they are the heralds, trumpeting the news that a product feature or service is very well received so you can continue giving the customer more of what they want. They also serve as the canary in the coal mine, giving product and engineering groups a well-timed heads up that your course requires correction.  

Good organizations are wise to build customer service into every person’s mindset, regardless of role. Every leader, no matter the function, should be required to do a customer service shift – even if it’s just listening in on calls where member services takes the lead. There’s nothing like hearing your customer firsthand to create empathy and understanding for him or her – and to spark new ideas that make your product or service much, much better. In fact, for the first five months after I started Reputation.com, I did all the customer service myself. In addition to feedback that was both fascinating and eminently useful to our business, I personally benefitted, becoming much more adept at effective listening and relating to customers authentically. As the company grew, I left customer service to others better suited but read every single customer email and call synopsis for the first two years. Even now, eight years later, I still read customer messages every day and take the occasional shift. What are the best customer service practices at your organization?

Meat-Eating Humans: Mightier than Lions, Feebler than Ants@@

I know some of you prefer the punch line right up front, so for that camp, here you go: A population of some 7 billion Homo sapiens simply cannot eat much meat. Period. In my world, the debate about meat-eating often devolves to competing views about nutrients, advanced with that penchant for dogma and religious fervor that have come to figure so prominently and detrimentally in all things nutrition. There are cases to make for and against saturated fat, for and against dietary cholesterol, for and against dairy, and for and against protein intake at any given threshold.

From only slightly greater altitude, the debate is about dietary patterns, but rooted in much the same considerations. There are vegetarians to one side, Paleo diet enthusiasts to the other. I think the most ardent of vegans, and the most carnivorous proponents of the Paleolithic diet have nearly comparable cause to love and hate me. In both cases, I have defended the merits and strived to expose the flaws in the exaggerated arguments that abound. I suspect the vegans may find a little more to love and less to hate, since I land, in the company of Michael Pollan, with the confident recommendation to eat “mostly plants.”

In fact, a true Stone Age diet could well be the healthiest diet for our species. Despite the hype to suggest otherwise, we certainly don’t have the evidence to prove that; but importantly, we have no evidence to disprove it either. There are no long-term, randomized trials pitting an optimal Paleo diet against a comparably optimal Asian, Mediterranean, vegetarian, or vegan approach.

But a relative absence of evidence was not the only consideration to bedevil that prior paragraph. I advisedly used the terms “true” and “optimal.” A true and optimal Stone Age diet would be comprised of foods extant in the Stone Age, and consumed by our Paleolithic forebears. That would mean some wide variety of wild plant foods, and wild animals- most if not all of which are now extinct. Unless you have recently seen, and eaten, a Mammoth, you are obligated to concede that a genuine “Paleo” diet is not possible. Much then depends on the fidelity with which the concept of our native diet is recapitulated.

Generally, the rubric is invoked to justify more meat, fewer plants. So in the cacophonous static of modern-day nutrition, a penchant for Paleo means bacon and grain-fed beef, often with an allowance made for cheese; whether or not it means arduous daily physical activity, a wide variety of plants, a daily fiber intake approaching 100 grams, and so on- all of which were thought to figure in our native experience. Paleo at its core has virtues, but it has become a convenient banner to fly over a plate of pastrami. Which brings us back to future. We cannot eat much meat any more, no matter the nutritional merits or demerits. The debate over nutrients is so myopic as to be downright silly. The debate over competing diets is seen with only slightly greater clarity from very slightly greater height. If we draw back and view the argument with the dispassion of some genuine altitude, a much bigger truth is as plain to see as a dust bowl. We have all seen just this kind of truth from altitude, manifested as an epic battle between two ants. Now, of course, at their scale, ants are a lot stronger than we are. But who cares about their scale? On our scale, they are ants. And while the red ant and the black ant are locked in a colossal, life-and-death, winner-take-all battle, we are invited to reflect ruefully that we could settle the matter with a single tap of the toe. The epic argument of ants devolves to pointlessness beneath the shadow of a boot. And so we come to it. For we are the ants, our endless “my diet can beat your diet” battles the pointless conflict, and the planet wears the boots. Imagine if there were 7 billion lions on the Earth. Unlike us, lions- in common with all great cats- are indeed constitutional carnivores. For them, it’s meat, or greet your maker. Adult lions consume on average between 10 and 25 pounds of meat per day. That translates to between 3650 and 9125 pounds of meat in a typical year. The best estimates suggest that something close to 2,000 gallons of water are required to produce one pound of beef. That figure is perhaps lower for the wild game free-ranging lions eat, but perhaps not much. If we go with the 2000 gallons/pound of flesh estimate, then every adult lion would chew through between 7,300,000 and 18,250,000 gallons of water annually, not taking into account what they drank. If we use the high-end estimate and apply it to all 7 billion lions, that would be 1.3 X10 to the 16 power, or 13 quadrillion gallons. That’s four times the volume of Lake Superior, which contains roughly 10% of the earth’s fresh water. Of course, there aren’t 7 billion lions on earth; there are only 30,000 or so. That’s because while lions may be kings of beasts, Homo sapiens call the shots at the top of the food chain. There are more than 7 billion of us- and that’s the primary reason there are dramatically fewer lions than there were just decades ago. We are taking ever more of the world’s acreage, food, and water for ourselves. And while even the most devotedly carnivorous of us could never match the meaty appetites of lions, we could certainly chew through an awful lot of meat. That much more so if our meat-eating proclivity persists as our population swells to the predicted 9 billion of us, or 12 billion. Folks, it comes down to a pretty basic choice. We can either have a whole lot fewer of us meat-eating Homo sapiens, or we need Homo sapiens to eat a whole lot less meat. The funny thing is, the rate-limiting issue makes the plant vs. animal nutrition debate irrelevant. It’s all about water. As noted a couple of days ago in the New York Times, a switch from a standard omnivorous to a vegetarian diet would reduce an individual’s water consumption by roughly 60%. A reduction in animal foods and commensurate increase in plant food alternatives such as beans and legumes could produce half that benefit. We derive and defend our competing arguments about diet - with preposterous, unfounded conviction- as if we can eat whatever we want. But whether the argument is as old as the Stone Age, or as new as the latest incarnation of fad-diet hooey, it is comparably subsumed within the larger truths and greater forces that govern the planet. Bickering over what nutrients do or don’t do ignores other salient considerations, from land use to the treatment of other species. But in the end, even all of that is just so much dust in the wind. For on a dry, dustbowl planet, there are no good choices left- and everybody’s just too damn thirsty to take any interest in the hot new dietary claim. Unlike lions, we Homo sapiens are not constitutional carnivores. On the other hand, we have very clearly been eating meat since before our genus spawned our species. There is nothing intrinsically unethical or unhealthy in meat-eating. I believe my vegan friends should concede this. But there are more than 7 billion of us now, not the isolated roaming bands surrounded by pristine expanses that characterized the Stone Age. With the great power to shape the fate of the planet comes the great responsibility to think beyond the boundary of our dinner plates. Our diet debates circumscribe much more than our meal choices; they potentially circumscribe the Serengeti, and the world’s aquifers. Even the king of beasts is subordinate to the laws of nature. We, my Homo sapien cousins, are as well. So we find ourselves back at that punch line. We may debate our meat-eating proclivities as if mightier than lions. But we are also, in the grand scheme of larger forces, feebler than ants- however inclined we may be to forget it from our arrogant perch atop the food chain. The reminder, though, will get increasingly unpleasant. All our passions and rants will ultimately prove to be moot- for we are ants in the shadow of the planet’s great, dusty boot.

Foods that i want to eat and explore: Meat-Eating Humans: Mightier than Lions, Feebler t... http://t.co/5JJaiQxPJQ
— Armida Calacday (@dhangcalacday79) March 11, 2014

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Cooking Video@@

You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me." "I was ninety percent sure." "I see," Clary said. There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hands on his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" "The other ten percent.”

“Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored. "In future, Clarissa," he said, "it might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious situations." "You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken. "Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit." "I didn't invite him into bed," Clary snapped. "We were just kissing." "Just kissing?" Jace's tone mocked her with its false hurt. "How swiftly you dismiss our love.”

Foods that i want to eat and explore: Cooking Video@@ http://t.co/XvqfhoFKNY
— Armida Calacday (@dhangcalacday79) March 10, 2014

The 2013 Best Food Blog Awards: The Winners@@

In SAVEUR's ongoing mission to chronicle a world of authentic cuisine, we find what we're looking for more and more in one place: online. Of the tens of thousands of nominations that came in this year—blogs great and small, visual and textual, humorous and profound, technical and amateur, exuberant and austere—we found not just great writing, great photography, and a great commitment to the importance of food to storytelling and community-building, but also some blogs that truly spoke to us. We're thrilled to shine a light on the sixty-eight unique blogs that are finalists in the fourth annual SAVEUR Best Food Blog Awards—and even more delighted to announce the winners in each category. Congratulations to all

Foods that i want to eat and explore: The 2013 Best Food Blog Awards: The Winners@@ http://t.co/zoYjY6yNft
— Armida Calacday (@dhangcalacday79) March 10, 2014

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