• Fresh Air: interview of ex-CIA operative Robert Baer, author of The Devil We Know - who says on the show, and I quote, "of course Bin Laden is dead" - and points out why Iran is actually helping us in Iraq.

• This American Life: profile of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone. As author Paul Tough writes in Whatever It Takes and says in this interview, there is a solution to poverty. And it's not that complicated. It just requires people deciding to do it. (See also this past pointer to Canada on Fresh Air.)

• This American Life: Another Frightening Show About the Economy, a followup to their recent, very popular Giant Pool of Money episode, explaining the credit crisis in clear language (which everyone should take time to hear).

P.S. If you're interested in creating a media diet for yourself, start by reading Bit Literacy.

Update: Bonus fourth item, Charlie Rose's interview of Warren Buffett on the financial crisis:

Twenty of you wrote in with comments, mostly agreeing with the column, and even offering a counterexample of Southwest Airlines, which has maintained its customer focus.

Now the New York Times has run a profile of JetBlue, pointing to evidence that JetBlue's management is actively moving away from its original vision:

Though its approach is still jaunty, as seen in its "Happy Jetting" slogan, JetBlue is reshaping itself. Notably, it has shifted from its roots as a low-fare carrier and adopted a sober and more nebulous identity as "a value airline."

Some analysts have voiced concerns that this might not be the best strategic move; here's the reply, an instant classic:

Edward Barnes, JetBlue's chief financial officer, says the airline isn't worried. "You can't underestimate the brand," he said.

You can't underestimate the brand. It raises an obvious question: What brand?

Let's compare: the old JetBlue had...

• low fares
• on-time, friendly service
• pillows and blankets upon request
• and an overall experience that customers recommended to their friends

...and the new JetBlue has...

• ads and signs everywhere saying "Happy Jetting"
• higher fares
• some of the poorest on-time arrival measurements in the industry
• pillows and blankets for $7
• and an overall experience that I've personally seen customers recommend their friends against, multiple times, over several months.

If one is to measure the brand by the traditional approach ("let's spend thirty million dollars shoving a logo and a tag line down their throats"), then the new JetBlue is, I suppose, consistent and well-known. Lots of money buys lots of ad impressions. Congratulations.

However, if one is to measure the brand through the lens of "good experience," which I believe is the most accurate way of evaluating companies today, then JetBlue is doing poorly.

Branding is simple. It doesn't take two years in an MBA program, or a PhD in quantitative analysis, to understand one simple fact. As I wrote about in Defining "Branding",...

The brand is what you tell your friends about afterwards.

If your JetBlue flight leaves you feeling annoyed enough to tell your friends about the experience, no amount of "Happy Jetting" happytalk is going to convince your friends otherwise.

Similarly, if your experience with Google - or Apple - or Whole Foods - or Southwest Airlines - or any other beloved product or service - leaves you raving about how great it was, then the company by definition has a strong brand.

The winning companies today are those that listen to their customers, and create products and services that serve customers' needs with speed, service, and low cost... in other words, the winners are those with the best customer experience.

As the financial markets continue to tighten competition for customers, this equation will become even more important. Dropping thirty million to shout a tag line at customers, rather than building a customer-centric culture, is now even more dangerous than it was in the past.

And so I actually agree with JetBlue's CFO: you really can't underestimate the brand. I just wonder whether he understands what the brand actually is.

- - -

When Ed Barnes says "you can't underestimate the brand," I think he means what he says: that no matter how low you estimate the brand, it's never an underestimation.

One could say: you must not underestimate the brand. That makes good sense (in the spirit in which you and I would invoke that phrase).

Or one could say: you can't overestimate the brand, meaning that no matter how high you estimate the brand, it's never too much - that's how important it is. Again, this aligns with our point of view.

If my analysis here holds water, then Barnes is indeed telling us what he truly thinks, and it explains perfectly well what's going on. We just keep hearing something else, because it seems so hard to believe. Then again, maybe he's telling us the truth without even noticing it himself.

Meanwhile it appears that the recent commuter train crash in Los Angeles was caused by the train operator, who was sending text messages instead of watching traffic signals.

If you know someone who needs an intervention, hand them Bit Literacy.

From the Plain English Campaign come these examples of clarifying writing:

Before
High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process.

After
Children need good schools if they are to learn properly.

Before
If there are any points on which you require explanation or further particulars we shall be glad to furnish such additional details as may be required by telephone.

After
If you have any questions, please phone.

More fun reading on their examples page.

I believe this crisis could have been avoided had the people in charge followed a "good experience" approach to their work: committing to simplicity (rather than gratuitously complicated products), a long-term approach (rather than short-term gains at everyone else's expense), and an integrated view of their own role in the world (rather than a narrow view of "just keeping my head down, don't ask me to think about it").

A simple, long-term, integrated approach is the right way to do business. There are many reasons to advocate it, but I'll just list one. Committing to good experience focuses attention on other people in the system, not just oneself - one might even call it "caring" (!) - and for companies that follow the approach, it happens to pay enormous dividends over the long run.

I believe in capitalism and the benefits it can bring society, even a global one. But like any system, the output depends on the input. If enough players try to cheat - say, by swindling their fellow citizens - the system won't perform well in the long run. When the day of reckoning arrives, someone has to pay up. And here we are.

I'm - well, what's the best word - outraged? sickened? - that our system worked in the perverse way it did. Many of those who made out with unfairly large short-term gains are now on their yachts, safely out of the game, while everyone else - teachers, nurses, designers, middle managers, stay-at-home parents, and so on - will have to pay back those indiscretions for a generation or two.

One good way I've heard the problem described is "privatize profits, socialize losses." To the robber barons running the system, here's the deal we-the-people had with them: heads you win, tails we lose (and we'll pay for it all). What's to keep someone from taking huge risks, with that upside-only arrangement?

Of course, it's more complex than simple finger-pointing. The robber barons were playing the game made legal by the legislation passed by the people we elected. And the signs of this corruption have been visible for awhile, so maybe the people didn't do enough to get it fixed. Maybe it's time to "throw the bums out," or maybe it's time just to pay more attention. I don't know. The important question is what we create, starting now.

For my part, I'm still a hedgehog, sticking to the same old message, advocating for good experience: a simple, long-term, integrated approach that focuses on benefits outside a narrow self-centered view. I'll continue, via the Gel conference, to spotlight creative leaders who take this approach.

And via our Councils, the Creative Good team and I will continue to build a community of executives who are helping each other get through these times.

And finally, I'll keep writing Good Experience. For anyone who's ready to build, there are good things afoot. Stay tuned.

- - -

P.S. Below are some of my favorite resources for understanding the credit crisis and the larger financial system. Hope you find them useful:

• Roller coaster of housing prices

• Relating the financial crisis to Moses and the golden calf

• Must-listen Fresh Air interview explaining the crisis

• On a prescient column from a year ago

• A good punk song to accompany the crisis

• Money as Debt, a video on the origins of money

• A summary of the crisis (back in May!) by Douglas Rushkoff, Gel '06 speaker

Update: Just came across this column by Philip Greenspun, who writes:

The people who created the bubble, in many cases engaging in frauds of various kinds, were rewarded handsomely and are now relaxing in their Greenwich, Connecticut mansions deciding whether to take out the yacht or the private jet. Wall Street firms did not retain their exceptional profits during the years of fraud, but rather paid out almost all of it to the executives and rank-and-file employees who engineered the fraud. (Actually if they had retained some of these profits they wouldn't be needing a bailout!)

I saw the sign at right in my neck of the woods recently. Such a nicely designed sign (and an important message) with a glaring grammatical error! It should be "never reopens" instead of "never reopen."

Right?

Item #2, "Discover new voices," mentions us: "Gel does a great job of not only corralling largely unknown speakers but giving them interesting things to do."

I'm working on a revamped Gel Videos site, so that we can share those new voices even more widely. Stay tuned.