Leading Questions

The future is local

I've been talking to people. Here's what I'm hearing about how they are handling the recession.

Fear, desperation and hunkering down are typical descriptions.  No confidence about the future. I've yet to talk to a person who either runs a business or owns one that believes the government's stimulus efforts will do much good.

Heard about a guy who bought rental property as a retirement investment. He's had to take a second job to pay the mortgage because his tenants have lost their jobs.

Heard a guy tell another about a long career with a company that started early in his life. He retired well and young, and now is having to think about going back to work because his investments are in such bad shape.

Read in a Tom Peters' post the other day a quote from Peggy Noonan. She first speaks about spread of pessimism.

This isn't like the stock market crash of 1987 or the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2001. People are not feeling passing anger or disappointment, they're feeling truly frightened.

The reasons:

This isn't stock market heebie-jeebies, it's systemic collapse.

It's not just here, it's global.

It's not only economic, but political. It wasn't only mortgage companies that acted up and acted out, so did our government, all the governments of the West, spending what they didn't have, for a decade at least.

And at the center of the drama is your house—its worth, or its ability to see you through retirement, or your ability to hold onto it. An extra added angst bonus: Those thinking now about retirement are just old enough to remember America before the abundance, before everyone was rich, rich being defined as plenty to eat, a stable place to live, and some left over for fun and pleasure. For them, the crash has released old memories. And it's spooking people.

...

Perhaps the biggest factor behind the new pessimism is the knowledge that the crisis is not only economic but political, that we'll have to change both cultures, economic and political, to turn the mess around. That's a tall order, and won't happen quickly. One thing for sure: Our political leaders for at least a decade, really more, have by and large been men and women who had fortunate lives, who always seemed to expect nice things to happen and happiness to occur. And so they could overspend, overcommit and overextend the military, and it would all turn out fine. They claimed to be quintessentially optimistic, but it was a cheap optimism, based more on sunny personal experience than any particular faith, and void of an understanding of how dark and gritty life can be, and has been for most of human history.

The crisis isn't just global, but local. It isn't just about the ability of large institutions, business and governmental ones, to foster trust and confidence. She is right this isn't a simple burp along the path towards prosperity. We are experiencing the first great systemic failure or collapse (as Kevin Kelly calls it) of the connected era. 

The Noonan quote that Peters selected. 

I end with a hunch that is not an unhappy one. Dynamism has been leached from our system for now, but not from the human brain or heart. Just as our political regeneration will happen locally, in counties and states that learn how to control themselves and demonstrate how to govern effectively in a time of limits, so will our economic regeneration. That will begin in someone's garage, somebody's kitchen, as it did in the case of Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak. The comeback will be from the ground up and will start with innovation. No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local. That's where the magic will be. And no amount of pessimism will stop it once it starts.

My experience of working with people and their organizations they make the transitions of organizational change has shown me that attitude is an important factor in dealing with a crisis. Fear and desperation need to be replace with trust and confidence. Hunkering down isn't survival. It is burial. The future is local and it is collaborative.

The challenge we each face together is the recreation of a local business environment that supports innovation, entrepreneurship and collaboration. It doesn't start in Washington, or on Wall Street or at your state capital. It starts right where you are.

I end, as Noonan ended her column, believing that opportunities abound right now. They are not easy or simple, but they are there for people and business who are willing to put aside territorial privilege, act collaboratively and practice innovation and entrepreneurialism in their businesses and community organizations. 

There is great strength in every community waiting to be released. It is up to us. Let's begin the conversation that makes this happen.

No More Torture

Last night President Obama told the American people and the world that the United States would no longer practice interrogative torture. 

In my inbox this morning comes this note from Michael Yon,

President Barack Obama has spoken.  His words beamed around the world.  I am in Asia preparing for a long year in Afghanistan and other contended places, but stopped to listen closely to President Obama's words.  Most of the things that President Obama talked about will take years, or many years, to implement.  But one thing can happen NOW.  No more torture.

I believe we can beat the terrorists we face without torture.  In fact, we can fight them better and more effectively from high ground than from low ground.

Thank you President Obama for moving to the high ground.

Michael Yon

Yon is an independent journalist whose coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been insightful and prescient. I highly recommend subscribing to his email alerts.

Yesterday, I watched FBI director Robert Mueller's presentation and Q&A at the Council of Foreign Relations on Monday. There he stated that the FBI does not use torture. He went so far as to say that any FBI agent serving anywhere in the world, serving with any combined forces is under obligation to operate by FBI protocols.

From Wikipedia, torture is ...

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. 

I've always been skeptical of the benefits of torture. I'm glad we are taking the lead on this issue.  It means that we can face any person of any country with integrity and openness without compromise.  As our global community grows closer, the people of good-will in each country need to know that as American's, we can be trusted.

What President Obama has done is not just a shift from Bush adminstration policy,  but the policy that has governed the nation for generations. It is a good thing. Thank you, Mr. President.

When Communication becomes a Conversation

In my consulting work, there is really only one constant that unites all organizations. It is the poor quality of communication that takes place. Why is this the constant? Because the generally accepted conception of communication is that it is the distribution of information from the organization to its constituents.

This way of viewing communication is not just in printed communication, but also in spoken communication. Think about your education experience. How many classes were organized around the teachers distribution of information to the class through lecture and text. There are some fields of knowledge where this is appropriate, but not many because most information needs to be translated into useful, relevant knowledge. The teacher/presenter should always have in mind answering the  question, "What am I to do with this information?"

This came to me as I read a story linked by Garr Reynolds on his Twitter feed (@presentationzen) - How to present while People are Twittering. For traditional presenters, I can see how this would be a nightmare. The conversational nature of communication is growing in importance, and Twitter is forcing presenters to adapt.

I've Twittered one presentation that I attended. I posted a tweet to the presenter's Twitter address.  People who follow him were sending me questions to ask. So, the presentation was not just to those assembled in the room, but to the several hundred that follow the speaker. It was fascinating to see how the energy and the dynamics of the event changed as a result.

This does change the way presenters need to think about presenting information.  It may mean that the approach is more Socratic. By asking questions that the audience can answer in tweets, and the presenters responds to, a conversation is created, and the message that the presenter wants to convey gets communicated in a way that people may actually remember.

The day of simply distributing information as the chief means of communicating is over. Welcome to the age of participative communication.

Quick Takes: Traveling the Lewis & Clark Trail with Naturalist Daniel Botkin

The Lewis & Clark Expedition is one of my favorite leadership stories. During the bicentennial years, I wrote a blog on L&C as the first 21st century leadership team. 

I have just received word that Daniel Botkin, a noted naturalist, is serializing his excellent book, Passages of Discovery: the American Rivers Guide to the Missouri River of Lewis & Clark.  This is a great peak into what the natural world of the mid-West and upper Rocky Mountain region was like two hundred years ago. He plans to post one chapter a week. You can find his blog here.  If you are a lover both historical and natural history writing, you'll enjoy reading Botkin's book.

Quick Takes: Why you should blog

Watch this Open forum video with Seth Godin and Tom Peters talking about blogging. Seth tells why blog and Tom the impact that it has been on him. I began blogging in July 2004, at the same time I began to write my Real Life Leadership column. Here's what I've gained from the experience.

1. Practice in writing clear, coherent, compelling ideas. Writing clearly is not the same as speaking clearly. They are different ways of articulating ideas. When we speak, it is not unusual to say a series of sentence fragments. However, the over use of phrases in writing, I've discovered, is a product of writing to think out loud. 

The most important thing I have learned about this is from my column. I describe the column as "Dear Abby for Leaders."  I take a real world question and answer it. Writing to what I hear people discussing is what I am trying to do.The 500 word limit for my column has shown me how much extraneous verbiage I use in my writing.

I understand, now, how to make every sentence count. One key? Cut out all qualifying adjectives and adverbs, and make complex sentences simple. A second key? Get over the feeling of not being understood. I see this in my own writing when I begin a sentence with something like, "what I mean ...".

2. Clarity about what I think.  Forcing myself to write everyday provides me the mental exercise to work through ideas. My Impact Leadership diagrams are the product of this practice. The result is the ability to think more clearly in context.

Blog writing is a healthy mental exercise because it tends to be a conversation with other writers. If I'm commenting on something Seth or Tom has written, I'm trying to elevate the clarity and intelligence of my writing to their level.

Lastly, I take my writing cue from Tom Friedman who a decade ago on the Charlie Rose said one night that his aim with his New York Times column was two-fold. First, it was to have the reader say, "Hmm, I didn't know that." And second, "Ah, I never thought of it that way."  In both cases, the reader is brought into different perceptual and knowledge contexts that make wanting to read the column more compellng.

This is my aim as well. And I have to do this for myself before I can do it for you.

If I've not said it lately, thank you very much for reading.

Quick Takes: Guy Kawasaki on Retweeting Twitter posts

If you aren't twittering, that's okay, eventually you will. Guy Kawasaki sees Twitter as a vehicle for building trust. Read his Open Forum post on why retweeting is the real power measure rather than number of followers.

Influence comes from having something worth saying.

Quick Takes: Gratitude in Action

Bill Taylor posts a great story he picked up from the Boston Globe about ironworkers who write the names of children cancer patients on the beams going into a new building at a local hospital.

This is a fine expression of their gratitude for the privilege of providing a building to serve children who have cancer.

Measuring Up

How do you measure success? I'm not hearing much talk about success right now, but we should.

The way we measure success is being radically altered.

If money was your measure, then your perception of your success is being altered.

If title was your measure, then your perception is being adjusted.

If security was your measure, then your perception is being challenged.

We are, right now, at a transition point in history where virtually every measure of success is up for grabs. If you listen and observe what people are saying and doing, you'll hear them talk about success as being about "MY" success. It is about what I get from success. It is about how I look compared to the next fella. Measures of success have been about personal accumulation. This is now changing.

There are at least two measures of success that are now emerging into prominence.

1. What is my impact? What difference have I made? What is change have I created? 
This measure has always been there. It was just viewed as a secondary measure. Change was a means to the end of personal accumulation. Now, impact is a preeminent measure, and what I get out of it is a secondary one.

Now, what I'm giving to make a difference is becoming a measure of impact. Are you giving back? Are you giving away for free part of yourself or your business that strengthens the business and community environment you are in?  Are you a giver or a taker? Are you acting out of thanks or entitlement? People are watching and their choices in the future are being impacted by this change in measurement.

This is one of the new measures of success. It is one that I see at the heart of leadership.  A second one is ...

2. How does your performance measure up to your potential?
I encounter people every week who want to impress me with either their ability or their success. They are all ego. Their high pressure tactics are old school.

Let me tell you something. I don't really care what you've accomplished in life. The past is just that past. I'm interested in your perception of your potential, and what you are doing to do to develop to meet that potential. I'm interested in what you have learned from your past that is helping you make a difference right now.

Don't compare your self to other people. You are not other people. I'm not you, you are not me, neither of us is the next guy or gal. We are who we are, and ultimately the only valid comparison is between where we am right now and where our potential leads us.

The reality is that most of us have no idea of what our potential is. The horizon of our potential is so near that we live in fear of reaching it too soon. For thirty years, I've operated on the principle that my horizon is beyond my reach, and I'm going after it. My inspiration was an interview that Johnny Carson did with Diana Nyad after her unsuccessful attempt to swim from Cuba to the US. She talked about what she learned about herself. I want that same knowledge of my horizon potential. It is my supreme measure of success.

Right now, each one of us is being given the opportunity to change everything about our lives that constrains us from meeting our potential. If you live in fear and desperation, you'll end up losing. If you live with an eye to opportunities, then you will learn to see the potential in every situation. And that potential is the opportunity for making a difference, for creating change, for having an impact.

How are you measuring up? What difference are you making? How are you giving back?  What are your plans for reaching your potential? Can you see the horizon of your potential?  Are you ready to go after it? Then, don't wait, get after it today. Set the pace and we'll be along side as discover new measures of success.

Encouraging Fledgling Movements

Yesterday, i did what I rarely do, get mad and publicly express my disappointment in the performance of a board. It was with the board of a non-profit that I am on whose members had failed to follow through on their end of a request to me. My rant achieved the impact that I wanted, which was a greater seriousness about the actions that board members need to take. Our problem as an organization is that our organizational structure is ill-suited to the actual mission that we have.This means that the people who serve from across the state of North Carolina are not given the opportunity to perform together in a way that is best suited to both the mission and values that we share.

This four year old organization is like so many that i see. I don't know enough about Annie Wadhams' Something Good effort yet, but I suspect that a similar challenge is at work for her as well. (I wrote about her here and here.)

New organizations typically begin with the passion of something saying, "This has got to be done!" Embedded in that passion is an idea that becomes the mission for a movement. Leaders of new organizations have the challenging task of not only creating an organizational structure to fit their mission, but also finding people to form the relationships to support it.

If you are involved in an organization or business at the governance level, you need to encourage development in all three dimensions of your organization. For Annie, I suspect, she needs encouragement and support for the structural dimension of her organization. She's got a great idea, and I know that people will flock to her site as they discover her counter-cultural message of goodness.

For the board that I am on, we need to work on all three dimensions. It is part of our growth as an organization. The original mission has been met and organized well, but that is not where the need is. So, we must sharpen our focus for what our future mission is as an organization. We need to expand our reach to people and groups who share this mission and provide them a way to organize themselves to carry their own version of this mission forward. (Read Seth Godin's Tribes to better understand what I mean.) And most importantly, we have to replace our organizational structure with one that is suited to the future needs of the people and groups we serve.

Part of the role of leadership is encouragement of fledgling movements. We need to do so in all three areas.

• Encourage greater clarity of our mission.
  

• Encourage greater personal initiative by the members of the movement.They must own the movement as their own, while at the same recognize the essential need for collaboration. The values that people share gives the movement the cohesion to survive.
  

• And, most importantly, we need to encourage the develop of new organizational structures that provide the support for people to lead together.

Movements are created by people who want to do something that is "personally meaningful and socially fulfilling." I mark that phrase in quotes on purpose. It is a measure of impact.

Ask yourself about the organizations where you give you time.

• Are our ideas and our mission personally meaningful and socially fulfilling? 
  
• Are our relationships in this organization personally meaningful and socially fulfilling?
  
• Does our structure support the actions of people as personally meaningful and socially fulfilling?

Encourage this, and your movement, your organization, will grow in its impact. Then you can begin to build toward the next level of impact, whatever that may be. And when you make the decision to go there, you'll be prepared to make the changes that these transitions require.

Quick Takes: Something Good Journal #2

Support Annie Wadhams who has a vision for spreading goodness through her Something Good organization. Here is her second FutureShifters video describing how Something Good is going to work.

Find more videos like this on futureshifters