Most valuable writing lesson ever. Or so says Steven Pressfield in this blog post on how his first professional job as advertising copywriter indelibly carved this truth on his psyche:

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial…

Three weeks ago, we announced that Enterprise Nation would make some small business owners the subject of a documentary.  Now, you don't yet need to get out the popcorn, but several insights the filmmakers picked up while putting people on camera are at least available for consumption.

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When the leaders of the G-20 meet in Pittsburgh on September 24, one of the key topics will be limits on bankers' bonuses. This will be a highly contentious issue for the leaders of the world's largest economies.

In late August, 2009, French President Nicholas Sarkozy proposed bonus caps for individual financial executives and a mandatory deferral of payment on 50% of such bonuses. While Sarkozy has implemented these proposals in France, he was rebuffed by the Finance Ministers of the G-20 in early September. They favor a proposal to limit the total amount of bonuses paid by a bank to a fixed portion of its income.

In my view, fixed limits on bonuses for individual bankers are likely to boomerang by leading to high guarateed salaries. But limits on overall compensation at unprofitable banks make sense if combined with share awards based on performance.

In February of 2009, Congress adopted legislative limits on bonuses of senior executives at financial institutions receiving federal assistance (Assisted Institutions). In specific, Congress limited their annual bonuses, or any other type of incentive awards, to grants of restricted shares of Assisted Institutions not exceeding one third of annual compensation.

These legislative limits on individual bonuses have already led to much higher annual salaries at Assisted Institutions. For instance, Wells Fargo raised the base salary of its CEO from $900,000 to $5.6 million. More broadly, Morgan Stanley increased by 250% the base salaries of its four top executives just below its CEO.

Thus, despite the best of intentions, these legislative caps have unlinked executive bonuses from executive performance. By raising base salaries, these institutions are effectively guaranteeing some or all of what used to be a variable payment contingent on that executive's performance. This is a perverse result, undermining years of efforts by investors, academics and others to tie executive pay more closely to company performance measured over a reasonable time period.

In response to these concerns, the Finance Ministers are pushing for an overall limit on bonus payments by banks to a specified percentage of their income. Although this proposal should not apply to healthy banks, a modified version makes sense for unprofitable banks.

In a profitable bank, the portion of income going to executive bonuses comes from the pockets of its shareholders. As long as the bank fully discloses the amount of these bonus payouts, shareholders can decide whether these payouts represent a reasonable allocation of the bank's income. Shareholders have been willing to invest in a bank with relatively high bonuses if they see significant earnings growth - the pie is expanding for everyone.

In an unprofitable bank, by contrast, the national government and the bank's bondholders should be interested in its bonus payouts as well as its shareholders. But there is no easy answer. On the one hand, high bonus payouts will deplete the bank's scarce cash and possibly imperil its solvency. On the other hand, low bonus payments may drive away the talented executives needed to bring the bank back to profitability.

Balancing both objectives, I would recommend that the unprofitable bank distribute modest cash bonuses now to top executives, together with large awards of restricted shares that will vest over the next few years if the bank returns to profitability. In addition, to avoid massive increases in base salaries for many employees, there should be limits on overall compensation for unprofitable banks - based on their revenue since their income is negative. This combination would incent talented executives to stay and turnaround the bank, while protecting the interests of the government insurance fund and the bank's investors.

What do you think of this idea? Do you favor legal limits on individual bonuses of senior bankers or aggregate bonuses at an unprofitable bank?

Bob Pozen is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the author of Too Big to Save? How to Fix the US Financial System (John Wiley, to be published on November 9, 2009)

When 9/11 happened, the Internet was flooded, and I couldn't even access it from MIT. In my office there was a high-tech plasma TV with its cable service down, but it could pick up a weakened airwave signal. We sat and watched the horrible events transpire in completely fuzzy images. There at the temple of the digital universe, I found it ironic that the only way we could reconnect with the world again was through an analog lens.

The above story is a metaphor for my awkward feelings about digital technology. I completely identified with Nicholas Negroponte's 1996 book Being Digital, and it was particularly symbolic that was the same year I became a professor at Negroponte's Media Lab. And yet all through my experience at that incredible place, I constantly wondered whether digital technology was making our lives any better.

The popular terminology "digital natives vs. digital immigrants" describes the natural divide that has occurred between those who were born with computers and those who came to them later in life. Given the ubiquity of cell phone use for even those who would see themselves as "digital foreigners," it's safe to say that we've all been assimilated to some degree. The question remains are we less human or more human for it.

I say this because I hear how technology can be dehumanizing — like the exasperating interaction you get with a phone tree when calling up your insurance agent. And I hear how technology makes our lives more fulfilling — for a CEO who wouldn't be able to attend his daughter's soccer game if it weren't for their mobile phone/office. My only conclusion is that we are coming to terms with the hybrid lifestyle we've chosen with technology. Just as a Toyota Prius is a gas-electric system, our generation of humanity needs to be digital-analog, and to know when to turn one on, and the other off. That's as parents, managers, and friends as well.

So in a previous post I mentioned my need to do less blogging, and more jogging in my role as President of RISD. How is that going? Well, I've started to cook meals for faculty members at my house - that's gone nicely from the feedback I've gotten thus far. I've pulled back from making elaborately designed PowerPoint presentations and am finding more comfort simply talking without any fancy aids. The other day I bumped into a group of freshmen who were being oriented around campus, and we did an impromptu conversation fishbowl - something I'd learned how to do from my participation on the Design Advisory Board for P&G.

As for other things I was already doing, like sitting with students whenever I see them gathered around campus or catching their concerns having lunch in the cafeterias, I still gain a lot from those interactions. And jogging? Yes, I still do my morning jogs around campus to randomly shake the hands of our groundskeepers and public safety officers. I'm on the running path to learn how to become a better balanced digital-analog leader, I guess.