User talk:BC1278/DovSeidman

Proposed Edit
Hi,

I have a number of improvements, updates and corrections recommended for this article, which I'd like to try to bring up from its current stub class to a C or even B. Given the range of sourcing (academic, books, journalism) and diversity of the bio across business, philosophy and law, an improved article should be an achievable goal.

I am a frequent Wikipedia editor but I have a paid consulting relationship with the subject of this article, so I wish to fully comply with WP: COI requiring this disclosure and independent review and approval of all suggested edits. FYI, this article was created by an editor unrelated to Seidman, who read about him in a front page article on the New York Times. He contacted Seidman to ask for a photo to accompany the article.

I am listing the suggestions below, individually, which I think make progress toward more encyclopedic use of language and accuracy. Since the suggestions are extensive, I also created an update draft for the article at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BC1278/DovSeidman#LRN

Lead

-add "and the author of How" to the lead. This is probably why he's best known and there's now a Wikipedia article about "How" to link to.

Education

-delete "mere" to characterize "970", his score on the SATs. "Mere" isn't NPOV.

Career

-change wording of first sentence so it does not state all these jobs occurred after law school, which the source does not say (and isn't true. Some were during law school).


 * Seidman's career included stints at the Washington, D.C office of O'Melveny & Myers, Arnold & Porter, Steptoe & Johnson, Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

-moved the sentence about the RAND corp. directorship from here to "Awards and Honors" section. It's out of sequence here by decades.

LRN

I'd like to suggest adding some additional statements from major articles about Seidman.

He was able to pre-sell a $500,000 contract to MCI based on the idea. He raised $2 million from 42 investors to launch the company.


 * American Lawyer magazine wrote about Seidman in a feature story called "Should You be Afraid of This Man?" because of concerns in the legal industry that LRN would undercut law firms by charging substantially less.

Suggest including the following sentence because it shows the evolution of Seidman's thinking over the next 20 years, the related evolution of LRN, and because it was the subject of an article in a major business periodical:


 * "Seidman eventually shifted the company direction toward ethics and regulatory compliance, as well as corporate culture, governance and leadership. His position, explained in the journal Strategy + Business, is that the most sustainable businesses are also the most moral, through “sustainable values” rather than “situational values”.

Suggest re-orienting the language in the following sentence toward Seidman himself, as per the source (a column in the NY Times by Seidman):


 * Seidman created a flat reporting structure at LRN which emphasizes "collaborative management." A New York Times column he wrote described his goal of having the company move toward self-governance with staff reporting to the company mission instead of having a formal reporting structure, with titles.

Best selling author

Suggest adding this sentence which encapsulates the subject matter of the book:


 * ...former United States President Bill Clinton. "How" is a philosophical framework for the changing role of behavior, governance, culture and leadership in contemporary society..."

Columnist

Suggest adding summary of article from Harvard Business Review:


 * "In an article in the the Harvard Business Review, Seidman says that while the world previously transitioned from an "industrial economy" to a "knowledge economy", it is now moving to a "human economy". Workers will no longer have an advantage over increasingly intelligent machines, but will be valued for "essential traits can't and won’t be programmed into software, like creativity, passion, character, and collaborative spirit—their humanity, in other words." "

Legal battle

This section can be tightened up and also need a very important clarification.

The first sentence strikes me as having a NPOV problem, as "catchy phrase" is an characterization that seems to somewhat trivialize the "How" concepts. In any case, the sentence doesn't add any information and I think it can safely be cut.


 * "Through writing his book and developing talking points for his lectures, Seidman has distilled his perspective with a catchy phrase."


 * If this sentence is deleted, the beginning of the next sentence should be corrected as follows, for clarity: "The first sentence of Seidman's book is: “This is a HOW book, not a how-to book,"...

Suggest cutting... "founded in 2005 by a Turkish immigrant" as off topic and superfluous.

Most importantly, please add this sentence, immediately following "how it is made makes all the difference in the world" to clarify what the dispute is about. Support for the sentence is in the same source:


 * "Seidman said that Chobani used ‘how’ to connote that they are an ethical company, appropriating the foundation of his philosophy."

Awards and honors

Suggest adding keynote address before the NFL Owners

Seidman was selected as the keynote speaker before the NFL owners in 2014, advocating that the NFL create a culture of high expectations, where tolerance and respect are the norm.

Suggest adding address at Fortune Time Conference in Vatican City attended by the Pope:

Seidman addressed the Fortune-Time Global Forum at Vatican City about the moral imperative of global leadership.

--


 * I have added a copy of the edit request to the article's talk page, as per the correct procedure. I've also removed the edit request tag from this page. Regards, VB00 (talk) 16:41, 25 January 2017 (UTC)