Leading Questions

The Fall of the Berlin Wall - 20th Anniversary

Twenty years ago today, the unthinkable occurred. The Berlin Wall, which had divided the city since the early 1960s, came crumbling down. It was an act of freedom for those who had lived under the Communist rule in eastern Europe. Two years later the Communist government in the Soviet Union collapsed and new democracy sprang up over night.

My generation remembers this as a watershed moment in our lives. We grew up with a clear distinction between free and oppressed. The West was free and the people's of the East, who were living under the domination of the Communist governments of the Soviet bloc, were not. Today, it is a different story.

That was an ideological age. Today, hardly at all. Twenty years ago, freedom was a real topic of debate. Today, there is no debate, only the exercise of power.

Don't think those issues matter any more. Think we've moved beyond them. Here are some voices that stood for freedom before the Wall came down.

Lech Walesa - Polish Solidarity movement leader and first president of Polish third republic

"As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs, to mould our own future. This does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world."

“We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless.”

“It takes really a long while for people to learn to take advantage of (democracy). So the legal framework of democracy can function everywhere. But as we say in Poland, it's hard to make a bull move unless it really wants to.”

"I realize that the strivings of the Polish people gave rise, and still do so, to the feelings of understanding and solidarity all over the world."

Andrei Sakharov - Soviet scientist and dissident

“Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.”

"Profound insights arise only in debate, with a possibility of counterargument, only when there is a possibility of expressing not only correct ideas but also dubious ideas."

"Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships."

Alexandre Solzhenitsyn - Russian author and Noble Prize recipient

“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice."

“In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State”

“For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”

“The revolution is an amalgam of former Party functionaries, quasi- democrats, KGB officers, and black-market wheeler-dealers, who are standing in power now and have represented a dirty hybrid unseen in world history”

Vaclav Havel - Czech poet and first president of the Czech republic

"The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both."

"Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace."

To those who now know freedom who once did not, please do not let us forget what your brothers and sisters, friends and family died to secure. May your voices reach our ears and may we hear so we too may understand.

Life's little pleasures are the best ones

David Pu'u posts on textures in his Ventura, California world. Here's one of his pictures.

David also points to this video which celebrates the small business person. Listen to what this man says about his purpose in business.

A comment before viewing. When I started my business in 1995, one of the reasons to do leadership development and planning was to help small businesses and community organizations find strength and sustainability. It wasn't just for the business' sake. Rather it was for the sake of the people who were their employees, their customers, their recipients, for the families and the community. I was convinced then, and remain convinced now that the strength of the nation is not based on what happens on Capital Hill or in the White House, but rather what happens in small businesses on Main Street in cities and towns throughout American, and the world. So, when I watched this video of a guy who sells soda pop, my heart was glad, because he gets it too. Enjoy.

Thanks also to Seth Godin and Kim Komando who contributed to the material that is presented here.

Notes in search of a presentation

Every person I meet ...

... is in transition

... has questions

... needs hope and integrity

... has ideas that illuminate and obscure

... wants meaning and fulfillment in life

... has relationships that either add or detract from a life of meaning and fulfillment

... has a purpose to their life and work that is sometimes evident and often not

... has a need to align that purpose with all the social and organizational contexts in their life.

I am learning that ...

... life is a dynamic,

... between our ideas, our relationships and the various contexts where we live

... our activities are not always filled with purpose or meaning, but with obligation and duty

... the impact we want to have in life is tied to the activities we do

... people and relationships are the center of activity for fulfilling our purpose

... that humility is necessary to do collaborative work

... it is easy to lose touch with the big picture and opportunities that come from seeing the connections between ideas, people and contexts.

I know ...

... less than I think I do which drives me to know more

... that what I don't know makes a difference

... that there is risk in doing nothing as well as acting too quickly

... that if we act on what we know that we discover what we need to know

... that self-denial is not the same as self-deception

... contentment is transitory

... that life is meant to be lived, and is not a museum relic

... that good work and good relationships feed a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Values - the surprising key to future growth

This week's Work Life Lead column at Weekly Leader - Values - the surprising key to future growth - is up and running.

I'm writing in response to a question that Vickie Gray asked me on Twitter. 

@edbrenegar making choices abt what to give up in order to make space for growth - how do you choose?

I find values are the key. Let me know what you think.

The Recession is a Game Changer

Do you need proof that the world has changed with this recession?

Check out Tom Peter's list, Recession46: Forty-six “Secrets” and “Clever Strategies” For Dealing with the Recession of 2008-XXXX.

He starts by stating the obvious.

You come to work earlier.
You leave work later.
You work harder.
You may well work for less; and, if so, you adapt to the untoward circumstances with a smile—even if it kills you inside.
You volunteer to do more.
You dig deep, deeper, deepest—and always bring a good attitude to work.
You fake it if your good attitude flags.
You literally practice your “game face” in the mirror in the morning, and in the loo mid-morning.
You give new meaning to the idea and intensive practice of “visible management.”
You take better than usual care of yourself and encourage others to do the same— physical well-being significantly impacts mental well-being and response to stress.
You shrug off shit that flows downhill in your direction—buy a shovel or a “pre-worn” raincoat on eBay.
You try to forget about “the good old days”—nostalgia is self-destructive
(And bores others.)
You buck yourself up with the thought that “this too shall pass”—but then remind yourself that it might not pass any time soon, and so you re-dedicate yourself to making the absolute best of what you have now.
You work the phones and then work the phones some more—and stay in touch with and on the mind of positively everyone.
You frequently invent breaks from routine, including “weird” ones — “changeups” prevent wallowing and bring a fresh perspective.
You eschew all forms of personal excess.
You simplify.
You sweat the details as never before.
You sweat the details as never before.
You sweat the details as never before.
You raise to the sky and maintain at all costs the Standards of Excellence by which you unfailingly and unflinchingly evaluate your own performance.

In effect, you need two plans going forward. You need a new business plan. And you need a personal development plan.

Even as government becomes an increasingly intrusive part of our lives, we are more independent than ever before. The social support structure of family and community are not what they once were. Which means that if you do not have an attitude and the behaviors to be resilient and adaptive, then you are going to have a hard time coping with the changes that are taking place.

Read Tom Peters whole list. Copy it. Reflect on it. Factor it into your personal development plan.

HT: Dan Pink

Taleb on Skepticism

Smart people many times outsmart themselves because they are confident about their intellectual ability. I place all politicians in this classification. The result is not an expansive mind open to truth or reality, but rather a closed mine of opinion and suspicion. When our minds become closed, we treat our opinions as personal statements, and we treat those who oppose us as threats or even enemies.

This is what I thought of when I watched this interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan. Here they are discussing David Cameron, UK Conservative Party leader who may well be the next Prime Minister. In this instance there is no difference between the politics of Britain and of the US. The difference is between kinds of liberalism and conservatism.

The key here is skepticism. Taleb is making a differentiation within the traditional economic ideology of both the left and the right. They are talking about conservative economic approaches, but the point applies to liberal/ progressives as well.

Skepticism isn't a tool applied to other people's ideas. It is applied to one's own decisions. It recognizes that every free decision holds risk. The question is how to mitigate the more disastrous consequences related to risk.

At the heart of Taleb's point is the need for politicians to be circumspect and humble about their own ideas. Their confidence and the public's declining confidence in them should be a sign that something is amiss.

I find no evidence of this kind of intellectual integrity by the politicians in Washington. This concerns me as it should every person on the planet. What happened a year ago is possible again. Where's the skepticism by the news media, by academics, by the public? There is evidence of it, but it is written off as disloyalty. In essence, check your brain at the door. Just be a good citizen and think as your are told.

I think it is time for a great deal more skepticism. Remember that on election day Tuesday.

If you have not read Taleb's books Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, I suggest you do. He is an excellent tonic to the optimism that passes for reason in Washington.

"Homelessness is an attitude, not a lifestyle."

Becky Blanton became my friend through her generosity of spirit. At one time she was homeless and depressed, and now she is a globally recognized writer. Listen to her story and then I'll tell another one.

Homelessness is many things and most of them tragic. Becky learned that it was an attitude and not who she was as a person. She inspired many people at TED this summer and this video will inspire millions more.

Over twenty five years ago, my life was impacted by a man who was homeless. His name is Berkeley Tulloch.

Berkeley came up to me one afternoon as I was approaching my car.  On the rear window of my car was a UNC-Chapel Hill decal. He said, "I went there." I turned and found a dirty, smelly, alcoholic homeless man. My first thought, "Yeah, sure."

As it turned out, he did go to Chapel Hill. He was a Ph.D. student in philosophy when his wife and young son were killed in an auto accident. Berkeley was devastated by the loss.  As he told me, he drank through every thing he owned.

At the time I was a young associate pastor in a large Presbyterian church in Atlanta. My responsibilities were for the church's ministries in the city, which included our ministry to homeless people. Berkeley and I became friends. We talked frequently about his homelessness and the loss of his family. He clearly was searching for a way to change his existence. In the vernacular of Becky, though living without a home, Berkley was clearly trying to rid himself of the attitude of homelessness.

Over the course of a year, he took steps forward and backward. There were times I'd sit in a dirty downtown hotel room until he fell asleep in a drunken stupor. And there was the time he came to faith, was baptized and joined our church during a Wednesday Noon service that we held for business people in our neighborhood.

One day Berkeley told me that he wanted to go home. He was ready to be sober. He want to go to Raleigh to Dorothea Dix Hospital and check himself into an alcohol rehab program. I bought him a bus ticket and put him on the bus wondering if I'd ever hear or see him again.

A year later, I had a call from Berkeley. He spent three months at Dix hospital and was now in Sanford living with his brother Bill. He told me that Bill was moving and the he was going to go to Durham and live on the streets so he could help people like himself. He said that it was hard to live under a roof. The call ended. It was the fall of 1985. That was the last I heard from him.

In January of this year, I received an email from John Tulloch, Berkley's youngest brother. Over the next several months, we exchanged phone calls and email.

John described the Berkley he knew growing up.

Berk was in the 10Th grade when I was born, so my memories of him are few.  I distinctly remember hearing his voice resonate throughout our home as a mix somewhere between Perry Como and Frankie Valli.  He was the most charismatic and intelligent person I would ever know.  Just a few years ago, I learned about a painting  of Aberdeen High School he did and that it was almost thrown out (the school was demolished in the early 70's and they did not know it was a real place).  Someone recognized and retrieved it, gave it a good cleaning and it is in the museum in Aberdeen.

Berk was away most of his life, and really out of touch with us for most of the 70's.

Berkeley had not gone to Durham but to Charlotte where he eventually worked for the Salvation Army as a truck driver. John wrote me,

Berkeley died in Charlotte on March 13, 1988 at Memorial Hospital in Charlotte.  He was watching a football game (he loved football!) and ended up having a heart attack.  He survived the heart attack but succumbed to "internal bleeding" the next day. 

Becky's message of hope is echoed in Berkley's story. I find it repeated in people who have experienced trauma and tragedy in their lives. To be homeless in mind is to find yourself alienated and isolated from people and places that matter. There is hope if you want to be different, and want it enough.

Additional thoughts about homelessness.

This an edit version of comments that I made another site where Becky's video was posted.

Becky's message that homelessness is an attitude is a profound one. It requires some reflection on our part. It means that for some people they are homeless inside their homes. It may mean that they are alienated from their families, from society in general and their behaviors are socially annoying and personally destructive. We've probably all known people like this.

My point is simply that we need to follow Becky's lead and see these people not from the standpoint of their physical presence, but rather as human beings in need, just like us. As I've heard many times from people after an encounter with a homeless person, "Oh, but for the grace of God, go I."

To be homeless is a very complex experience. It is the total lost of personal structure that alienates us from the social structures that support most people. As a seminarian thirty years ago in Boston, I took a course on urban ministry. Our first three days were spent on the streets of Boston with 50 cents in our pockets, learning in a small way what it meant to be homeless. Quickly, I learned to scavage for food from discarded meals at an outdoor market. I sold blood. I slept shoulder to shoulder with other homeless men on the floor of a shelter. I stood by the magazine rack in an all night grocery store falling asleep on my feet. I loitered in the Boston Pubic Library. I rode the "T" to pass the time. And my most physical memory of the experience was how much my feet hurt.

The homeless don't need our pity. They need understanding and a structure that provides safety and security so that relationships can be formed. Giving money to panhandlers doesn't do it. They actually can do a pretty good business if they are disciplined about it. Establishing shelters where their mental and physical health can be addressed is an important part of creating the structures that make it possible for homeless people, like my friend Berkeley, to change.

I'm really grateful to Becky for her willingness to tell her story. You did a beautiful job. I hope it has a wide impact upon people across the world. It has certainly touched me by taking me back in time.

"We are the average ...

of the five people we spend most of our time with."

My friend, Meridith Elliot Powell shared this with a group of us yesterday.

"I'm thinking with whom do I spend most of my time?"

I mentioned this at a social network site, and another friend, Becky Blanton responded,

The five person average is interesting. I'll have to think about that...and then flip it...and make it the five people I WANT to spend the most time with to be who I want to be. So often we are who we are by default, not by design.

Yeah, that's true too.

Then I thought, "I wonder who would put me on their list?"

After some reflection, I decided if I'm going to be the average of five people I choose to spend time with, then I'm going to at least pick people who enjoy a good meal, like to travel and enjoy good conversation.

Sustaining engagement

Dan Pink posted this video under the theme of "motivation through engagement."

There are many clever people who know how to use technology to engage people with ideas. This is not the challenge. It is a totally different thing to sustain that engagement for a real change in behavior.

One of Dan's commenters wrote,

I love the concept, but I’d like to see this same study done on those same stairs a year from now. I suspect that those numbers will drop significantly once the novelty wears off — and it becomes more annoying than interesting.

Still, the concept is powerful and intriguing and I can see a lot of relevance to other industries and problems. (Stephen Palmer)

Engagement requires leadership. By this, I mean, that someone needs to constantly be looking for ways to engage people in the idea. It doesn't have to be much, but it has to happen.

How can engagement with the stairs be sustained?

Right now, the stairs are a curiosity. They need to become a social gathering point for group creativity. So, engagement could mean a video contest of a group of people who write and perform a song on the stairs and post to YouTube as a contest. I suspect that groups from all over Europe would come to this subway station to perform and video their song. 

Whatever the endeavor, leaders have to keep the idea of the initiative before people all the time. If it is a online discussion at a social networking site, the person who is in the leadership role needs to respond to people. Do so and interaction and conversation is sustained.

Engagement with ideas is an social thing that is facilitated by technology, not the other way around. If you want to motivate through engagement, you have to stay involved. It is the way to sustain and grow an idea's spread.

"If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?"

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle has just been published in English. Solzhenitsyn scholar and biographer Edward Ericson in his review describe the central message of the novel.

When faced with the moral dilemma of what to do about the stunning secret that has fallen into his possession, Volodin asks himself, "If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?" He exchanges the potentially self-indulgent principle that "we are given only one life" for the consequential principle that "we are given only one conscience." His action establishes the ideal of "humanity," and thus sets the bar by which all the novel's characters are judged.

The United States and the former Soviet Union are worlds apart. Yet the people who inhabit both worlds are human beings who live each day within a similar moral universe. We each live with various levels of fear in conflict with a conscience that begs us to live with honesty and integrity.

The question of what does it mean to be human is an important one for our time. For many writers like Solzhenitsyn, the answer lies in how we live under fear, tyranny and oppression. It is something that most of us in the West have never experienced.

Over past few months, the subject of fear in the workplace has come up in conversation has come up often. Workplace fear has more to do with not knowing what the future holds, instead of an oppressive state imposing rule over a person's conscience.

It is the moral dilemma of living as a free being under Soviet oppression that informs Solzhenitsyn's writings. Solzhenitsyn, best known as the author of One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, spent eight years as a political prisoner which transformed his understanding morality and human dignity.  It was this moral perspective that brought him criticism from the Western critics. His Nobel Prize lecture, his 1978 Harvard commencement address - A World Split Apart, and Warning to the West are good sources of Solzhenitsyn's perspective.

In the First Circle is a restored edition of a self-censored version he changed to get past Soviet censors published as The First Circle. If this historical moment intrigues you at all, I highly recommend his memoir of dealing with the Soviet government entitled The Oak and The Calf. 

Ericson writes of Volodin's character.

No character is more radically altered from one version of the novel to the other than Volodin. In the shortened book, he is a jaded young member of the privileged Soviet elite. In the full version, he is a young functionary whose moral evolution leads him to commit treason against the regime of which he is a part. Readers are left to ponder, along with him, the ethics of betraying the worst sort of regime—a variation on the age-old theme of the legitimacy of tyrannicide.

While we don't have political prisons here in the United States, the fear of speaking counter to what is the current political fashion is nonetheless real. The challenge for each of us is to know the values that form our conscience, and live by them. The integrity and confidence that comes from doing so is the right kind of counterweight for our lives.

An excerpt from chapter one is available here.

Transition Points and Space

This week's Weekly Leader column - Living in Transition Space - looks at a different way of understanding change.
Instead of thinking of change as simply disruptive, we should look at it as a transition process. Our natural tendency will be to focus on the transition point. However, we typically living in the transition space between those junctures of change.

I'm convinced that the frequency of these transition points are going to increase. As a result, we need to develop new ways of approach our work as organizational leaders. This is what the column addresses this week.

The Real Secret to Success

Attitude has a lot to do with whether we succeed or not. Read Twitter posts on a regular basis, and one of the patterns you'll notice is unbridled optimism in a formula for success. Too often this optimism denies reality and leads us to a kind of self-deception that is destructive of the very success we desire.

Bright-Sided:How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich and We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism by John Derbyshire approached the topic of optimism from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Megan Cox Gurdon in her review in the Wall Street Journal quotes them.

"We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world," warns Ms. Ehrenreich. "Things are bad and getting worse, any fool can see that," warns Mr. Derbyshire.

Though naturally an optimistic person, I do find the modern phenomenon of positive thinking highly problematic. Sort of a "mind over matter" for modern people. It is often used as bulwark against the realities of life. For many of us, we are a pain-avoiding, death-denying culture that runs from conflict into the arms of an uncritical belief in positive. While it may appear that the opposite of being positive is being negative or pessimistic, I believe it is a more complicated.

Especially provoking to Ms. Ehrenreich is the pervasiveness of the notion that a woman can improve her chances of survival by maintaining a perky outlook. The scientific basis for this belief is thin at best, yet, as she writes, it's a powerful "ideological force" that goes well beyond medicine and "encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate."

Her curiosity (and disgust) aroused, Ms. Ehrenreich delves into the long history of positive thinking in America, which might be summarized thus: dour 18th-century Calvinism begat floaty 19th-century New Thought, which begat 20th-century New Ageism, Norman Vincent Peale and today's mega-church "prosperity gospel."

As Ms. Ehrenreich disapprovingly explains, positive thinking has saturated not just American religion but also corporate life and popular culture, and it is rapidly soaking into modern psychology. The problem for her is that people who are insistently reciting inspirational phrases won't hear the siren's wail in time to save themselves. Ms. Ehrenreich cranks her indignation up highest when aiming at the bankers, economists, bureaucrats and business honchos whose near-hallucinatory positive thinking, she believes, has pushed us all to the brink of economic collapse.

For me the dividing line is not between optimism and pessimism, but between entitlement and responsibility. 

I find optimism a shell covering for a belief in our own entitlement to health, wealth, happiness and a life free of hardship. It explains to me the long century long shift from an Emersonian self-reliance to the point that we have become wards of a benign, beneficient state.

I don't believe optimism in itself is bad. Rather, it is the popular contemporary form that denies reality. My conversation guide the Four Questions That Every Leader Must Ask is built around a more realistic perspective of our life and work situations. The third question focuses optimistically on the opportunities that we have now. These opportunities require us to take action. There is no entitlement here. All there is an opportunity and a choice whether to pursue it or not.

The fourth question focuses on the problems that we personally have created. Intentionally, I am not looking at the challenges that our various contexts provide us. For example, we can see the recession as a problem that entitles us to feel sorry for ourselves and receive a government bailout. Instead, we need to look at what situations we have control over, and address them effectively.

The problematic issue of optimism that Ehrenreich and Derbyshire address is really a modern phenomenon. It was social philosopher Thomas Hobbes, 350 years ago, who wrote that "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." This is no longer a view widely supported by the average person. Prosperity, even in the midst of a global recession, is rapidly expanding throughout the world. In places where poverty and disease had been the normal experience of people for centuries, middle class wealth is beginning to emerge.

While I would not suggest we go back to the days of Hobbes, I would suggest that a more realistic approach to life accomplish precisely what the optimists and positivity-gurus promise. And this realism is not quite the pessimism of Ehrenreich and Derbyshire. Instead, it is closer to the thinking of the ancient Stoics.

Greek slave and Stoic teacher Epictetus wrote, "Difficulties show men what they are. In case of any difficulty remember that God has pitted you against a rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil."  Roman emperor,

Marcus Aurelius wrote, "You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last."

When the hardships in life are faced with reason and determination, we gain a richer appreciation of success and happiness. It is this perspective that guided Admiral James Stockdale (whom I've written about here) as the highest ranking officer imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. In his discussion with Jim Collins, when asked who didn't make it out, and his response was the optimists. This was so because they believed that if they just were optimistic that it would counter reality. Optimism only serves us when we use it to generate a determined will and persistence to work through hardships to achieve success.

A positive outlook serves only when we embrace reality and commit ourselves to overcome the obstacles that stand in our way of success. This is not an entitlement mindset that comes from believing that we deserve success because of our positive attitude.

There is no replacement for hard work, realistic self-criticism, a passionate vision worked out with commitment and perseverance and a recognition that much of our success is a product of other people's contributions and the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time.

Is Small Business at a Crossroads

In my browsing this morning, I came across this article from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta - Prospects for a small business-fueled employment recovery.  Here is a quote from a speech given by William Dudley of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

"For small business borrowers, there are three problems. First, the fundamentals of their businesses have often deteriorated because of the length and severity of the recession—making many less creditworthy. Second, some sources of funding for small businesses—credit card borrowing and home equity loans—have dried up as banks have responded to rising credit losses in these areas by tightening credit standards. Third, small businesses have few alternative sources of funds. They are too small to borrow in the capital markets and the Small Business Administration programs are not large enough to accommodate more than a small fraction of the demand from this sector."

Whether you work in a small business or patronize one, it is an important article to reflect upon. Look at this chart that I've posted from the article and especially the results from 2007-2008.

Job losses from late 2007 through 2008 were 43% from businesses with less that 50 employees.

Let me pose a question. What if 43% of the stimulus money went to these small businesses. What do you think would have happened? Do you think those dollars would be sitting in a bank? I don't think so either. They would have been spent, and real stimulus and real economic strength would have been built.

Having spent the last fourteen years working with small businesses as an organizational consultant, my perspective is different than Washington's. I take a micro, localized view of the economy. Global businesses are not really global, but a collection of local economic operations. There maybe a global headquarters, but it nothing but a building with offices. The real economic engine of those companies is local. The global nature of them makes them efficient. But they are still localized operations where people go to work, pick up their pay check, deposit it in the bank and pay their mortgage, bills, insurance and buy food and other necessities for their families.

We live in a networked age. A local jewelry maker in Indonesia can sell her product line to customers in the US or Europe. She can because of the internet and the global reach of package companies like UPS and FedEx. Here a smart business person on one side of the world can have a successful company selling to people in a nation where 43% of the job losses in one 15 month period were from businesses virtually the same size as her's. What does this tell you about the business climate in the US today?

Linked is a New York Times article - Are Medium-Size Businesses the Job Creators? - that suggests that we should change the way we look at business size. Look at this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was included in the article.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (Numbers do not total 100 percent due to rounding.) Job Creation by Firms of Different Sizes, 1992-2008

What should those of us who are small business owners and serve small businesses take away from these two articles?

1. Scale matters. The most productive small companies in regard to job creation are those between 50 and 500 employees. If you are starting a business today. You should consider as a part of your business planning process what it would take to reach that threshold of 50 employees. In a number of client situations, the idea came to me that many of their problems would be solved by being just a little bit larger. Then the scale of costs would be more favorable for them.

What if you don't want to grow that large? What are you alternatives?

2. Collaboration leverages size for small businesses. Becoming a collaborative partner with other business provides a way to be big while remaining small. The skills and perspective required to be a good collaborator are not the same as being good at running a small business. 

What if you feel like you've reached a crossroads, a transition point, in both your business and professional life?

3. Impact determines what business you are in rather than the activities that you do.  To be successful today requires a change of mind about what business you are in. If you are in the business of providing the same products and doing the same services over and over again for customers, then you may find yourself irrelevant and out of business. However, if you understand the impact you want to create, then you can change your business and/or employment status to put yourself in the best possible position to achieve that impact. If this means that you close your small business and go to work for a medium size one, then that is what you do. In so doing we become a mission-driven workforce, rather than a job activity driven one.

My main concern is the lack of recognition by Washington of the situation of small business. This isn't a Democrat/Republican, or Bush/Obama issue. It is a national issue that is impacting people, families and communities across our nation. 

What if these are not my issues? What can I do to make a difference?

4. Support local small business groups in your local community. In most communities there is an economic development agency. Check with them and offer support to helping attract and support new business. Check and see if there is a local chapter of SCORE where you live. Offer to teach a class on some aspect of being a small business. Check and see if there is a micro-enterprise organization in your community. Each of these organizations provide help and support to small business. Get involved and you'll be strengthening your community.

Is small business at a crossroads? Based on these job numbers, I'd say yes. Support your local small business while we learn to make the changes that are necessary to survive in a very tough climate for business.

The Israeli Example

In the fall of 1981, I saw George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, debate Lester Thurow, author of the Zero-Sum Society. Their discussion was about whether supply-side economics popularized during the Reagan years or Keynesian economics popularized during the Roosevelt years and now again in the Bush/Obama years were the route to economic growth and the alleviation of poverty. I left that evening convinced that Gilder was right and Thurow wrong; convinced that economics is not just about numbers but also about our philosophies about human nature and society. Nothing in the intervening 28 years has changed my mind.

Reading Gilder's essay - Silicon Israel - on the Israeli capitalist resurgence takes me back three decades. As a young guy in his twenties during the 1970s, I remember race, Vietnam and Watergate being the defining issues of my college years. I remember the lack of opportunity as high inflation made it difficult to find jobs. I remember the Carter years as lacking opportunity, of hope and a reason to believe that better years are ahead. Our time, now, reminds me of those days.

Some Context

Recently, I reflected on this with a friend in his mid-twenties. He started a business at the age of 18. He is in the process of selling it to another company, and is preparing the next chapter in his life. I have other friends in their twenties and thirties who have their own businesses. When I was their age I didn't know anyone in my peer group who had their own business. They were either still in school, worked for the family business or gone to work in a corporation. What changed this?

I attribute it to Ronald Reagan. His optimism and the embracing of supply-side economics raised the small business entrepreneur to a status equal to the large corporations. Then in the mid-80s, Peter Drucker published his influential Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the personal computer revolution began to take root, and the world changed. Large corporations like Microsoft, Intel, IBM and General Electric created products and services that elevated the ability of a small business owner to create a successful, sustainable business. Add to this the rise of venture capitalism, and an economic revolution took place that made the Clinton years the mirror opposite of the Nixon/Carter years.

Was there "irrational exuberance" and the creation economic bubbles that eventually burst? Yes, of course. But just as in the 1950s when the economy grew dramatically in large part because of the impact the G.I. bill that made it possible for World War II veterans to get a college education that previously many could not afford. So, took the 1990s were a time where to be an entrepreneur meant a world of opportunity at your doorstep.

Today, we have returned to the questions of the late 1970s. The debate between Gilder and Thurow still raises the questions that we must answer. What kind of society do we want. What is the nature of freedom, and the role of government in our lives?

Reflections

In reflecting on Gilder's article and the years since I heard him, here are some of my conclusions.

1. Our current financial crisis is not a failure of capitalism, but of the corrupting influence of politics into business. Where capitalism has been allowed to be practiced without government intrusion, it has been highly successful in transforming lives and communities for the good.

2. Government has a role in business, but a minimal one of creating trust, not insuring the financial survival on individual businesses. The actions of both the Bush and Obama administrations display a certain lack of faith in the system, a lack of clarity about the boundaries between business and government and is producing a delaying effect on recovery. People don't see economic recovery as represented by government action. What they see as recovery is new shops opening. New buildings going up. There family and friends getting new jobs. These are not developments that can be lead from Washington, but more from the state and the local level.  Specific micro-loans make a difference in creating the conditions for wealth to be created.  It is virtually impossible for this to be done at the macro-level of the nation.  

3. The lessons from the Reagan years are simple. Low taxes increase tax revenues through a growing economy. Higher government costs suppress economic growth because it removes capital from the system. This especially true in the relation between federal and state governments to local governments.

For example, the federal stimulus package is being used where I live to repair roads. Maybe the roads needed repair, maybe they didn't. The point is that this is a temporary stimulus. Once the roads are paved. It is back to where things were. The stimulus isn't building new roads to create new centers of economic life.

4. Small, entrepreneurial businesses are the life-blood of any healthy economy. It isn't because there are more of them. It is because these are the people who are taking risks to meet new market needs.  New ideas get tested in small businesses because the risks are lower. Governments discourage the creation of small businesses through higher taxes and intrusive regulations. 

The course we are on is a return to the 1970s, and not the future that Gilder outlines in his article on Israel. Real hope and change came to that nation. Read all of Gilder's article. It is an instructive study for how a nation can change. It should give us all hope that the same can happen here again as it once did.

Seth Godin's Wizardry Explained ... by Seth

I'm an avid reader of Seth Godin's books and blog. He is wise and insightful, and worth your time. Here's a video of Seth talking about his approach to the publication of his books. It is very much like peaking behind the curtain to see the Wizard of Oz.
Watch the video. It is a little over a half hour. Well worth your time. I'll comment afterward.

This really isn't about books. It is about the spread of ideas. This means this talk is for all of us who have never published a book. If you have an idea, share it. If you like someone else's idea, share it. If someone's idea has changed your life, tell that story.

Remember the book is the souvenir, not the product. The idea is the product and conversation the vehicle for sharing it. The book is just a marker to remind you of the idea's importance.

The Importance of Executive Experience

Donald Sensing writes an interesting and insightful post on President Obama as Chief Executive. He uses Mae West and the Peter Principle as his reference points for describing the President's performance in office.

We have here a Mae West presidency, which I illustrate with two quotes of the platinum blondeshell:

1. It's better to be looked over than overlooked.

2. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

And,

... the trip illustrates perfectly why the president is a premier example of the Peter Principle.

"The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter. ...

The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.

I'm not totally convinced about the first assessment. Though after the last two weeks with the UN, the G-20 and the Olympics, I'm more open to the notion. 

I am very much convinced that the Peter Principle has come home to roost in the President. His lack of executive experience has been telling all along. The true believers won't buy this critique, but anyone who has had to run a business sees the tell-tale signs of inexperience.

Here are three examples of poor executive performance by the President.

1. Managing the budget. Many executives ascend to the highest office in their companies and take on the attitude that the budget is now their personal slush fund. Not only the rise in indebtedness, but the assumption that all our economic problems are solved by throwing money at them, is evidence of an inexperienced executive.

2. Growing the ranks of middle management. President Obama's use of executive czars is no different than adding more layers of management to a company's staffing chart. Obviously he doesn't know or understand what lean management means. In effect, the czars serve as unaccountable surrogates for the President. This weakens the chief executive officer's position making him more removed from the day-to-day happenings in the organization.

3. Leading by making hard decisions. This is one part of Sensing's post that I found most insightful as he writes about the relationship between Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower.

After John F. Kennedy was elected, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spent many hours with him. One of the key lessons was this: "All the decisions you will make," said Eisenhower, "will be hard decisions." Dwight went on to explain that the easy things will be tended to by cabinet secretaries and others of the administration with executive authority. But the tough ones will always be kicked to higher levels to be decided. At every level, the decisions become more and more difficult until, at last, the presidential inbox is filled with nothing but the most difficult items. 

Executive inexperience shows when the executive tries to do too much, tries to be too influential in too many areas, tries to push too many agendas, and consequently fails to maintain command of the big picture. This becomes a picture of a leader without focus or discipline.

From the Iowa caucuses through to today, my impression of Barack Obama is of a talented rhetorician, but not an executive. Unfortunately, making eloquent speeches is really a secondary task of the presidency. It can enhance or detract from the executive responsibilities, but being president is not the same as being the chief spokesperson for the American people.

President Obama will succeed or fail based on his executive abilities, not his politics or his rhetorical skills. He has much to learn, and little time to do so. 

HT: Instapundit

See New Now - by Gerald de Jaager & James Ericson - a Leading Questions review

We've all heard that perception is reality. What is perception but a mixture of observation, assumptions, our own history and the real world context we are in. Our perceptions are changed into stories to help us explain why the world is the way it, and what we must do with it. When our perceptions become too narrow, too defensive, too calcified, then we stop learning and life's goodness begins to recede.

It from this perspective that I began to read Gerald de Jaager and James Ericson's fine new book - See New Now: New Lenses for Leadership and Life. It is a book of brief stories intended to open our perceptions about life and leadership. The authors speak of these stories as lens because the stories enable us to visualize more than the story itself. We can see simple, compelling truths that guide us to perceive how we can be better leaders.

De Jaager and Ericson are connected to the Masters Forum in Minnesota, a program that has brought top-level thinkers and business leaders to their community. I've been reading Jim Ericson's blog - Conversational Kindling - for some time, and just love his talent for telling a story. 

The stories are quite short, but well written, and the purpose of the story is clear. It would be a great tool for any leadership team that wanted to expand their ability to think and communicate together.

I'm going to focus on just one of the 24 stories in this book. It deals with the presence of fear in the workplace. The chapter is The Baboon Reflex. They begin with a description of how baboon's hunt better alone than in groups.

Anything like that ever happen in your organization, or your life? Forgetting the team's goal and worrying instead about who might be gaining on you? These baboons had a goal and they had motivation to achieve it that's just about as powerful as any motivation could be: food and survival. In today's terms, they were "highly incented." But fear undermined them nonetheless.

This is just part of one of many compelling stories. The authors have not just published a book of stories, but have also created study guides for each of the "lens." This is a valuable resource for leaders who want to deepen the interaction of their team.

I highly recommend this book. It is a book and resources that will open, simply, clarify your perceptions so that wisdom and insight for leading will result.

Making it simple, and then following through

Life is complex without making it more so. We do it to ourselves everyday. We pile up expectations and qualifications that force us to manage competing demands on our attention.

Instead of trying to focus more, instead of trying to concentrate more, just try to make it simpler.

Ask one questions.

Ask for the ...

one thing to do

one person to talk with

one thing to do over

one thing to get done, today

Ask these kind of questions, and follow through on the answer.

The key is make it simple and follow through.

Building a "sticky" leadership team

My latest Weekly Leader Leadership Q&A column - Sticky Leadership - is about how leaders function in a more relationship based structure.

Listen to Martha, "Follow the Leaders"

Martha is a high school friend of our family who happens to be on the search committee for the new pastor of our church. Over lunch last week, we were talking about her experience on the committee and her thoughts about the leadership role this new person will take.

Martha is a bright young woman, and one particular comment stood out as an insight of extraordinary wisdom.

He shouldn't come in with an agenda. Instead, he should follow what we are doing already, and learn how to lead us.

The idea that leaders should follow is not precisely the same thing as followership. That has more to do with how those who follow can lead. This idea of Martha's is instead the idea that leaders should follow at times.

For this to happen it requires three capacities.

First, the capacity of personal maturity that allows for a new leader not to be intimated by a new setting and new people to lead.

Second, the capacity of humility that enables the leader to recognize that he or she doesn't have all the answer, doesn't know all the information necessary, and does not have a sufficient breadth of relationships to lead without following.

Third, the capacity to listen, observe and learn from others.

Many leaders are ill-prepared for a position of authority. They may have certain analytical skills that makes for good decision-making. But they lack these personal attributes that are often the difference between effective and ineffective leadership.

New leaders would be wise to listen to Martha and recognize that learn to follow is an asset that will pay dividends as their tenure as leader is played out.

Twisdom: Twitter Wisdom - by @TomVMorris - a Leading Questions review

(Welcome to friends and followers of Tom Morris, our Poet Philosopher of Twisdomville)

Let the tweeting begin!

The morning: Right after the fog, clarity comes.

Before engagements, prior to the mix, a brief, full moment of calm.

Bird songs begin the soundtrack for this docu-drama of life. A distant rustle. A buzzing bee.

The morning: This morning, never to be again. Attend to it. Relish it. Use it well.

A crunch of toast, a spread of jam, a topping of nuts, and I just am.

“Everything on earth is subject to change.” The I Ching

Lemons to lemonade: When the place burned down where the band Deep Purple was about to record, they wrote the hit “Smoke on the Water.”

“The loftiest towers rise from the ground.” - Chinese proverb. We all start from where we are.

Just wrote on our economic and political crises, “Living in Plato’s Cave.” Plato and Aristotle nailed it for us.

A thought: One half of human nature got us into our current troubles. It will take the other half to get us out.

These are the first tweets of Tom Morris.

Last spring, in an off-hand comment, I commented to Tom that he should be Twittering. I thought it was a good outlet for his congenial approach to ancient wisdom that he shares daily with people through his books and presentations.  Little did I know that a Twitter phenomenon of Vesuvian proportions would erupt. 

Partial proof is found in the pages of this marvelous book by Tom called Twisdom: Twitter Wisdom. The tweets you see above are his first ones. What is missing are his thousands of responses to the ReTweets and messages that came in response to his sharing of himself.  Tom Morris on Twitter is a picture of the joyous philosopher at work in the garden of life. After knowing him for almost forty years, I can say that this is some of the best work he has ever done, because it is built on his own personal interaction with people. The Tom you see in Twisdom, is the Tom that many of us have known over the years.

When I first picked up Twisdom, and begin to read, I thought: "Tom's a poet. Who knew?"

This is ancient wisdom as the great philosophers of Greece and Rome would have written. Read Marcus Aurelius and you find short bursts of insight, written down in the midst of the crush of being Roman emperor. Read Plato and Aristotle, and you'll find philosophy for living, not the dry, boring, over-written tomes written for the academy and not for the common citizen.

What Tom has discovered is a virtual Lyceum, a place to practice his profession as philosopher where he can reach out through the tools of social media and touch the lives of thousands of followering Twitterers. This isn't just a curious incident, but rather the convergence of the ancient art of the imparting of wisdom and a communication vehicle perfectly suited for one another, and the right teacher to make it work.

A few questions for Tom:

1. Today, what are your Twitter numbers? How many are following you, and how many tweets have you done.

I started on Twitter with two followers. Thanks to you, it wasn't just one!  Now, having done nothing to gain followers except to try to do interesting tweets about life, I have over 5,600, and the number is growing each day. (And Tom is approaching 22,000 tweets as I write.)

2. How have you changed since you started Twittering?

I think using Twitter has made me a more focused thinker and a succinct communicator. I have come to value more than ever the ability to distill wisdom into a small nugget that can expand in the reader's mind as they mull it over. I can wake up in the morning and within a few minutes bring a little ancient wisdom or some modern insights into the lives of thousands of people, an opportunity I otherwise have had only by flying around the country and speaking in the larger meeting facilities and convention centers.

3. Has this impacted your business ventures? What are you doing now that you were not when you started?

Twitter has broadened my sense of business opportunity. For example, in connection with the new book, some accomplished Twitter friends started a Twisdom Store on Zazzle, with various of my tweets available on shoes, mugs, T Shirts, postage stamps, cards, and other items. This is something that literally might never have occurred to me.  

4. Where does this Twitter thing go? How can it grow to be more substantial in linking people together?

I think we'll be coming up with more and more ways to integrate Twitter and the Twitter community into larger communities and enterprises, for social good, personal growth, and business opportunities. I don't think anyone anticipated a year ago how big Twitter would become and how fast it would grow. Now, almost anything seems possible.

Twisdom is filled with "really good stuff." More importantly, it shows how a simple media tool like Twitter can be a vehicle for influence and impact. If you are not on Twitter, you should be, and even if it doesn't make sense to you, at least join up, and follow Tom.  It is the Twisdom way.

Here are three random samples to give you a further taste of this special book by Tom. 

Playing at work

Playing is more than having fun, especially when you play at work.

See what I mean at my latest Work Life Lead column - Playing at Work - at Weekly Leader.

Bloodline in the rock

Over the weekend, we attended our church's annual congregation retreat. This year's theme was Play, and we played in many creative ways.

Drawing and painting on the form of a small Greek cross was one of activities. The collection of pictures will be brought together into a larger painting to be hung in the church in the future.  I painted two of these pictures.

Bloodline in the rock is of a mountain in Wyoming of which I'm particularly fond. Mt. Moran, in the Grand Teton range of Jackson Hole, is a mountain of massive granite which has a diabase basalt dike of reddish brown lava that cuts vertically through the mountain.  I find its presence endlessly fascinating because it represents to me how good things can rise up from the hardness of life. My picture is more of what the mountain represents to me, than a picture of the mountain itself.

In much of life, when we try something new, we are taking a risk. Risks are inherent in life. Do we accept these risks as a way to expanding the range of our expression, or as an unavoidable facet of life?

Andy Goldsworthy is a sculptor who uses natural materials in extraordinary ways. In his video Rivers and Tides, a sculpture that he has been working on falls apart in the wind, he says,

"When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse; that's a very beautiful balance."

Here is Goldsworthy creating an arch out of stone, and toward the end of the video removing pieces of it to see if it will collapse.

As in art, so also in life, translating what we see in the natural world into expressions of our passion and commitments enable us to see more of who we are in the context of the world we live in.

Having painted Bloodline in the rock, and then introduced to Andy Goldsworthy by our artist guide, I decided to paint another of my favorite objects, a simple rock cairn.  I called it Cairn of Fire.

What did I learn from this little experiment in artistic expression? It really helps to be an observant person. We see things as objects, like a mountain or a pile of rocks. But we don't normally see the interrelation of the parts. For example, in trying to draw a cairn, I knew that the typical cairn is not uniform, but very eclectic. What I did, as a result, is try to draw the stones in the cairn very quickly so they would not be uniform. 

The ability to see what is there in the picture is no different than seeing and hearing what is going on around you. Learning to observe is learning to be a better communicator. To observe is to shift one's attention away from your own thoughts to what is happening in front of you.

Whatever you think you see or hear is a perception of what actually takes place.

Bloodline in the rock is not an exact representation of Mt. Moran. The lava dike on the mountain is visible in the circle.  My painting is my perception of the mountain that you see here. To see it with the human eye, rather than through a photograph is to see it differently. In this shot, it seems insignificant. But to stand here by Jenny Lake in the Grand Teton National Forest and look at it, the dike stands out much more.

What I learned from playing with paint, a brush and some crayons is that we can learn to express ourselves in new ways. This is important if we are to communicate what is important to us.

I encourage you to take a pencil and quickly, in a manner of a few minutes, draw something that matters to you. It won't be perfect because there is no such thing in art. I once heard it say that a work of art is never finished. I think this is also true for our lives. And the more we test the boundaries and horizons of our expression, quite possibly as Andy Goldsworthy has learned, we'll find a very beautiful balance that will enhance the quality of our lives in ways unimaginable right this moment.

Values 2.0 Revisited

The 2.0 meme is built around the notion of interactivity. Web 1.0 is a static, brochure like website. Web 2.0 embraces social media as a context for online interactivity. The same distinction applies to how values factor into our lives and our organizations. Here's how I distinguish Values 1.0 from 2.0.

Values (see Circle of Impact) serve as a connecting idea for our relationships. They are ideas that connect through interaction and integration for the purpose of creating impact.

In a Values 1.0, there is little interactivity and consequently minimal integration of values into the life of the business. Values serve as icons, as symbols that are more  sentimental than foundational to how the functions.  As a result, a company's values have a marginal benefit to the operation.

For example, when a mission statement is never incorporated into the decision-making process of the company, yet emblazoned on plaques to be hung on the wall or the printed on the company's communications, that mission is iconic rather than alive.

In a Values 2.0 context, the emphasis is two-fold, interaction and integration.

A value like respect, for example, requires an understanding of what it means for each level of the company to experience it. It is integrated into the operation of the company when policies and practices are designed and implemented that insure that people have a way to be heard, and their ideas acted upon.

In this perspective, the values that we share in organizations transcend our mission, and our vision for impact.

OUR values inform OUR mission and define the way WE design and operate the organizational structures that serve as the context for OUR vision of impact.

The assumption behind this notion is that our relationships are the focal point for the work that goes on in an organization. The relationship can be between colleagues or with a client, but it is in that interaction that the work of the business takes place.

If there is no attention given to the values of the organization, then the emphasis on relationships is diminished as well. 

I'm revisiting this topic (see posts here and here)because I'm increasingly convinced that businesses need to see that their values are a key asset for providing a stable, sustainable context for growth. Adopting a Values 2.0 approach provides a basis for understanding how to create a more collaborative, socially healthy organization.

Thank you, Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug has died. Who you may ask? You should ask because this scientist is one of the great men of the 20th century.

From a 1997 Atlantic Monthly article by Greg Easterbrook.

Borlaug is an eighty-two-year-old plant breeder who for most of the past five decades has lived in developing nations, teaching the techniques of high-yield agriculture. He received the Nobel in 1970, primarily for his work in reversing the food shortages that haunted India and Pakistan in the 1960s. Perhaps more than anyone else, Borlaug is responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar era, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were widely predicted -- for example, in the 1967 best seller Famine -- 1975! The form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths.

Borlaug was the 1970 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. From the presentation address.

This year the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament has awarded Nobel's Peace Prize to a scientist, Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug, because, more than any other single person of this age, he has helped to provide bread for a hungry world. We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.

Who is this scientist who, through his work in the laboratory and in the wheat fields, has helped to create a new food situation in the world and who has turned pessimism into optimism in the dramatic race between population explosion and our production of food?

Norman Borlaug, a man of Norwegian descent, was born on March 25, 1914, on a small farm in Cresco, Iowa, in the United States, and originally studied forestry at the University of Minnesota. It was as an agriculturalist, however, that he was to make his greatest contribution.

Here are selections from his Nobel lecture - The Green Revolution, Peace and Humanity.

The Subverting of Hierarchy

A decade ago The Cluetrain Manifesto was released as a prescient picture of what we are now coming to understand as the future that is fast becoming the present.

The Cluetrain authors, in a revolutionary style reminiscent of Martin Luther's 95 theses nailed to the Wittenberg church door starting the Protestant Reformation in 16th. century Europe, posted 95 theses on the nature of organizations, markets and life in the age of the Internet. The entire book is available free online here.

The seventh Cluetrain thesis - Hyperlinks subvert Hierarchy - is a point about information flow and access to that flow. A hyperlink like this one takes you to some other place in the online world. In this case, the main page at Wikipedia, but it could be any one of a billion different places. This ability to access information places power in the hands of people that we previously did not have.

Recently I heard Manuel Lima speak on the visualization of networks. You can follow his exploration of this topic at his blog Visual Complexity. 

In his presentation he compared the French Encyclopedia of the 18th century with Wikipedia. As you can see from this slide from his presentation, the growth of information in our time is staggering. This growth of information and our access to it is forcing organizations to change.  From this one picture you can see how we now truly live in the Information Age.

Hyperlinks may subvert hierarchy but that is not replacing hierarchy. Reading Clay Shirky (See his recent book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations) may lead to the idea that we will see corporations go away, though he doesn't say this. In its place, we will all be self-organized into online social networks linked by our own hyperlinked profiles and communication means. This is already happening, but it is not replacing the traditional hierarchical organization.

For example, the free e-book, Managing Morale in a time of change is a product of the very phenomenon that both Cluetrain and Shirky identify.

The larger picture is something a bit different from simply being the end of formal organizations and the rise of community. Instead, we are seeing a shift of social influence that is more significant than the subverting of hierarchy.

Since humankind began to create communities and stop wandering as hunter/gatherers, hierarchy has formed as the power base of all organizations. Read Homer and the Old Testament history of the early Hebrews, there were always persons who held power and authority in a hierarchical structure that secured power and created order for their society. The difference between one lord and another lord was often (1.) the strength of their military defensive power and (2.) their moral vision that created either a just, prosperous society or not.  This is what we know of hierarchy up to this very day. It is the nature of hierarchical power that is at the center of the debate about healthcare today.

What Cluetrain, Shirky and many others point to is the realization that hierarchy's claim upon our lives has been loosened. I characterize this change as the end of institutionalism and the rise of social connection as the organizing principle of organizations.

In hierarchy, there is order from top to bottom. Power resides in a graduated scale with greater power held by the few at the top, down through the organizational structure to lesser power held by the many at the bottom. It is the unequal hold of power that also drives the politics of Washington.  These vertically integrated structures existed for millennia on the control of the lower levels of organization. Control of access to information, resources and opportunity were some of the ways that hierarchy functioned. In a time where most people were undereducated to their potential, and where the skills required to produce things were simple and repetitive, hierarchy worked. It is what made the industrial revolution so productive. In this instance, the worker in a hierarchical structure was only as free as their income allowed them to be. Dreams of wealth and advancement were not most peoples' privilege. Yet, beginning in the 15th and 16th centuries this began to change as exploration of the world, and tools for communicating ideas began to spread to the masses.

In our day it is hard to imagine a world without easily available reading material. However, prior to Gutenberg's moveable type press, the cost and time constraints on the production of printed information was such that the vast majority of people across the globe were functionally illiterate. As literacy and education became more common, so did the range of opportunities available to the average citizen grow.

Yet still, hierarchy ruled because there was not the means for any other kind of organization. Over the past generation this has begun to change. Today, collaboration is fast becoming the norm in how business gets done.

Collaboration is the ability of people to communicate and coordinate complex work processes in an efficient and effective manner. It is dependent on the ability of members of the collaborative group to work together, to communicate effectively and share in the rewards and responsibilities of the project.

Many collaborative groups function not by hierarchy, with one person in authority who delegates the tasks of the project. Rather these groups are lead by the "first among equals". This view also known by its Latin form, primus inter pares, treats the organization of work from the perspective of whomever has the knowledge, experience, expertise or responsibility is the leader. From this perspective, leadership is not a role, but how we relate in the social context of work.

In a collaborative project, with one person's client, the lead will be taken by the person who has the information or skills to address the specific need of the client. So, if a planning client of mine needs assistance on employee pension plans, then I bring in the expert on that area, and they take the lead on helping my client establish the best approach for them.

In hierarchical structures, leadership is a function of position, authority and power. In collaborative structures, leadership is a function of the character and influence of people in a social context. Personal character, communication skills and the ability to share power are keys. 

While this may seem rather mundane and ordinary for many of us, it is revolutionary in the context of hierarchy. It is so because it means that leadership is not held as a private privilege, but rather shared as a common responsibility. It is this way of work that is creeping into the hierarchies of organization as changing them from within.

It would be nice to think that this is all a very rational, forward thinking process, but typically it is not. Instead, when hierarchy breaks down, and goals and standards must be met, the last resort is to call a meeting to see who has any ideas for getting out of the mess.

What is pushing the acceleration of the adoption of this approach are many causes. However, at the heart is the access to information and tools for communication that the internet provides. The e-book noted above was the work of 36 people from 11 countries on four continents. The discussion that is captured by the book took place over 12 days, and the production of the e-book a little over a month more. This is the model of the future in miniature.

What needs to happen is for companies to embrace the subversion of hierarchy in favor of social collaboration and allow for their businesses to grow from within at all levels. I don't think that hierarchy will ever go away. It will lose its hold on people and society as each of us realizes the level of freedom and opportunity that comes from our connections to one another.

Yes, subvert and elevate hierarchy to be an incubator of shared collaborative leadership. This is the future that would have scared Agamemnon, Caesar, Henry VIII, Hitler, Stalin and all the little dictators who use hierarchy to subvert the interests of their people to their own private ones.

It is the future. Embrace it now, and learn to lead to strengthen hierarchy through its subversion to a more socially connection environment for work.

A simple question about why this path

If every corporation is downsizing and flattening out their organizational structures.

If Clay Shirky is correct about how people can organize themselves apart from traditional organizational structures.

If social media is the context for human interaction and collaboration.

Why then are we looking solve the nation's healthcare problem with the exact opposite?

Where do we get the idea that a federal bureaucracy is the best approach?

I just don't get how smart people don't understand that the world of centralized control structures are the past not the future.

The president hasn't convinced me that all of a sudden the past record of federal bureaucracy managing the welfare of people will change for the better. Congress certainly doesn't give me any impression that they understand what really happening outside of Washington. History doesn't give me any comfort the a federal bureaucracy is the best alternative. 

Can someone give me a rational argument for why this is the right path to take?

You are in control of you - Admiral James Stockdale on surviving in stressful situations

This week's Weekly Leader column - You are in charge of you - looks at the stress that comes from losing one's job in the context of the story of James Stockdale, the highest ranking US POW imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

A long section from an excellent interview posted at the Academy of Achievement where Admiral Stockdale tells about how he managed the psychological stress of imprisonment, and the role that the philosophy of Epictetus had in his survival.

Admiral, how did you survive psychologically? The other men you mentioned perished under the same circumstances.

James Stockdale: I don't know. I didn't feel like I had more vitality than the next one. I had things to do. I was alone a lot, and I found ways to talk to myself and to bolster my own morale. I was getting occasional letters from my wife Sybil. And she would from me. She probably wrote 50 and I got six, and I probably wrote 20 and she got two or something like that.

After I came out of Alcatraz, we all came back to the regular prison. They tried to get me to go downtown. They tried everything. They would give me the ropes three times a week. One of my original breakthroughs was self disfiguration. I was given a lot of times in the ropes in room 18, which is the main torture chamber of Hoa Lo prison. It also serves as kind of a ceremonial chamber when no prisoners are in there. In that, the only room in the building, a great big building with plate glass windows, and they had big heavy quilts that they drew across it. I was in there and they were about at their wits end. Two officers were working me over. Pi Ga, my torture guard, was always there to take me wherever they wanted. It was about mid-afternoon and they said, "Okay, you've done okay, today. Now you want to get washed up." I knew what that meant. That meant we were going downtown that night.

Managing Morale in a time of change - a Triiibes e-book

We are living in a time of great change. For many people it is disruptive and disorienting. It affects their lives, businesses and communities in dramatic ways.

In preparation for a client's webinar, participants were asked about issues that they wanted addressed. Morale was one of the most repeated ones.

As a result, I posted to one of my online social networks the following question. 

I'm interested in ... thoughts about the issue of employee morale in the context of continuous, disruptive change. The situation I'm addressing is one where cuts in staff and consolidation of operations have dramatically changed the work context. ...

What is your recommendation to an organizational leader for maintaining morale of his/her people who find that their "plate" of responsibilities is growing as the company reduces costs through layoffs and consolidation?

The response was of such depth and substance that it was suggest that an e-book be prepared to share with people. Managing Morale in a time of change - a Triiibes discussion e-book is the result.

Morale is a huge issue, but it is also a symptom of larger issues. I encourage you to share this free e-book with people at work, with friends and colleagues, with counselors and advisors and with people in your wider network of relations. The e-book is free to distribute. Please keep it intact so that the full range of discussion may be available to other readers.

In no way is this the last word of the issue of morale. It is just one discussion that took place during a two week period of time in July of 2009. I encourage you to create your own discussions and post them online for others to see, participate and contribute.

If you have questions or comments, please leave it here at this post, and I'll share it with my co-contributors.

On behalf all who contributed to this discussion and e-book, thank you for sharing it with others.  May you find ways to bring hope and confidence to the many work and social contexts where morale is an issue

Creative Commons

Managing Morale in a time of change - a Triiibes discussion e-book by Ed Brenegar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Coming Deficits Crisis

Raise your hand if you would run your household finances or your business like Congress and the White House manage theirs?

Of course, all us understand that we live with limited financial resources. We balance our check books and work hard at keeping positive cash flow from month to month.  Now the numbers coming out of Washington are not just big, but predict a looming disaster ahead.

John Fund in the Wall Street Journal writes about David Walker, a CPA who served in a variety of government positions since the Reagan administration.

"We suffer from a fiscal cancer," he tells a meeting of the National Taxpayers Union, the nation's oldest anti-tax lobby. "Our off balance sheet obligations associated with Social Security and Medicare put us in a $56 trillion financial hole—and that's before the recession was officially declared last year. America now owes more than Americans are worth—and the gap is growing!"

If you looked at your bank account and you owed more than your worth, you'd have to declare bankruptcy. Let's assume that we are now at that point at a nation. Just for conversation's sake. We are our of money. So, how do we then address this statement floating through Facebook status updates?

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, post this as your status for the rest of the day.

This only makes sense if you are not responsible for paying for the health care of the nation. Just pass it off to someone else, and feel pleased about your compassionate nobility.The thought that came to mind when I read it was to imagine what it would require to put 300 million people on life support because the aim of health care is for no one to die.

Now here's the real issue that no one in Washington is willing to address. Listen to what Walker has to say.

"We have four deficits: a budget deficit, a savings deficit, a value-of-the-dollar deficit and a leadership deficit," he tells one group. "We are treating the symptoms of those deficits, but not the disease."

Mr. Walker identifies the disease as having a basic cause: "Washington is totally out of touch and out of control," he sighs. "There is political courage there, but there is far more political careerism and people dodging real solutions." He identifies entrenched incumbency as a real obstacle to change. "Members of Congress ensure they have gerrymandered seats where they pick the voters rather than the voters picking them and then they pass out money to special interests who then make sure they have so much money that no one can easily challenge them," he laments. He believes gerrymandering should be curbed and term limits imposed if for no other reason than to inject some new blood into the system. On campaign finance, he supports a narrow constitutional amendment that would bar congressional candidates from accepting contributions from people who can't vote for them: "If people can't vote in a district not their own, should we allow them to spend unlimited money on behalf of someone across the country?" (emphasis mine.)

We can wring our hands about health care and climate change, but if we don't address the crisis of spending in Washington, there will be nothing left to do anything. 

Walker makes an important point about the sequence of change.

"President Obama got the sequence wrong by advocating expanding coverage before we've proven our ability to control costs," he says. "If we don't get our fiscal house in order, but create new obligations we'll have a Thelma and Louise moment where we go over the cliff."

After Katrina, it was clear that the problem with federal government programs was their organizational systems. For example, last year the federal government determined that the FEMA trailer program would end and the people who had been given them would have to move into new housing. This decision seemingly was made without any assessment whether there had been sufficient recovery of the housing based. It was a bureaucratic decision instead of one of based on human need.

I agree with Walker. We need to change the functioning of the government before we create a crisis that will paralyze the nation.

An Additional Thought

The impact of these rising deficits has been impacting state and local governments for years. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels writes about what is happening with state tax revenues in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

State government finances are a wreck. The drop in tax receipts is the worst in a half century. Fewer than 10 states ended the last fiscal year with significant reserves, and three-fourths have deficits exceeding 10% of their budgets. Only an emergency infusion of printed federal funny money is keeping most state boats afloat right now.

Most governors I've talked to are so busy bailing that they haven't checked the long-range forecast. What the radar tells me is that we ain't seen nothin' yet. What we are being hit by isn't a tropical storm that will come and go, with sunshine soon to follow. It's much more likely that we're facing a near permanent reduction in state tax revenues that will require us to reduce the size and scope of our state governments. And the time to prepare for this new reality is already at hand.

The coming state government reset will be particularly wrenching after the happy binge that preceded this recession. During the last decade, states increased their spending by an average of 6% per year, gusting to 8% during 2007-08. Much of the government institutions built up in those years will now have to be dismantled.

If this is happening to state governments, you can be sure that it is happening to your local municipal ones.

During the early part of the decade, I had several projects working with local governments and organizations supporting them. At that time, a sales tax revenue conflict emerged in several states. In essence, locally generated sales taxes went to the state to be distributed back to local municipalities. In a number of states, the state held onto those revenues, putting a huge burden upon city and county governments. Then good times returned and local and state governments began to expand.

Governor Daniels is right to be concerned. This is what happens when politics and class warfare, from both sides of the political spectrum replace leadership and wisdom in public office. Nothing that I see in happening in Washington gives me hope that this pattern has changed.  State and local governments are beginning to understand this. They must operate within their financial means. Washington just prints more money. 

I don't know what the answer is from a policy perspective. I do know that at the heart of this deficits crisis is an ethical crisis. And until we address the issues of power, wealth and influence in Washington, the rest of the nation is going to be at risk.

Be sure to read all of Fund's article and share it with family and friends.

Cold Calls or Referrals?

My friend and colleague Meridith Elliot Powell understands networking and sales better than anyone I know. If you have the opportunity to attend one of her workshops, do it. It will transform how you understand what is required to build your client base.

Meridith responds to a question about cold calls.

I had a client ask me just last week, "how can I become more effective at cold calling?" My answer - "severely limit the amount you have to do."

Calling someone out of the blue that you don't know, who does not know you is - in my opinion - a tough way to go about building your business.

I totally agree.

Meridith writes about building a referral network. Read her whole post, print it off and memorize it. It is good stuff.

Let's assume that your list of people to cold call is really a list of influential people whom you want in your referral network. What do you do in addition to what Meridith suggests?

Do your homework on the people whom you want to cold call, so you are not cold calling but meeting them by referral.

It is valuable to know who people are and whom they know. You can start with the internet. Find out what activities they are in, what organization boards they serve on and what social and business connections you two might share.

Then you get one of those mutual acquaintances to introduce you.

I've told this story before, but it is worth telling because it still works 14 years later.

When we moved to Western North Carolina in 1995, I came with three names to connect from three different people that I knew elsewhere. I call each one of those people and told them that this mutual friend had recommended that I meet them. I went to see them, not to sell them on my services, but to establish a relationship with them. I left each encounter with 10-15 names and contact information. Many of those relationships still matter today.

Building a referral network is essential to growing a business. Many of my clients are introduced to me through other clients and friends. It works. And Meridith's training and coaching building a network is the best around.

Listen or Perish - The Rise of Listenomics

The digital revolution has impacted us all, but none like traditional print media and advertisers. In the past, we paid for the newspaper that had the ads that told us where to buy stuff. Today, it is all online, and mostly for free. For print media and advertisers, this is what Bob Garfield calls The Chaos Scenario, which is also the title of his new book. Watch this short video about the book.

This is the future of everything. In fact, if you wish to survive for long in media, marketing, politics or any other institution accustomed to managing its affairs from the top down, it is the right now of everything.  Survival means institutionalizing dialogue with all of your potential constituencies and sometimes total strangers for the purpose of market research, product development, customer relationships, corporate image and transactions themselves. The last of those benefits is especially important, because when you sell goods or services, you get money.

That is the essence of “Listenomics,” my term for the art and science of cultivating relationships with individuals in a connected, increasingly open-source environment.

You can download chapters from the book here.

HT: Greg Stielstra

Aristotelian motivation

Dan Pink, in his TED talk (Watch here or here), presents a perspective of human motivation that is worth reflecting on. In his presentation he identifies three aspects of human motivation that he wants us to consider: Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose.

All this seemed strangely familiar, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Dan was presenting a very Aristotlelian perspective of human motivation. Instead of giving you a dozen fragments from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, I thought I reproduce a couple pages from Jonathan Lear's Aristotle: the desire to understand .

There seems then to be philosophical as well as historical reason for going back to Aristotle's ethics. With decline in confidence that Kantian morality can give us any guidance as to how to act, there is reason to go back to an ethical system based firmly in the study of human motivation. The hope is that an ethical system grounded in human motivation will not only answer questions about how to act, but will also be justifiable by reference to life as it is lived in this world. Ethics, Aristotle believed, was grounded in the study of human desire. We have already seen that, for Aristotle, all human action is grounded in desire. It is of the greatest interest to see whether any study of human desire could have recognizably ethical conclusions about how humans should act.

The point of the Nicomachean Ethics is not to persuade us to be good or to show us how to behave well in the various circumstances in life: it is to give people who are already leading a happy, virtuous life insight into the nature of their own souls. The aim of Ethics is to offer its readers self-understanding, not persuasion or advice. Of course, as we have seen, Aristotle thinks that self-understanding will be of practical value: those who understand what human happiness is will, like the archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit their target.  However, this understanding can be of practical value only for those for whom it is self-understanding: namely, for those who are already living a virtuous life. There are two reasons for this.

First, ethics is not an area in which it is possible to spell out precise rules about how to act ... Ethics cannot properly be conceived as a moral computer which one feeds information about the current circumstances as input and which churns out instructions about how to behave as output. The way to find out what to do is to seek the judgment of a good man, for he will be a good judge of how to behave. The good man will be sensitive to what the circumstances require and will be motivated to act in the right way. But if ethics is not a set of rules, that one ingests in order to become a good person, then, one cannot become a good person by internalizing a set of rules, for there are no rules to internalize.

Second, human happiness is not something which can be adequately understood from an external perspective. Among the ends toward which human actions are directed, Aristotle distinguished between ends that are distinct from the actions which produce them and ends that are the activities themselves.  This is the distinction we have already seen between change (kinesis) and an activity (energeia). ... This distinction is central to Aristotle's ethics, for acting virtuously is not a means to a distinct end of living a happy life. Acting virtuously constitutes a happy life. This cannot be adequately understood by a non-virtuous person. From the perspective of a bad man, a virtuous act will appear onerous, painful or silly. From the perspective of the immature, the idea of a virtuous act may have some appeal, but his soul will not be sufficiently formed for this to be the strongest desire within him. He will feel the pull of contrary desires and he will not understand in any but the most superficial sense that acting virtuously is the way to be happy.

What Lear writes here distinguishes Aristotle from those contemporary ethical thinkers who want to make ethics either about our intentions, and not our actions, or who want to treat ethics as entirely from a utilitarian perspective of establishing rules of what is right and wrong.

The application to present day leaders and their organizations is that to follow Lear's description of Aristotle's ethics means that we don't live in a fantasy world of self-deception believing that all that matters is that I have good intentions towards people, or that I'm okay as long as I don't break the law.

Contained within the pages of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is a perspective that provides an ancient, yet practical guide that touches on Dan Pink's framework of autonomy, mastery and purpose. I an eagerly looking forward to the publication of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Dan Pink on Motivation

Dan Pink is a smart guy. He looks deeply into things that most of us take for granted. His new venture is an exploration into the nature of motivation. Watch his presentation at TEDGlobal in July to get a taste for what he is thinking.

In December, his new  book, Drive:The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is to be published. Here's a bit on the book.

... a paradigm-changing examination of what truly motivates us and how to harness that knowledge to find greater satisfaction in our lives and our work.

We have been conditioned to think that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is through external rewards like moneyathe carrot-and-the-stick approach. That is a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in his transformative new book. The key to high performance and satisfaction is intrinsic, internal motivation: the desire to follow your own interests and understand the benefits in them for you. And Pink has discovered thirty years of scientific data that confirm these ideas and show an exciting way forward.

Intrinsic, internal motivation ... stick with that thought. If this is how we are motivated to be at our best, then why have we organized all our institutions around extrinsic rewards of money and fame? Think about this. More is to come from Mr. Pink.

The Uncomfortable Nature of Leadership

My friend David Pu'u pointed to Seth Godin's post on the uncomfortableness of leading where he quotes from his bestselling book on leadership, Tribes.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strange rs.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.

As they say, "No pain; no gain."

There are two kinds of leading.

The first kind of leading is by personal performance, knowledge and expertise as one of the gang, often referred to as "first among equals" after the Latin phrase, "primus inter pares." The members of the group are equal in position, but one leads because of their knowledge, expertise or a position of authority.  Such as with a business partnership where one of the partners is the managing partner.

The second kind of leading is when you have a position of authority within an organizational structure. It is the second one where the most discomfort comes in.

I was the scoutmaster for my sons' scout troop for eight years. I tried to run our troop as a "first among equals", until my lead assistant in charge of camping didn't like a decision I made about his son's advancement. Within five days, the situation went from a disagreement between us to a challenge of my authority as scoutmaster before the whole troop. It wasn't personal. It was the principle of the issue. However, when the line was crossed from being between us to involving all the families, I had to exercise the authority that comes with the position. In consultation with the troop committee, he was suspended from all future activities with the troop. It was a sad moment because it didn't have to go that far. The beneficial result was that it created confidence that the boys would be treated fairly and cared for appropriately. Confirmation of the difficult decision came as parents stepped forward, offering their support and help.

It was very uncomfortable experience and a great lesson in leading. To this day, five years later, I'm still affected by it. He was my friend and scouting partner. We hiked together. We were a great team together. And in a matter of a few days, it was over.

This is one of those issues that supervisors and middle managers are not taught to understand. They rise through the ranks of the company. Someone thinks that they have some leadership skills, and they are elevated into a manager position. The challenge for them is no longer being one of the guys. It is why leadership is an uncomfortable position to be in.

This is why leadership is not just tactics and strategies, but personal character and the capacity to change.

If you are in this position, here are three areas to focus your attention.

1. Be clear about the long-term impact you want to achieve.

2. Be clear about the values that govern your decisions and behavior.

3. Be clear that you can't take the conflicts and disputes, that come with authority, personally. It isn't about you, but about principles and goals.

In encourage you to read Seth's NY Times bestseller book, Tribes, and to subscribe to his blog. I also encourage to read David's blog, especially right now as he chronicles his adventures in Bali.

Have Notepad, Will Consult

Seth Godin's post - The Talking Pad - highlights a practice that I've been using for years.

Zig Ziglar taught me about the most powerful way to use a yellow legal pad. He calls it a "talking pad."

When you're in a small meeting (you and one or two other people) it's awkward to use a laptop or Powerpoint, because it destroys the intimacy of the discussion. Basically, it says, "I'm going to talk to the screen and you can watch, okay?"  

The alternative is to use a thick pen or marker and a legal pad. 

This is how my Impact Leadership Guides were created.

Seth's post is about how to use a "talking pad" in a sales conversation.

Drawing on a notepad like this is a visualization process. It does two things. First, it provides people a process of idea development that promotes growing awareness. Second, it provides a visual reference point for people to remember later.

A "talking pad" or a conversation guide provides a way to visualize change. When people view the Transition guide, they can visualize the gap that exists between where they are and where they see themselves being in the future. Once they see it, then they can begin to act on it.

Almost everyone I meet, I take a couple minutes to introduce them to these conversation guides. Why do I do this? More than anything is that it makes for a better conversation. After a quick, 90 second overview, I ask, "What is the most daunting situation you are facing right now?" They tell me a story, and I ask, is this a Idea, Relationship or Structure issue? They identify one of them, and then we talk through how each of those dimensions actually can contribute to a solution. I'm constantly amazed at how often this sequence can take place in five short minutes. 

I'm not an artist. But by learning to think like one I am learning how to communicate better with people. Helping people visualize solutions is the first step in helping them bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be. 

One alternative to the "talking pad" is to use a small white board with dry-erase markers. A couple years ago, I went on a trip with my daughter to tour areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Before the trip, I learned that one of the women on the trip was deaf. So, I packed my little white board and markers in my computer bag to help us communicate better. It made a huge difference because I didn't know sign language, and we both new how to write and draw. The "talking white board" broke down the communication barrier that existed between us. 

What I found was that over time I was repeating images and connections on my "talking pad' so regularly that a patterns of meaning had emerged. From that came the desire to formalize the diagrams into conversation guides. I use Microsoft Visio to create all mine. It is fine for my limited artistic ability.

Creating these conceptual tools is a very good way of learning to think clearly. Diagramming the relation of ideas is a challenge. Instead of having to think only in the typical left to right, top to bottom manner that writing sentences require, treat the communication of your ideas as a work of art, illustrating connections between them. If you can learn to do this, you will also learn to think more quickly because the connections present in real life situations become much more obvious.

I've had a lot of fun learning how to think in this manner. And learning to communicate with people by drawing pictures and diagrams opens up avenues of awareness that simply talking does not do. I encourage you get your "talking pad" or white board out and start drawing. You'll find that it will transform your ability to think, to communicate and to relate to people more effectively.

Morning Update: After writing the above last night, I wake this morning to part two of Seth's notepad chronicles. This is a very good idea. I works well with the Impact Leadership Guides. That's the point, in conversation you write on them. It captures the essence of the conversation. Write on them, when you describe each transition point, identify the how each leadership dimension contributes to the desired impact, and answer each of the Four Questions. And if you are giving the charts to the other person, take a picture of what you've written down so you too have a visual reference of the conversation.

Read both of Seth's posts and then start doing it.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/collinanderson/2886338586/

Creating a Communication Culture

We are all in the communication business. We are all experts about certain aspects of communicating. From my experience over the years, the issue of communication is a real one for everyone. I see three types of communication that we must distinguish.

1. Distribution of information. This takes the form of advertising, newspapers, magazines, television shows, academic journals, and over the past generation, through websites.

2. Personal expression of opinion & perspective. This takes a variety of forms from speeches, essays, poetry, novels, film and television, opinion-editorials and to simply expressing your point of view in a meeting.

3. Conversation. The interactive exchange of information and perspective between people takes the form of letters, phone calls and today through social media, like email, text messaging and in online social networks.

Conversation incorporates information distribution and personal expression in an interactive manner.  When people have a conversation the whole person becomes involved. Conversation is a social asset in ways that the other two are not.

Information distribution and personal expression are delivered to a presumably willing, receptive audience. In a conversation we are both producers and consumers of the content of communication function in a feedback process that reinforces and adapts the conversation to the current situation.

If work demands are squeezing out time for personal interaction, how do we, then, effectively address our internal communication needs? 

We need to look first at how to create a culture of conversation and then at the quality of our communicating.

To create a culture of conversation we need three components.

1.  We have to be committed to making conversation a priority. We can't let situational circumstances like too little time dictate how well people communicate. Do we let deadlines keep us from performing at our best? We don’t. In fact, deadline commitments often are excellent motivating factors to fulfill those work expectations. If conversation adds value to communication in the workplace, then it needs to be a priority that we are committed to making work well. 

2. Building a culture of conversation should be built by the people who will use it. As persons in positions of authority, we need to permit, support, endorse and become a participant in the conversation. Just as conversation is different from and incorporates information distribution and personal expression, it is also different from traditional supervisory interaction. In conversation, we are providing information and opinion, as well as giving support and finding solutions to issues. Conversation can be a form of informal peer consulting that builds confidence and reduces the level of anxiety and ambiguity that exists in the workplace.

3. Creating a culture of conversation requires a convenient place where interaction can happen. Meaningful sharing of ideas and opinions builds upon one another. Networking tools that allow for the thread of conversation to be archived for future reference is a place where this culture is created.

A culture of conversation lives on the quality of the communication that takes place. This quality is measured by its clarity, its consistency, its attention to the consequence of the communication and the degree to which it is conversational.

Clear communication is more than a well articulated message. It is also an expression of integrity.  We build trust when we demonstrate an open and honest approach to communicating with others.

Consistent communication is timely and dependable. It helps people who look to us for leadership to know that we will keep them in the loop to the best of our ability. Our conversation is dependable when it is fair, honest and in context.  Consistent communication contributes to the establishment of a culture of trust.  

The Consequence of our Communication is two-fold. We must keep in focus the purpose of our communication. Is it just to provide information or to let someone know my position on an issue? Or, am I looking for some change in behavior or direction because of what I communicate? Therefore, we need to keep in mind what is the specific action or response we want people to take as a result.   If you are clear on this point, you’ll also know how to measure whether they heard you clearly.

Finally, fostering a culture of Conversational Communication creates an environment where everyone has a better sense of what is happening beyond their own job responsibilities. Conversation builds confidence by strengthening social bond that is essential to high functioning organizations in a time of downsizing.

Effective communication is a personal discipline of interaction with people. Its effectiveness in the workplace is dependent upon creating policies and practices that provide a safe place for people to share information, ideas, opinions and express support for one another.

Is Social Media a Fad? You decide

Watch this video closely. If you need to pause it to capture the message? Do so. Social media is a technology. The real change is with people.

Since the first human walked on the earth there have been clear limitations placed on human interaction. We may have been social beings, but limitations on movement and communication made it difficult for people to know more than a handful of people during their lifetimes.

Over the past two centuries this has been changing.

The first change was the steam engine which when applied to a train allowed human beings to travel faster than a horse.

Then came the radio, as my grandfather told me, openning up the world to people who had no conception of what life was life on the other side of the planet.

Along came the internet, and as the technology developed, social media. 

The technology of social media creates a context where people can connect. They share ideas and values. They collaborate and celebrate. They co-create and do things just a few years ago would have been unthinkable.

Social media is not just a way people connect. It will be how we organize in the future. There will always be some sort of hierarchical structure. But the inner workings will reflect more and more the interaction that we have through social media. We'll all be networking, working in groups where the "first-among-equals" takes the lead for as long as necessary.

We are a society in transition. Nothing anyone has experienced up to this point has prepared them for what we are now experiencing. We are at the point of the most dramatic change that human history has experienced since the days of the Roman Empire. The principal difference is that it is not led by powerful elites who control the means and therefore the substance of social media. Social media is the most egalitarian of all technologies, and the most individualized. Remarkably, it is in its infancy.

Interesting time to be living in, huh?

HT:Bill Kinnon & Jonathan Brink

Quick Takes: How to Be a Smart Protégé

This Wall Street Journal article, How to Be a Smart Protégé, is an excellent quick guide to mentoring. The authors offer eight tips.  My favorite is.

6. Make It Mutual.

Mentoring networks involve shared learning between two people. Too many people enter the relationships thinking of themselves as plebeian protégés who get support. Savvys, on the other hand, realize they have something to offer their mentors, too, and help them out whenever they can—which gives the other person a deeper vested interest in them.

One Savvy, a technology consultant, describes how she fostered relationships with three senior colleagues: "If I saw a senior consultant who was swamped with something, and I realized that I didn't necessarily have the computer intellect to be on his level there, but I could type really fast and I could be creative and design the presentation, and I could help with all the interviewing, I said as much to him. I said to him, 'Listen, I'd like to help you out if you'd like it.'"

Now, let me turn this on its head. As a guy in his mid-fifties, I make the assumption that I don't know anything. I seek out people in their twenties and thirties to learn new things.

The key for us seasoned veterans is to make learning mutual, not simply instructing the protégé.The benefits are beyond your imagining.

The Gratitude Campaign

Expressing gratitude is often awkward because we feel embarrassed. Especially if we are traveling through an airport and we see service men and women who are traveling. This little expression of appreciation is easy way to say thanks. It just may catch on as a way we can express ourselves to others as well

Work Life Lead @ Weekly Leader

Over at Weekly Leader, I've chosen to alternate my weekly Leadership Q&A column with a new series called Work Life Lead. The purpose is to address those issues that bridge the fine line between our personal and professional lives.

The first WLL column was The Thinning Live between Work and Life.

Yesterday's column, The Conversation Key, touches on how we can do a better job of communicating both at work and at home.

All my columns at Weekly Leader may be access through the Leadership Q&A category.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36088455@N02/3334369346/

Are your customers commodities?

As a customer, you can tell when a business begins to think of you as a commodity. All of a sudden, you are in and out - less talk, less transaction time. What does this mean? What should you do?

A friend of mine told me of a favorite vacation spot that his family had visited many times over the years. He had become friends with the owners. During his last visit, he noticed the customer service just wasn't what it had been in the past. He felt rushed and neglected. When he expressed his concern, the response was, "You've been here before. It's not like this is something new to you."  

When loyal customers begin to have this experience, it means the business has entered a transition point. We know this because what we are doing is getting harder, or our results are not what they were. A transition point can be good or problematic. It can have internal or external reasons. Whatever it is, you must understand it and act. Whether, it marks a decline or new opportunities, you must act.

The choice is not between changing or not changing. The only choice is what kind of changes do I make?

Change is necessary to sustain the loyalty and good will that long term customers have for a business.  When your customers become commodities, as a number lacking any history or distinctive relationship to the company, just the next transaction, you have determined a new course for your business. You may think that this is a rational business decision. It is also a decision to change the value structure of your business.

Long term customers don't bring their business to you because you have the lowest prices, unless that is your business. They come because you stand for something that is validated every time they encounter you. It doesn't really matter what those values are. It does matter that you know what they are, and that they matter to you.

Losing loyal customers marks a transition point. It is a change that matters. What are the implications?

In the past, you may have been able to charge a premium for your services because of your relationship to the customer adds value to the produce or service. Now, you are transitioning into the commodity business. You have to lower your fees to find customers. And those customers are not like your loyal ones. They are only interested in price and availability.

This is what happens at transition points. We make some seemingly innocent, rational decision, and do not see the unintended consequences.

Dealing with change is rarely rational and orderly. It is disruptive and disorienting. We have to learn how to see the tell-tale signs of transition and act to either reverse the trend or capitalize on it.

For my friend, he may return to this vacation spot one more time, giving his owner friend a second chance to show that he values his friendship and loyalty over the years. He'll go with a critical eye to see how he is treated. And there if has been no improvement, he may just move on to a new vacation spot next year.

Conversations with Richard Bandler - a Leading Questions review

Almost twenty years ago, I was introduced to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP through the Anthony Robbins Unlimited Power tapes. At that time, I found that NLP to be a communication technique as an excellent device for manipulation and control over others. When offered the opportunity to review Conversations with Richard Bandler, who is co-founder of NLP, I welcomed it as a chance to revisit this perspective of human development to see whether my original skepticism was justified.

Owen Fitzpatrick, a student, mentee, and friend of Richard Bandler recorded a series of conversations that he conducted with Bandler over several years. The book as a result is not an introduction to the techniques of NLP, but rather a book that celebrates Bandler’s ideas and perspective about self-development.

For those who are uninitiated into the world of NLP, Fitzpatrick provides a description.

NLP studies the way we represent our experience through our neurology (neuro), how we communicate with ourselves and others (linguistic)  and how we can change our habitual ways of thinking, communicating and behaving (programming). … NLP is described as an “attitude,” “methodology,” and “technology.” It is an attitude that enables you to live life in a happy, productive, and successful way. It is a methodology that enables you to usefully model successful people in different areas, such as education, medicine and business. It is based on the principle that no matter what someone else can do, you can learn how to do the same thing once you understand what that person did in the way they thought as well as in action or behavior. It is a technology that contains within it systems and skills that enable you improve the quality of your life.

The book provides anecdotal illustrations of this approach to human development. It is written for people who already are practitioners and fans of Richard Bandler and NLP. It does not take a critical nor introductory approach to the methodology.  As a result, I found it less that helpful in providing a perspective of NLP that addressed my original skepticism.

The fundamental psychological assumptions that are the basis of the NLP philosophy I don't believe are credible. Their conception of personal freedom and the "chains of freedom" is confusing.

Personal freedom is the ability to feel what you want so that the "chains of the free" - of fear, sadness, and hate - are broken. Real personal freedom is about being able to go through and break as many of these chains as you possibly can. These chains are made up of negative feelings, limiting beliefs, and destructive behaviors. It's about being able to build the kinds of internal states that take people to good places through curiosity.

To be free you have to be moral, because then you won't have dilemmas about what's good and bad. If you are doing the right thing for the right reason, then every part of you will line up and do it perfectly.

Over simplifying emotions as either good or bad provides a false resolution to the link between our emotions and the outside world. A false dichotomy between good and bad emotions sets up a binary trap for those seeking to implement NLP in their lives.  Any emotion, regardless of whether labeled good or bad, can affirm and enhance the quality of our lives. The task is not to label them, but to interpret them in the situational context.

For example, sadness is considered a "chain of freedom." In other words, sadness is a bad emotion that inhibits our freedom. Is sadness the opposite of happiness, or is it a depth of emotion that affirms some good within us?

Sadness is a natural and often an affirming emotion. When we feel sad at the loss of a loved one, that feeling of sadness is not a bad emotion as it can affirm their contribution and place in our lives. Thirty one years and two days ago, I lost my mother. On the anniversary of her death, I feel more acutely her passing, and the loss of her relationship and the opportunity for her to know her children's spouses and her grandchildren. Because I feel sadness in her absence, I am closer to her because her memory lives on in me. The experience of sadness is an important part of the grieving process and I'm freer to love her because of my sadness links me closer to the reality of what I and my family have missed in her not being with us.

The underlying philosophy of freedom, as described in the book, reduces freedom to a psychological state. 

Freedom from these chains really comes from intelligence. Real freedom is not based on a personal inventory. It is based on bathing your neurology in other chemistry. Freedom is not about following rigid ideas. It is about going into a state where you find your own personal destiny. It is about having flexibility in your behavior, not rigidity. It is your ability to change your own internal state.

NLP is a way of thinking that places the self at odds with social obligation. Freedom is being released from rules that inhibit the self. The self lives by it own self-appointed rules. As a result, our personal freedom is at odds with our relationship to others and to society as a whole. In effect, NLP's conception of personal freedom is prescription for interpersonal conflict and social decline. This is what I concluded from Tony Robbins description of NLP. I don't believe this is their belief. I do believe this is logical outcome of a quest for personal freedom being at the center of life.

Fortunately, people do live by social rules and desire to fulfill the expectations of their social relationships. Those rules are the source of our freedom. They provide us values that establish a basis for relationships within a social environment. As a result, there is no self-development distinct from our development as social beings. The measure of our personal freedom is not what we feel inside, but how we live. It is not what society does for us, but rather what we give to society that is the measure of our freedom. 

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is described as a technology. Technologies are tools. It is the purpose and application of the tool that matters. My skepticism has not changed toward this approach to human communication. I find its philosophical foundation lacking a sound basis in human experience.

Practitioners and followers of NLP and Richard Bandler will find Conversations with Richard Bandler a reminder of Bandler's thought and contribution to NLP. However, those who are looking for an introduction to the techniques of NLP will need to look elsewhere. And for those of us who are open skeptics, the book lacks the critical perspective needed to provide a clear and compelling case for NLP.

To Initiate is To Lead

There is no leadership without initiative. It is where it starts.

The other day Seth Godin posted the following.

"I'm just here to learn."

Learning is fine. Listening is good. Consensus is natural.

But initiating is rare and valuable and essential. (my emphasis)

Last week I was sitting with a friend talking about a variety of subjects and I realized that I had crossed a threshold. I was no longer a consumer but a producer. I spend more of my time writing than I do reading others' writings.  It was a good feeling.

The Circle of Impact developed from the realization that leadership begins with personal initiative. 

Leaders take initiative to create impact with ideas, through relationships and in organizational structures.

What does it mean for everyone in an organization to lead? What happens if only 10% of the organization leads? What happens if you change that to 25%? What happens if 15% more people are taking initiative to make a difference? Do you think the difference is tangible, measurable and meaningful?

Initiative doesn't have to be rare. All it takes is a person deciding that something that matters to them requires some kind of action to affirm it. That's all.

When initiation becomes a natural and learned part of our lives, we begin to become producers of things that are valuable and essential. There is no waiting either. We can begin with our first step forward. So go and initiate and be a leader in the place where you are right now.

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership - A Leading Questions review

Almost twenty years ago, the conventional wisdom about organizational leadership began to change. Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline was the first to acquaint me with the ideas of systems theory. Then Stuart Kaufman's At Home In the Universe came along to introduce me to the ideas of self-organization and complexity, followed by Margaret Wheatley's Leadership and The New Science. Since then, there have been many, many more writers that have come along to explore the nature of leadership from the vantage point of science.

My problem, and I'm sure this is true for many people, was the lack of background in quantum physics and evolutionary biology. As a result, applying these ideas was frustrating and discouraging.  Part of the problem was the conceptual difficulty of the ideas themselves, and the lack of a suitable organizational environment for them to take root.

The world has changed since this new world of leadership science began to be developed. Today, these ideas are finding greater receptivity as their application becomes more refined and real tools and guides are developed.

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World is an important and welcomed addition to the growing body of thought on adaptive change in organizations.  The authors are Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Harvard's Kennedy School colleagues and co-founders of Cambridge Leadership Associates, and Alexander Grashow, CLA's Managing Director. Heifetz is the author of Leadership Without Easy Answers and co-author with Linsky of Leadership on the Line They bring not only a first class understanding the theoretical understanding of leadership, but a real world perspective of having worked with leaders from around the world.  Since I first became acquainted with Heifetz's perspective in the early 1990's, I have found their perspective on leadership uniquely insightful.

The value of this book is its practicality. It is a guide book for how to be an adaptive leader.

This book is about possibility. Not daydreaming, wishful-thinking possibility, but rather a roll-up-your-sleeves, optimistic, realistic, courage-generating, and make-significant -progress kind of possibility. Leadership for change demands inspiration and perspiration.

The core focus is on learning to be an adaptive leader, with adaptation being the key idea. Here is their basic understanding of the adaptive nature of leadership.

Adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. The concept of thriving is drawn from evolutionary biology, in which a successful adaptation has three characteristics: (1) it preserves the DNA essential for the species' continued survival; (2) it discards (reregulates or rearranges) the DNA that no longer serves the species' current needs; and (3) it creates DNA arrangements that give the species' the ability to flourish in new ways and in more challenging environments. Successful adaptations enable a living system to take the best from its history into its future.

For the authors, evolutionary biology is an analogy for how we function as leaders. Not to over simplify, but from this perspective leaders are change agents who practice the art of preservation and change. Leader is not a title or a role, but rather how one approaches ones relationships, decisions and activities.

Recently, I completed a two year long project with a client whose constituency was so focused on the past that you could consider them a museum. Over those months of work, they began to see how the values of the past could be actively lived out in the future with vitality and growth. The above quote describes what took place over those months.

The authors provide six ways to understand how being an adaptive leader makes a difference.

• Adaptive leadership is specifically about change that enables the capacity to thrive.
  
• Successful adaptive changes build on the past rather than jettison it.
  
• Organizational adaptation occurs through experimentation.
  
• Adaptation relies on diversity.
  
• New adaptations significantly displace, reregulate, and rearrange some old DNA.
  
• Adaptation takes time.

Even though this book is a guide to how to be an adaptive leader, it should not be read as simply a book of tactics. It builds upon a systems view of human interaction and organizational life. They provide a basic understanding of systems thinking in order to fully benefit from their practical wisdom.

There is a myth that drives many change initiatives into the ground: that the organization needs to change because it is broken. The reality is that any social system (including an organization or a country or a family) is the way it is because the people in that system (at least those individuals and factions with the most leverage) want it that way. In that sense, on the whole, on balance, the system is working fine, even though it may appear to be "dysfunctional" in some respects to some members and outside observers, and even though it faces danger just over the horizon.

If, then, you are in an organization that some people think it is broken, and others do not, as the person in authority, what is your job? Do you treat the critics as an annoyance and do everything possible to run them off to preserve peace and tranquility? Or is your job to look at the big picture and realize that there may be some truth in their criticism. To take this view means that you potentially become disliked by everyone because the steps you take as an adaptive leader please neither side.

To approach leading from this perspective requires a different view of the role of leader. The old paradigm held that there are a few leaders and the rest followers in an organization. The new paradigm is much different.

People have long confused the notion of leadership with authority, power, and influence. We find it extremely useful to see leadership as a practice, an activity that some people do some of the time. We view leadership as a verb, not a job. Authority, power, and influence are critical tools, but they do not define leadership.

It is important to understand the implications of this perspective. As a leader, you are not a place holder on the organizational chart, or some gatekeeper who believes that all decisions must come through you as the authority figure.

Exercising adaptive leadership is dangerous. ... The dangers reside in the need to challenge the expectations of the very people who give you formal and informal authority.

From my personal experience, what they say is true. To be a change agent, to create change, especially when you are unsure how it will be received, is one of the hardest aspects of leading. Yet, it is what secures the impact of we desire.

Leaders are change agents. My own perspective is: Leaders take personal initiative  to create impact with ideas, through relationships and in organizational structures. A person's tolerance for change factors into how well they can be an adaptive leader. This diagram illustrates the various levels of tolerance of change that people have.  There are those people who are change-phobic, who resist change at all costs. There are those who embrace change to such a degree that there is no continuity established that allows for strength to be built and sustained. As a result, I find that people who are impact leaders have a change tolerance ranging from receptive to active initiation. It is never change for change sake, but rather, change that serves a higher purpose. This is why I too see leadership as a behavior that arises in the initiative of the individual regardless of what role they have in an organization.

I highly recommend The Practiced of Adaptive Leadership. Master the lessons that Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky provide us, and you'll begin to make a difference which encourages others to join you in leadership. I also recommend that you pair this book with Seth Godin's Tribes. Two very practical books on leadership, though very different, that provide an excellent grounding in the new paradigm of 21st century leadership.  I will carry both in my bag to use as reference in my own leadership opportunities.

Remarkable Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the formation of the Triiibes online social network. This virtual community of tribal leaders was created by Seth Godin to provide the readers of his book on leadership called Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us a place of support and interaction.   In my review of his book, I wrote,

Let me say upfront that this is the first leadership book in twenty five years of reading them that accurately describes what I see leadership being. From my vantage point, it is the best book on leadership written this century. I'm not  waxing hyperbolic. I'm serious in believing that this could be the most important book on leadership you'll read throughout the rest of your professional career. It is so because how you function in your role, wherever you are, can be transformed by applying the lessons Seth offers in his book.

I still find this to be true. It is a simple, honest, inspiring book for anyone who has some desire in their heart to make a difference. It is about how we take that motivation and begin to form a tribe that can help achieve our goals. In this time of great change, it is an ideal book for you and your friends, family, associates and employees to read.

Triiibes, the social network Seth created, is a remarkable community of people. I was invited to join through the kind request of Becky Blanton, my co-finalist in the Dan Pink's Johnny Bunko contest.  This invitation entered me into a world of passionate people whose desire to make a difference in the world overwhelms me. I've found a collection of people who mirror many of my own values and interests. As a result, I find validation, support and opportunity through these always interesting people.  Let me give you one example.

A few weeks ago in preparation for a client presentation, I posted a question at the Triiibes website about the issue of morale in the workplace. Over the course of twelve days, over 130 responses were posted to the discussion. This amounts to almost 80 pages of conversation on this one topic.

Conversation is what these online communities are about. However, Triiibes takes it to another level. During the course of the discussion, one Triiibes member, Richard, suggested we compile the conversation and publish it as an ebook. This discussion on morale is in the process of being edited and formatted for distribution. None of this interaction and activity is for pay. It is derived from the generous nature of the people involved.  Soon, the public beyond Triiibes will be able to benefit from this conversation. I'll post on the availability of the ebook soon.

Distance may separate us, but genuine friendship is being created through the Triiibes community.  Recently, a group of us gathered in suburban northern Virginia, outside Washington, DC, to meet and share dinner with one another. Triiibes members present are (left to right) are Jill Anderson, me, Bonnie Larner, Becky Blanton and Bernd Nurnberger.

All of this was made possible by the remarkable influence of Seth Godin. Thank you Seth for your leadership and your lack of a need to be in control. You have taken a tribe of loyal readers and followers, and provided a way for them to find one another and begin to create a new depth of leadership in places that have great needs. Your impact grows with each post and response. Triiibes has become an incubator of ideas and inspiration that is fueling people around the globe to lead. Thank you for making this happen.

Banking on Cupcakes

My friend, David Pu'u, writes about a dinner that ended with cupcakes.

At the end of our repast, someone mentioned cupcakes. We were full, but I remember thinking: What the heck, its only a cupcake,  and ordered two, which we shared. Those cupcakes were unlike anything I have ever experienced or tasted. They exemplified an obvious flair for creativity and generosity  in what would as a rule, be a mediocre at best, stab at the art of baking.

What the heck, its only ... you put the name in there. It could be a phone call or a drive to the office or a report due tomorrow or your child's soccer game or dinner tonight with the family.

When we invest in believing that every moment can be an historic and life elevating one, then we approach the investment of ourselves in that moment differently.

Lately, my discussions with various people and groups have centered around the following.

• change in an unknown future
• doing more with less
• morale in the workplace
• work-life balance,
  
• the need for visionary leaders
• the organizational shift from centralized to decentralized to interdependent leadership models.

Laying behind each of these discussions is a facet of human life that David is touching on in his post. He writes.

Those cupcakes said a lot to me about how our lives could work and what a world could be, if we found enthusiasm and creativity in our little segment of a daily existence that at times, for even the most creatively inspired, can wax mundane. We all go through it in family, work, sports, art: that “what is the point?” query.

Here is the point. When we engage our endeavors with creativity, and flair, and have it matter to us, it will make a difference somewhere down the line and matter to others. One never knows what results will spring from your diligence and attention to what is right in front of you in your life, at this exact instant.

I do find that people are asking "What's the point?", and asking it a lot. They do not see that each moment is an investment in the next, creating strength that is like putting money in the bank. All the moments that seem "pointless" don't have to be.  It is a choice of perception.

In reflecting on all those conversations noted above, I realize that much of what brings us down are the external realities of our lives. Business is hard. Our children are distracted and indifferent to the family's needs. My friends constantly complain about bosses, spouses, politics and the designated hitter rule. 

The reality is that we have very little control over the external realities. All we can truly control is ourselves. If you are dependent upon other people to give you the strength and support to deal with life, then you are squandering the investment that David writes about.

Goodness and joy in life begins within us. We must decide that I will not allow circumstances to dictate how I feel about myself or life in general. This is not the mind over matter sort of mental gymnastics. No, this is a change in our orientation to life so that what we do is an expression of who we are inside.

If you take the attitude that I'm going to invest creatively in every thing I do, then regardless whether it produces something now or later, you are investing in a strength that will be there when even harder times come.

David's, a photographer, response to the cupcakes at dinner was more than simply a post on creativity. Instead it became a way to honor and thank his friend the chef for inspiring in him a fresh creativity. He closes.

I took the confections home having thought about the subject, and inspired, shot cupcakes. Even had a little joke with my editor at Surfer, Jean Paul Van Swae about it (You won’t believe what I am doing JP!). The short of it is this, West’s passion for his business and love for his community birthed  something new, and my own homage to the source of my inspiration.

That is how we all ought to be, inspired by one another. I am constantly amazed by the bright lights in my life, and am convinced that without their illumination, contributions, enthusiasm and participation, that the world around me would be pretty freaking dark.

...

Go ahead, do it. I know you are stuffed.  But you will enjoy the results, and so will everybody else. Have a bite.

Do you see how inner strength, creativity and gratitude expressed in honor to others is how we deal with the hardships and challenges that we find today. My suggestion is that you look at all that you do as a way your are creating beauty and goodness. If you cannot see it in some way, step back and consider why do it. What IS the point?

Each moment of our lives is an investment in a future impact.

Bank on the cupcakes, and life will be sweet.

Photo credits: copyright©David Pu'u

Becky

See Becky Update below

Today marks a milestone in a story of a woman whom many of us have come to know and love. Mid-morning in an auditorium in Oxford, England, Becky Blanton will cross the stage and address the TEDGlobal conference about how she has gone from being homeless journalist living in van three years ago to being an invited speaker at TED.

The door opened for Becky to speak because she won the Johnny Bunko contest last winter. It was through the Bunko contest that I came to meet Becky. I was one of the three finalists in the contest. Becky, as an expression of the magnanimous person that is, secured an invitation for me to join an online social network of leaders started by Seth Godin, called Triiibes. That is a story in itself which you can read about here, here, here and here.

Becky's story is more than Johnny Bunko and more than being homeless and living in a van. Here's how she described it to some of us a couple weeks ago.

The important thing is not the whole homeless story - but the fact that our reality is based on our perceptions. Any of us can change our situations, find our hope, change our circumstances. Few of us will do so in such a dramatic fashion, but I was hard-headed and kept "trying to make things work," and failed. My commitment to my pets is what kept me in the van. I refused to give them up and accepted a choice (keeping my animals) of living in a van rather than giving them up and moving into an apartment. All choices have consequences - and gifts. This choice had both. (emphasis mine.)

I'm very happy for Becky. She deserves this moment in the public eye as much if not more than anyone I've ever known. I'm grateful for her friendship, and wish her all the best as she speaks today. An early recording of her six minute talk had me in tears.

After writing the above, Becky sent a report to her tribe of supporters. Here's some of what she has experienced, along with some pictures. It captures part of the person that Becky is.

From Becky at TEDGlobal2009/Oxford:

This is the view from my room at TED! I know. I couldn't believe it either - but it's what I visualized for the last six months so I guess the law of attraction works! ...

Okay. Bear with me....this is the TED experience beginning with arrival....

Spent the day sightseeing on a tour bus and talking to the driver, Alan. He's invited me back to stay with his family if I come back. I handed out cards to everyone on the bus who was curious about TED. My cards say, "It is not our abilities that define us. It is our choices." Alan drops me off at the door to Keble College, not on his regular round of stops, but he's a NUMBER ONE customer service oriented guy!!

Nick is a physicist studying at Keble College. He wants to be a journalist. We talk journalism and vandwelling as he carries my bags to my room overlooking the quad and the building that is the TED Global centerpiece.

Shelia Bailey owns Daisies Flower Shop in Oxford. She's responsible for the flowers for the TED party tonight. She loves Oxford and pointed out the best seating and the place where there's most likely to be a breeze. She gives me her card as well and shows me the inside of her flower van....since I love all things vans...having lived in one.

Miles is the IT guy who ""fixed my mac" but it broke again. I figured out how to reset it this time. He camps and we talked camping and vandwelling. Now I know where to go to park on 3,000 year old trails in England!

I arrived early and saw the guys with the hawk demonstration and asked to take photos...and to let the hawk land on my hand!!! THEY SAID YES AND I GOT TO PLAY WITH THE HAWK!!!!!! My TED experience is complete. I also talked to the Tom's shoes folks - they said "HI Seth." They said you told them you really liked what they were about and the shoes when they saw you in California.

Albara Alohali is here from Saudia Arabi. He has a new Canon camera. We talked about settings and then got shoes. He didn't want to play with the hawk.....He's the guy setting up Saudi Arabia TED. Lots to do after registering.....no line! Pays to be early!

Then it's off to the TED stage! Got pictures of "Griff" sleeping. He started work at 4  a.m. this morning and is "beat." There have been 24 presentations - practice, since they set up. Several other folks hand me off to various people until I arrive at the AV (audio Visual) room where I am told I am DEEPLY loved. I have no audio visual stuff so they get a 30 minute break. They need it. There is no air-conditioning here and it is HOT HOT HOT!!! My room is gorgeous....just remodeled...in the oldest wing of the school.

And lastly the story of the hawk...

Right off the bat stuff has been cool! I got to play with a hawk!! Hawks, the handler said, are "Tribal animals." When they get used to human beings and learn to trust them, the human becomes part of their Tribe. More on that in a separate blog post, but here's a cool photo! Yes! I got to wear the glove and "catch" the hawk about a dozen times!!! FUN FUN FUN!!!

And in a follow up email she wrote...

I told Bruno at dinner that my TED experience was already complete - I got to play with the hawk! He said, "Yeah, talking tomorrow pales in comparison I'm sure!" Glad he has a sense of humor! I don't have room for ALL the stuff I did, but basically the locals here are really friendly and told me where to go to drink beer in the bar where Bill Clinton smoked pot, where to get the best photos of the boats on the river, where the best fish & chips are - (they were right)...all the fun stuff they don't cover in the tour books. And the bus drivers know my name! Talk about great customer service - these bus tour guys are awesome!

Becky Update

My TED talk is done. Parts went great, parts I forgot. I hope they can piece it together. As much as I practiced and memorized - it all flew out of my head halfway through. Thank God for notes. Actually, now that it's over, I think I've forgotten the whole morning. Not unusual. What shocked me so much about the experience was the kindness of strangers. So many smiling faces - so many people wanting me to do well. I hope I did. It was the hardest thing I've ever done - even harder than living in the van for a year. Too much to blog about, but it was intense. (emphasis mine.)

Dan Pink rearranged his schedule to be there in the front row cheering me on. He is amazing. Simply amazing. I walked over and shook his hand at the end of my talk....it was too emotional....I don't have the words to describe it. But something inside me changed. For the good! Lunch is in an hour. Amazing people. Amazing speakers. I can't believe I can't form complete sentences or function, but it is that powerful, and those are just the TED University folks.

I think I just want to go somewhere and cry. It's intense. So intense to be here. If you get a chance to go to TED - do it. You'll never regret it. And this is just the first day. wow.

Later that day ...

I must have done better than I thought. People came up to me all day and night, crying and hugging me. I spent almost an hour in the bathroom because as I was washing my hands women kept coming in the door and stopping to tell me their story and their feelings after hearing my talk. I'm stunned at how intensely people WANT to connect with other's experiences. A female doctor took a year sabatical to live on a boat and told me she got the same response. People saw her differently and treated her with hostility. When she moved off of the boat after a year, people went back to treating her like a doctor. It made her so angry. (emphasis mine.)

A woman who had been kidnapped and tortured, held hostage and raped for months - also identified with it. Non-Americans were more moved than Americans and identified more deeply. I've never been hugged and cried so much in my life. Everyone wanted a longer speech and more details. It was a great way to get stories. I asked what they liked best about the talk and wow! The floodgates opened! It was like getting my own personal TED experience hearing people's stories....just incredible!! What I saw as "forgetting my place," the audience saw as emotional pauses....so, it worked I guess. Humbling. Totally humbling experience.

I remember about three faces on the front row. People tell me that there was a standing ovation, people crying etc. but I didn't hear a thing. I remember walking over and leaning off of the stage to shake Dan Pink's hand (he was in the front row) and then the moderator/host saying, "And that's what we call a "TED" moment." Apparently there were a lot of tears, but I remember a hug from the host and Dan.

Impact, not Balance

Is there such a thing as balance between personal and professional life?

Twice this week I saw the question raised. Once in a webinar and the other in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece - Work and Life -- and Blogging the Balance.

The WSJ article was prompted by a comment Jack Welch made at a SHRM conference in June. He said, "There's no such thing as work-life balance ... There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."

I agree with Welch. I don't know what work-life balance looks like.  The issue, for me, is a question of the impact that I want to have.

One of the ways I answered this was to work for myself. While it is never perfect or in balance, it has given me more freedom to be with my family in ways that people in typically corporate jobs cannot. On the other hand, my work does require 24/7 attention. I know there is a price for this. As Welch says, there is a consequence.

The greater question for us is whether our lives have an integration that allows for us to make a difference regardless of the situation. Balance isn't trying to find some median point of activity concentration between personal and professional life. We end up measuring our lives by the activities that fill up our schedules. That is not an effecive measure of much of anything, except energy. It is like going on a vacation trip, and only telling people how many miles you drove, and how much gas you used and what you spent for food and lodging. Not an accurate picture of vacation.

Impact, integration, wholeness, and congruence are better ways to approach the balance question. Find your purpose, make a difference and live your life as if it is a whole thing, not just a collection of parts. You will have to make sacrifices. But if you are doing what you love, and making a difference, then you have a type of balance that really matters in the long run.

Follow Up in Response to Comment below:

Thanks for your comment, Becky.

Women are more expressive about the issues. Men are (I'm over generalizing here.) just think of this as the way things are and deal with it in a more private, less open way. Listen to what they complain about and the issues of balance emerge.

A friend of mine used my Four Questions guide to focus his week. Within a few months his emotional intelligence website became the most visited in the world. He attributed it to focusing on the impact question.

Let's ask the Four Questions about the question about balance.

1. What is the impact we want from finding balance between our professional and personal life? 

2. Who do we want to impact through this balance?

3. What opportunities do we gain from achieving this balance?

4. What problems of balance have I created that I must address in order to achieve balance?

If we approach the balance question from an impact context, I think we can find some clarity that leads to real action that makes a difference.

Let the tribe be the tribe

Steven Pressfield points to Patrick Devenny who points to Charles Trower on how to  win the war in Afghanistan. The fact that Trower was a British cavalry officer in India over 150 years ago is a clue to why Pressfield's blog on the war in Afghanistan makes for excellent reading.

Intrigued by these two posts, I found Trower's book online and began to read it. The context for this book is the leadership of Afghan and Indian (including today's Pakistan) horse soldiers. The importance of this context is the recognition that the culture of mid-19th century England is not at all the same as Afghanistan then or now. My own experience with the Afghan people in the NWFP of Pakistan in 1981 tells me that little has changed since Trower's book was published in 1845.

Here is what Trower describes as the right kind of leader for what today we'd call a multi-cultural unit.

The selection of an European Officer to serve with Irregular Cavalry(re:non-British military), instead therefore, of being a mere matter of interest should be made with .much circumspection. His standing in the Company's Army is of no importance so long as he possesses the requisite qualifications, which may thus be briefly enumerated. He should have a very considerable knowledge of Hindoostanee, more especially a colloquial knowledge, so as to be able to converse really fluently with those entrusted to him —not that bastard degree of acquirement contemplated by the Governor-General in G. O. of the 20th of April, 1844—he should be well versed in their customs, habits, and peculiar modes of thinking and feeling, which can alone be acquired by mixing much with natives. He should be a man of admirable temper, never hasty, firm, yet patient; for many things apparently trifling to our ideas, are of much importance in their estimation : and it is a great (although a frequent) mistake to judge of the conduct of natives by the standard which we have set up for our own. Physically he should be strong and of good constitution, of active habits of mind and body, and an excellent horseman. He should be one likely to excel in athletic exercises or feats of horsemanship; for, as with all demi-barbarians these physical advantages are held in high estimation by the class of men composing Irregular Cavalry, and the mixing with the men in their warlike sports creates affection, as the excelling them in their own line produces admiration. He should be of easy access, ever ready to hear each man's complaint. He should be a man of good nerves, and of a considerable spirit of enterprize ; generally intelligent and sensible ; for he is often placed in circumstances which call for the exercise of tact and great judgment. (The emphasis in the quote is mine.)

Now consider this description of the qualities of leadership from a contemporary point of view. This kind of leader comes to his or her position recognizing that the people they lead are not necessarily from the same background or culture. Yet, for today's leaders to be effective, each of the qualities I emphasized in the paragraph above are needed. The basis for this leadership is the recognition that there are values that transcend cultures.

Pressfield quotes Devenny's reflection on Trower's philosophy of leadership. He describes this in two phrases "Let tribes be tribes" and "Work with tribalism, not against it." Devenny describes how this is done through three principles of Trower's.

1. Incentivize -- Raising tribal forces is often confused with the purchase of mercenaries, part-time allies loyal only as long as the money lasts. Trower agreed: Simply lavishing gold on tribes was short-sighted. It was better to incentivize participation through a methodical, society-wide approach. This involved consultation with tribal leaders, targeted recruitment, the promotion of local elites, and a pay scale that rewarded good conduct and active participation.

...

2. Live and let live -- The relationship forged through the incentive system led some British officers to believe they could Westernize Pashtun fighters. To Trower, this was arrogance of the worst sort. Pashtuns were fiercely independent, and any effort to treat them as "property" would be disastrous. Trower's colleagues were advised to ignore any impulse to "civilize" such units: "There is nothing as distasteful to the majority of natives as change of any kind, above all any change affecting their purse or prejudices."

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3. Go native -- Educated by years of living in the tribal areas of Pakistan and India, Trower argues that British officers should make every effort to blend in with their native recruits. This recommendation will ring familiar to American military advisors, particularly U.S. Special Forces. Officers attached to irregular groups should have "very considerable knowledge" of the native culture, and should rapidly learn their languages.

I find wide and specific application of these principles to business leadership. If we approach employees as a tribal unit, we'll recognize that they have a different focus and agenda than those who are in executive positions. They do not want to lose their jobs, or pay, but they also are not interested in making their job more than what it is.

Today, it is probably not necessary to "go native." Modern society with its universal education system has caused cultural differences to become fewer, and those that remain are more contentious and divisive. What Trower is telling us is that to be effective as leaders, we need to understand who we are leading. And they need to understand that it matters to us. This is wise counsel that each of us should follow.