Hidden in an article about a recent mass shooting was the following datum, which has more relevance to your responsibilities as a business leader than you might think:

“Far-right radicalism is the nation’s top domestic threat, according to the FBI, particularly in the category known as RMVE, racially motivated violent extremism, the agency’s catchall term for white supremacist and neo-Nazi militants.” (“3 shot dead in hate crime in Florida,” John Raoux, Terry Spencer, and Trisha Ahmed, 8/27/2023, Associated Press.)

The relevance?

I’m certainly not challenging the FBI’s tabulations on this front. The FBI has both more data and more expertise on the subject than I do.

But I think a deeper root cause analysis might be in order, because tossing aside a few more shovels full of dirt would, I think, reveal that far-right radicalism is the consequence of an even more pernicious neurological ailment – one we’re all vulnerable to if we aren’t wary, namely, the deep-seated need to despise and feel superior to some identifiable group of people.

And it isn’t just some identifiable group of people either. It’s always the same identifiable group: “Them.” As I’ve pointed out before, “we” are the source of all that’s good and right with the world: We’re smart, we’re strong, we’re virtuous. We demonstrate excellent personal hygiene, and we’re snappy dressers, too. That’s in contrast to “them.” They’re ignorant, stupid, and too ignorant to know the difference between ignorance and stupidity. Their morals are unsavory, they smell bad, and their mothers dress them funny.

I’ve made this point before, but perhaps not often enough.

The connection to your leadership?

Once upon a time I presented the five primary motivators – useful to marketers, just as useful to business leaders with some minor tweaks: (1) need for approval; (2) fear; (3) exclusivity; (4) greed; and (5) guilt.

Focus your attention on exclusivity (“A dangerous way to motivate,” 10/27/1997). It caters to the desire most people have to be unique and to matter. Remember the recruiting ad the Marines used to excellent effect? It was “The few, the proud, the Marines!”

Join the Marines and you became part of a rarified, special, exclusive group. This was highly motivating to your average Marine (yes, I know, there’s no such thing as an “average” Marine), but won no friends among the Army’s troops.

It’s a dangerous way to motivate business employees because it’s divisive, encouraging employees to treat rival organizational silos with disdain and without cooperation or collaboration.

Which takes us back to our national culture and your role as a business leader in helping to shape it: Whenever a business leader encourages employees to divide the organization into rival silos, that leader encourages employees to divide other aspects of their world into “us” and “them” too.

Bob’s last word: Faced with news of yet another mass shooting it’s easy to feel powerless.

But as a business leader there is something you can do: Whenever you hear an employee grousing about “them” and how awful “they” are, challenge them. It doesn’t matter whether “they” are HR bureaucrats, Accounting’s bean counters, IT’s propeller-heads, or management’s empty suits.

If you can help those you lead jettison the us vs them mental habit you’ll have helped.

Because while I ain’t no expert, I’m pretty sure mass shooters are less likely to aim at those they think of as “us” than they are to fire at “them.”

Bob’s sales pitch: You might have noticed the links to past KJRs. In round numbers the KJR archives contain about 1,400 entries, which means if you’re looking for a commentary on a subject that interests you, there’s a pretty good chance I’ve written about it at least once.

I’d be delighted if you were to take advantage.

On CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “6 ways CIOs sabotage their IT consultant’s success.” The point? It’s up to IT’s leaders to make it possible for the consultants they engage to succeed. If they weren’t serious about the project, why did they sign the contract?

Among the more annoying symptoms of aging is being annoyed by areas of social decline those of us entering geezerhood readily recognize because of the perspective our advancing age gives us.

For example, as if climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and generative AI aren’t bad enough …

In my youth we had the Gabor sisters, “famous for being famous” as the saying goes. Except, perhaps, Eva Gabor, who, in addition to being famous for being famous, became famous for playing Lisa Douglas on Green Acres.

If you’re too young to remember the Gabors, think Kardashians but with a modicum of class. I used to think that with the Kardashians we’d hit bottom. But we haven’t, because we now have “social media influencers.”

Back when the Gabor sisters reigned, they defined “fashionable” among a certain set of acolytes for whom “I want to be like her!” was their rallying cry.

At least they had class, so there was something worth emulating.

That’s in contrast to the Kardashians, who exemplify Rodney Dangerfield’s famous line in Back to School, “Call me some time when you have no class!”

But credit where it’s due: At least the Kardashians are famous and good at achieving it, so there’s some justification for emulating them among those who wish they were famous, too.

Okay, it’s a stretch, but go with it.

But social media influencers?

Supposedly, to become a social media influencer you first have to create content followers pay attention to. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I publish content every week that you pay attention to. (You do or you wouldn’t have reached the preceding sentence.)

Does this make me a social media influencer? As I consider the existence of “social media influencer” as a career to be a sign of social decline, the possibility worries me.

But I think I’m okay. A hallmark of social media influencers is that they want to be social media influencers. That’s their ambition and career goal. The sole value many of these folks deliver is little more than what celebrity endorsers deliver.

Which isn’t much, because of how many celebrity endorsers have no connection to the product they endorse – if you’re a NASCAR fan, do you decide which cola to drink because of which cola’s patch your favorite NASCAR driver wears?

Back in 1996 when I started writing the “IS Survival Guide” for InfoWorld, here’s how I explained what I was going to provide: “Suggestions and ideas that come from years of real management and executive experience managing technology; conversations with other managers and executives; discussions and debates with consultants, writers and academics; and just plain reading and thinking.

A lot comes from real-world experience of what works well. A lot more comes from real-world experience of what didn’t work so well.

The point, that is, was and is to provide useful perspectives that weren’t just like what every other industry pundit had to say on a subject.

Bob’s last word: That, I think, is what I find annoying about social-media-influencer as a profession: Fame is its point, not its byproduct, which means we, as a society, have decided to reward people whose sole claim to fame is that they’re adept at getting noticed.

Sure, I’d have liked to have “gone viral” (the 1990’s social-media-influencer equivalent) but that needed to be a consequence, not my purpose.

Bob’s sales pitch: No, I’m not asking you to help me become a social media influencer. But as I start to wind down Keep the Joint Running, you have an open invitation to peruse the archives and download copies of anything you find useful. The usual attribution courtesies apply.

This week on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “7 IT consultant tricks CIOs should never fall for.” It’s about how many consultants fix what’s broken by breaking what’s fixed, plus 6 other common consulting misdeeds.