Leading Questions

Guiding Assumptions for Creating Impact in 2010

2009-12-15T06:20:51-05:00

Last week, I posted here and at Weekly Leader a simple process for reviewing 2009. This week I'm providing a simple method for planning for next year. In my Work Life Lead column this week - Creating Your 2010 Impact - I provide a simple outline of questions to answer.

1. What is the transition that is taking place in your life and work?

2. What is the impact you want to create in 2010?

3. Who do I want to impact in 2010?

4. What opportunities do I have now that I need to act on for 2010?

5. What problems have I created that I need to resolve in order to create the impact I want in 2010?

There are some guiding assumptions behind these questions.

1. That transition and change is given in life and work.
2. That life and work are fulfilled in creating impact, not simply doing activities.
3. That relationships are the primary context for making a difference in life and work.
4. That opportunities are always present.
5. That we must be responsible for our lives and work, which includes the problems that we create for ourselves and others.

If you buy into these assumptions, then this planning process will help you greatly increase your impact in 2010.

Let me know how things go. If you have questions, just ask. I wish you all the best in the new year.

"A Period of Truly Staggering Underachievement"

2009-12-14T17:47:28-05:00

In two weeks, when Dan Pink's new book, Drive:The Surprising Truth of What Motivates Us is published, you will read the following.

Harnessing this second drive has been essential to economic progress around the world, especially during the last two centuries. ... Fredrick Winslow Taylor ... believed businesses were being run in an inefficient, haphazard way, invented what he called "scientific management."

Workers, this approach held, were like parts in a complicated machine. If they did the right work in the right way at the right time, the machine would function smoothly. And to ensure that happened, you simply reward the behavior you sought and punished the behavior you discouraged. People would respond rationally to these external forces - these extrinsic motivators - and both they and the system itself would flourish.

... And so this general approach remained intact - because it was, after all, easy to understand, simple to monitor, and straightforward to enforce. But in the first ten years of this century - a period of truly staggering underachievement in business, technology, and social progress - we've discovered that this sturdy, old operating system doesn't work nearly as well. It crashes - often and unpredictably. Most of all, it is proving incompatible with many aspects of contemporary business. And if we examine those incompatibility problems closely, we'll realize that modest updates - a patch here or there - will not solve the problem. What we need is a full scale upgrade.

Read again the sentence in boldface italic.

... in the first ten years of this century - a period of truly staggering underachievement in business, technology, and social progress ...

This is not hyperbole. This is reality.

Recently the financial services firm, Deloitte, published their 2009 Shift Index. Their announcement of their 2009 report begins with this paragraph.

Despite major improvement in labor productivity over the last four decades, many industries in the United States have experienced alarming decreases in their return-on-assets (ROA). This according to Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, which today released industry-specific findings from its 2009 “Shift Index,” a new economic indicator identifying three waves of disruption that are shaping today’s business landscape.

In other words, all this efficiency is not creating a stronger, more vital economy. Why is this?

Dan Pink isn't just blowing smoke either. He is pointing to a reality that has been obscured by the recession. Unless you are in an industry that is in radical free fall, the temptation is to think that once the recession is over, things will be back to the way they used to be. It is not going to happen this way.

We'll see a continued long slow decline of those industries that have not embrace the realities that are now present. Those businesses that embrace the transition to the next era of organizations and business will thrive. Can old, legacy companies change fast enough? They can if they are willing to abandon their assumptions about the way the world works, especially their ideas about people.

The key is changing the structure of organizations to be more closely aligned with the insights that Dan Pink provides in his book. (I'll post a review of Drive closer to its publishing date.) It isn't just more collaboration or telecommuting. It is at a more fundamental level of policy, compensation and the place of the business in a global social context. This will require a redefining of many industries and the leadership roles within them. It is already happening, but not at a pace that we can afford. It must pick up.

As Dan Pink writes about the importance of "intrinsic motivation" and Deloitte chronicles The Big Shift, we each need to become more self-critical about our governing assumptions about life and work.

From analog to digital, from paper to story

2009-12-14T02:42:35-05:00

Here are four videos on books, the stories in them, how they are made, that fascinate me. I found them at Alan Jacobs blog which is worth reading. This will take about 18 minutes to watch, and is worth watching. Get a cup of coffee and enjoy.

The first is on the art of bookmaking.

Here's a bookmaking project that recreates the pictures from a Webster's Dictionary.

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

This video is about how bookmaking now has moved from the analog world of the above videos to the digital world of on demand production.

And lastly, a fascinating video about the story that our imaginations find in a book.

Starting with a client's perceived need

2009-12-11T16:27:44-05:00

Where do you begin with clients?

Are you selling?

Do you begin with what they want?

Or, do you explore what they perceive their need to be?

I start with the transition question.

What's the transition question?

It is a question about what they perceive as having changed. It isn't just that it has changed, but change in some relatively permanent way, as if there is no going back.

Most people have a sense that something has changed, is changing or needs to change, but don’t have a way to see it very clearly or completely.

That is where I begin.

Once they see this transition, they are more motivated to make changes that take advantage of the transition they are in.

People see problems. They know when things are not right or in decline. They know it intuitively, even though that can't describe it precisely.

Once they begin to see the transition they are in, I begin to talk with them about the dynamic of the Circle of Impact. This dynamic is an interplay between our ideas, relationships and the contexts where we are involved. They are always touching one another.

For example, your client's perception of transition is not just an idea. It is also a product of their interaction with people and their involvement as participants and contributors in the social and work contexts where they are involved. These contexts are impacted by the quality of relationships and by the ideas that govern how the structure and relationships function.

If your client's group is in transition, meaning that change is happening to them, and it isn't clear where it is going, then a lack of clarity (Ideas) about policy and procedures may be affecting the comfort and security that people feel in their relationships with each other. If there is a lack of trust then the group has less capacity to manage well the transition they are in.

See how this dynamic is played out? Try this exercise.

Make a list of your clients and ask the following three questions about their situation.
1. Is my client clear about who they are and what they stand for?
2. Do they trust the people with whom they are involved?
3. Do they feel that they have an opportunity to contribute their best?
If the answer is no to any of these questions, then there is a breakdown in the dynamic of the Circle of Impact.

Helping people move from a vague sense of change and need to a clearer one provides a foundation for addressing the deeper issues of their mission, vision and values. I call them the deeper issues because these are not simply ideas, but the ways we connect the dimensions of the Circle of Impact together.

Look at the above illustration.

A mission is an idea that connects a social or organizational context not only to its purpose, but also how it is organized to achieve its mission.

If your client's stated mission and the organization of their life and work are not in agreement or alignment, then you know there is an issue to address.

How will they see this disconnect between mission and structure? One way is that no one takes their stated mission seriously. They are simply empty words.

A vision is a word-picture of the effect of a group's mission. It captures the impact that people create through the social or organizational context where they participate?

If there is not actual impact, then you know that there is a breakdown in the Circle of Impact. Is the breakdown an Idea, Relationship or Structure problem? Until you look closely at the dynamic you don't know. However, it is less important where the problem is than realizing that the solution comes from all three dimensions.

My experience is that all people have values, but often don't know what they are. They need help in identifying them. And we need a real world impact picture in order to identify them.

Values function in two ways.

1. Values unify relationships. They are the bond that unites people within a social or organizational context together.

2. Values also create the strength that everything else is dependent upon. A mission is simple a statement of identity and purpose. A vision is a statement of the results of that mission. Underlying both ideas are values, and the values really are used to create the strength that we see in collaboration.

Real strength comes from our interaction with people, whether as partners, employer/employees or with clients. Ideas and the structure of social and organizational contexts are the tools that we use in our relationship to make a difference that matters.

The problem for most of us, including our clients, is that we have not been taught how to see this dynamic between our ideas, structure and relationships.

Helping your clients clarify the perception of their problems and the transition they are in is the first step toward bringing significant, sustainable solutions to their situations.

Next week, I post at Weekly Leader, Part 2 of a process that you can use with your clients to help them identify the impact that they want to have next year. When you use this methodology together, you build trust and a vision for how your relationship can make a difference beyond what you have been able to do up to now.

Imperfections are what actually make someone PERFECT

2009-12-09T09:51:42-05:00

Here's a touching commercial from Singapore that has a message that I find fresh and affirming.

We are all imperfect. We can accept our imperfections as distinctive marks of our individuality, or we can use them to divide and destroy our relationships. Whether in life or work, realize that the best relationships are ones where we can laugh at our imperfections. When we take them too seriously, we begin to lose not just the relationship, but also our perspective for managing our lives. Please don't wait until the memorial service of a loved one to tell them how much you appreciate them and their imperfections.

Thanks to David Pu'u for pointing to this video.

Conducting your own 2009 review

2009-12-08T07:50:14-05:00

We are all approaching our end of a year of many transitions.

In the past I've written about using my Four Questions that Every Leader Must Ask as a guide for an end-of-the-year review and a way to plan for the next.

This year, I have been impacted by people who have helped me see beyond the organizational leadership work that I have been doing for a decade and a half. The result is a reframing of this material for individuals who living on the thinning line of life and work, and the expansion of my consulting work to include a new coaching program.

While we do look at the change of the year as a time of reflection and new beginnings, the reality is that we can do this year round. However, if you have not, then there is now time like the present to begin to think differently about yourself as the new year approaches.

Today, in my Weekly Leader column - Reviewing Your 2009 Impact - I present the first step in a process of review and planning that will conclude in next week's column. I've prepared an one page listing of the questions that I ask in the column. I suggest that you print the list and the column and spend a few moments over the next week reflecting on the past year to 18 months.

I've said many times over the past couple years that I believe we are in the midst of one of the most significant transitions in all of human history. This is bigger than President Obama, the IPhone, the recession and the combine effects of 9/11, Katrina and the Iraq/Afghanistan war. The transition is, regardless of what you see happening in Washington, is a shift towards individual responsibility and collaborative relationships that transcend the old bureaucratic structures that are no longer able to manage the complexity of life today.

In order to be at our best, for ourselves, our families, our co-workers, our communities and for the world at large, we each need to thinking clearly about what we believe and the difference we are committed to making today. A starting place is gaining perspective and understanding about where we are and what we need to focus on next year.

I invite you to read today's column and begin to answer for yourself the Life / Work planning questions and if you are so inclined, share them with me. I believe that as you go through this process of reflection, that you'll begin to discuss opportunities that were always there, but that the lack of clarity of insight blocked your vision of them. It is my hope that from this exercise you'll find new opportunities in life and work that will enable you to have an impact that is far beyond what you would have imagine a year ago, or even yesterday.

Three Kinds of Giving

2009-12-07T15:37:14-05:00

The Joyal Capital Management Foundation is hosting a project in eight cities where 100 children receive a $100 gift card to be used at Dick's Sporting Goods. Mainline Supply Company, a region supplier of water systems, provided the volunteer support for the events that took place in Concord and Asheville, N.C. Great people. Great cause.

Many of the kids, on their own, were choosing to use their gift to buy for brothers and sisters. One family I met spoke with me about how they look at gift giving at Christmas.Watch this short video of Wesley and his mom Susan talking about giving. I hope it encourages you as much as it did me.

Here are some pictures from the Concord and Asheville events.

Strategy + Business' Best Business Books 2009

2009-12-03T22:22:10-05:00

Strategy + Business magazine distributes a monthly email highlighting articles. Today's email had a link to their selection of the best business books of 2009. The selections are divided into categories with a different writer describing the books for this year. Here are the links. It's worth a look. Good stuff here.

The Meltdown
A Wealth of Explanations
by Clive Crook

Leadership
Means to a Greater End
by Charles Handy

Strategy
The Capable and the Failed
by Phil Rosenzweig

Globalization
Western Dominance in Decline
by Ayesha Khanna and Parag Khanna

Management
In Search of the Silver Lining
by Judith F. Samuelson

Marketing
Branding Goes Viral
by Catharine P. Taylor

Technology
Disruption 2.0
by Steven Levy

Biography
Unconventional Lives
by James O’Toole

You can find this month's S+B email here.

Do You Really Want to Be a Leader?

2009-12-02T20:39:16-05:00

The Wall Street Journal had an excellent article recently that raised a question that many people would be wise to ask. Do You Really Want to Be a Leader?

Too many leadership scholars and executives are obsessed by a pointless question: Are leaders born, or are they made?

The answer is irrelevant.

The truth is, you do not know what you are born with until you try very hard to express it.

It is impossible to know what you are made of until put your talent and skills to the test. The authors suggests that we ask three questions to test our desire or commitment to lead.

How Far Do You Want To Go?

To reach higher office and to fulfill its obligations, you must continuously make choices that will affect other people's money and lives. And you will be doing this in a context where other people will want your position or will be competing with you for the next higher position.

What Are You Willing To Invest?

Admitting to yourself what your limitations are can be difficult. But if you want to lead, you face tough choices about how much effort you must put in and in which areas you need to grow.

Leadership certainly requires business smarts, technical capabilities and cultural sensibilities, but above all, it is about power. While this point is upsetting to some people, the brutal reality is that whatever else a leader must do, a leader must gain, exercise and retain power.

How Will You Keep It Up?

Over several decades, you need ways to keep yourself going when you are not being recognized and rewarded for your performance—and to deal with criticism, resistance, setbacks and people disliking you or what you are asking them to do.

If you envision another 10, 20 or even 30 years of leadership work, then you must find effective methods for maintaining your physical vitality, your emotional flexibility and your intellectual reach and freshness.

Leading an organization can be a thankless, difficult, lonely job. There must an inner motivation to excel that exceeds the challenges that come with it. As a person who works with leaders as a consultant and coach, the authors describe well the realities that come with executive leadership.

Perspective

2009-12-02T07:53:33-05:00

Where you stand determines what you see.

Other than looking at the photographer, what do you think these people see?

My grandfather is in this picture. I think I know what his perspective was at this moment.

The challenge for most of us is how to have a large enough perspective to understand what we are experiencing.

To see with focus and openness is the challenge of having a balanced perspective.

This is the topic of this week's Weekly Leader column - Perspective.

The cost of gratitude - a Thanksgiving Day rant

2009-11-26T05:25:27-05:00

My post yesterday on the mutuality of gratitude did not fully capture one aspect of what I was trying to express. Shawn Alladio's comment really helped me to see this. I guess I was being too gracious. Thank you, Shawn.

When I say that giving thanks is not about you or me, I mean that it is not intended to make us feel good. It is intended to connect us to another person in a way that transforms the relationship.

Our best expression of thanks today may well be a confession of failing to be grateful to others. By expressing gratitude and appreciation to someone by saying I'm sorry, rather than simply "thanks," we open up the possibilities of change in our relationships.

Gratitude is being treated today as an alternative therapeutic device to move unhappy people toward a more positive, hopeful outlook on life. Being grateful can have the effect of making us feel good. I'm happy for those who have found this for their lives. However, this is not why we are to be grateful people. It is a by-product of something else.

When I say thanks, I want that other person to feel good. I want to connect with that person on a deeper level of human interaction than we had the moment before. When done with sincerity and humility, it has the power to transform the relationship. To heal, to unite, and to give purpose to the relationship's future.

There is no genuine gratitude in our lives without the recognition that our lives are made by the contributions of other people. When I thank someone for contributing to my life, I'm saying that a hole has been filled by their kindness, their honesty, their sacrifice or their love.

It isn't about me or you and how we feel. It is about recognizing that other people give us the life we live. Without them, we are nothing. There are no self-made men or women. Those who try to be, who think they are are the small people, confined into the narrow world of their own perception.

Gratitude opens and expands our perception of the world, because we see the gifts and potential of others. When we do, we can express our appreciation for who they are and what they give, regardless of whether it has directly impacted our lives or not.

The power of gratitude is the power be free from our own narcissistic self-importance to a more humble, open relationship to others.

Let me end with one simple story.

Millie Brown was my fourth grade teacher. I was the one student that she had that year that she had to discipline regularly. Once or twice a week, I'd stay after school and write a page out of the dictionary. Then I'd walk the two miles home.

Ms. Brown changed my life that year. I learned boundaries, and a lot of new words. I'm grateful to her for her commitment to be a teacher who cared enough for me, her student, that she'd not let me get away with being an uncontrollable force in the classroom. Her impact upon my life remains with me to this day.

Years later, I was able to express my gratitude to her as we served together in our church's ministry to members in the hospital. We'd visit people together. It was a sweet way for the relationship to find completeness, and mutuality.

Today, may your expressions of gratitude cost you your pride and self-importance.

May you find healing and openness in your relationships with family and friends. May those you thank find a person transformed by your appreciation for their contribution to your life

Let us return the soul to Thanksgiving Day. Become a person for whom Saying Thanks Every Day is not a therapeutic approach for feeling better, but rather how we live each day in relationship to one another.

Mutual Gratitude

2009-11-25T18:10:39-05:00

As US residents prepare for a Thanksgiving gathering of family and friends, I gentle reminder about what giving thanks means.

It isn't about you or me.

The purpose of giving thanks is not primarily to make us feel better. It may do that, but that isn't the purpose. If we are to feel anything, it is humility for appreciating and recognizing the gifts and impact of other people upon our lives.

A well stated expression of gratitude should honor the person whom you are recognizing.

If you are at you in-laws house, like I will be tomorrow, tossing out a glib thank you only shows your insincerity. It is better to say nothing than be insincere in expressing thanks.

Being sincere in expressing thanks demands that we look deeply into the effort and thought, and the effect of another person's actions.

Expressing thanks humbly and sincerely has the potential for transforming the relationship. When it does, then the expression of thanks becomes mutual. This is the ultimate goal of thanksgiving.

Mutual gratitude is the shared recognition that our relationship matters to one another and that we are grateful for the other person's impact upon our life.

The more specific you can be in expressing thanks, the more likely it will be that a mutual return of thanks will be offered.

May our hearts be filled with gratitude for the recognition of the goodness that comes to us through other people.

Family and Friends - protecting the business relationship

2009-11-24T07:20:48-05:00

This week's Weekly Leader column - Family and Friends - is about how to protect the relationships in business partnerships.

Too often the relationship isn't strong enough to manage the differences of opinion and conflict that inevitably arise in any business situation.

Enjoy and pass along.

Thanksgiving is more than ...

2009-11-19T05:13:08-05:00

Yesterday, two friends each sent me emails each focused on different aspects of giving thanks and expressing gratitude.

Thanksgiving is more than a feeling.

Bill Kinnon sent me a Go-To-Market Strategies piece called - When did you last say "Thank You" to a customer? . They offer this word of advice.

Make it personal. You should hand write it. We know...UGH. That's a lot of work. You may be tempted to email your thank you...and maybe you should do that too. BUT, a handwritten, old fashioned thank you note, will take you farther. Why? Because NO ONE else is doing it in today's business world. Also, be as specific about what you are thanking them for, as that makes it much more relevant and genuine. But do not ask for anything in your "thank you." Just be thankful!

This is not just a good idea, but a good thing to do. Today, drop into a local bookstore and buy a box of note cards. Back at the office, take a half-an-hour and write the notes and put them in the mail today. Act quickly as you can to tangibly express gratitude.

Thanksgiving is more than social etiquette.

Tom Morris sent me a link to this NY Times review - Gratitude's Grace Can Be Itself a Gift - of Margaret Visser's The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude.

“The Gift of Thanks” is a scholarly, many-angled examination of what gratitude is and how it functions in our lives. Gratitude is a moral emotion of sorts, Ms. Visser writes, one that is more complicated and more vital than we think.

English speakers are obsessed with the terms “thanks” or “thank you.” We often say these words more than 100 times a day, she writes, in a flurry that many other cultures find baffling.

The notion that we should thank others is not hard-wired into our brains, but learned from our parents. For a child, she writes, “the first unprompted ‘thank you’ is momentous enough to count as a kind of initiation into a new level of human consciousness.” In people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, little words like “thanks,” she notes, “often survive the shipwreck of all other memories.”

I've not read her book. I look forward to it.

Gratitude needs to be a tangible way to create openness and a mutuality of the affections of gratitude. Read this excerpt from her book. It shows me that gift giving as an expression of thanks is too often a covering up of genuine feelings and tangible actions.

Today, we use paper to cover our gifts, and it is not primarily because they are in need of protection that we wrap them. If we mail a gift, we first carefully wrap it in special "gift" paper — the prettier, the better — and then enclose it, as a safeguard during the journey, in something sturdy and commonplace like brown paper or a plain envelope. Gift wrappings are folded with care. The string that binds a mere parcel becomes, for a gift, a ribbon, often with bows and rosettes added — anything to replace with embellishment the toughness of workaday knots. Extra trouble is taken because of the need to declare that, whatever it is, the thing thus enclosed is not a commodity.

A gift nowadays has almost invariably been bought. As such, it is certainly a commodity, but one that is summoned now to become something else. The wrapping is a sign that the object has changed into a gift. When, on increasingly rare occasions, we give something we ourselves have made — edible gifts mostly, such as jams and chutneys and cakes — we often feel little compulsion to wrap them. We occasionally enfold but fail to hide them, by covering them in something revealing such as cellophane. Not hiding by wrapping means that this present was not bought in a shop. It was made to be given away, not to make money; it does not need, therefore, to be converted into a gift.

We do work at shopping, however, quite apart from having first saved the money to buy gifts. As Christmas draws closer, we spend time fighting our way daily through the shopping crowds, returning from each expedition exhausted, with arms weighed down and aching feet. And we complain. Christmas has gotten out of hand, we say. It has become too commercialized. We are all so greedy, so demanding, and so exigent nowadays. It really is too much. These objections may be true, but our struggles and complaints mean in part that the gifts we have bought have manifestly cost us trouble. We may not actually have made them, but everyone is aware — our own grumbling making sure it is understood — that work, freely undertaken, went into their acquisition.

Thanksgiving is more than feelings, more than social etiquette, more than a public display of our own magnanimity.

It is the appreciation and recognition of the impact of other people upon our lives with the hope that its expression is mutual. When it is, that is when the real transformative power of gratitude has the potential strengthen families, communities and even businesses. It is for this reason that we should Say Thanks Every Day.

Try

2009-11-17T18:27:52-05:00

Here's this week's Work Life Lead column at Weekly Leader - Try.

You'll get it.

The Communication Bug-A-Boo

2009-11-15T23:57:29-05:00

Communication is a problem...

... for every person and organization. No one is excluded.

... because people assume that it is about distributing information.

... because people assume that it is about what you are going to do for me.

... because people don't want to fool with it until it is absolutely necessary, and by then, a simple problem has become an issue.

... because we have a very poor conception of what it is suppose to be.

Communication is ...

... ideas articulated and presented so that they are understandable.

... interaction between people so that the person who has information to distribute understands the expectations of the persons who are to receive it.

... interaction between people that leads to understanding and action.

... a core activity of human relationships and the function of organizations.

... a means or a vehicle for people to talk and share information that is relevant to their relationship and their individual interests.

... a measure of leadership effectiveness. If you want to know what kind of communicator you are, just ask someone who is a recipient of your communication.

Effective communicators ...

... present a clear, compelling message that is timely and provides for action or implementation.

... understand what their audience wants to know and how to best present it.

... listen, learn and translate their ideas or information into the vernacular of the person or person with whom they are seeking to communicate.
... are good receivers of other people's communication.

... know how to use various communication methods appropriately to accomplish their goals.

... consistently engage people in conversation to discover how best to communicate with them in order to lead them to action.

If you are a leader, communication is a critical task to get right. Most of us have to unlearn much of what we know.

As I heard often when I was a child, "it isn't what you say that matters, but what is heard."

Add your additions in the comments. Together we may create something here that is genuine communication, not just me distributing my opinions to you. Okay? Let's try it.

Rock Slide

2009-11-12T18:22:34-05:00

Lately, we've had some rock slides here in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee. Here's one caught on video.

Talking about almost being in the wrong place at the right time. Whew!

HT: Jason McDougald

Veterans Day - the importance of telling your stories

2009-11-11T17:01:33-05:00

On this Veterans Day, let us remember the men and women who served in the Armed Forces of our country. If you can visit a museum or historical site and honor those who sacrificed for the nation.

Recently, I went with my father to attend his 19th Bomb Group reunion. It was held at the National Museum of the US Air Force at Wright Patterson Airbase, Dayton, Ohio. During the reunion, a memorial was dedicated. Here is Brig.General USAF (ret.) Charles Metcalf, director of the museum spoke briefly upon receiving the memorial gift.

If only 6% of the US population has any direct experience with the military, all the more reason to tell the stories that help to show who these men and women are.

Thank you for your service.

The Leader's Guide to Social Media

2009-11-10T23:36:21-05:00

This week's Weekly Leader column - The Leader's Guide to Social Media - addresses the value of social media to organizational leaders.

I know many people who resist using social media. They are content with a relatively small circle of relationships. They prefer face-to-face interaction, or at least conversation by telephone.

This is a luxury that most business can no longer afford. They must adopt a social media strategy in order to have access to the widest possible network of information and influence possible. Welcome to the age of social media

The Fall of the Berlin Wall - 20th Anniversary

2009-11-09T20:52:12-05:00

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.

Image data

Life's little pleasures are the best ones

2009-11-06T18:00:43-05:00

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

2009-11-05T15:21:41-05:00

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

2009-11-03T16:10:10-05:00

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

2009-11-02T11:07:47-05:00

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

2009-11-01T07:27:43-05:00

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."

2009-10-29T00:34:18-04:00

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 ...

2009-10-27T13:44:58-04:00

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

2009-10-16T06:19:36-04:00

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?"

2009-10-14T16:55:11-04:00

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

2009-10-13T23:20:11-04:00

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

2009-10-13T11:47:15-04:00

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

2009-10-07T23:02:14-04:00

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

2009-10-06T06:20:45-04:00

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

2009-10-05T21:41:55-04:00

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

2009-10-05T06:57:35-04:00

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

2009-09-29T11:36:09-04:00

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

2009-09-29T05:59:22-04:00

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

2009-09-28T09:19:27-04:00

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"

2009-09-27T18:22:42-04:00

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

2009-09-26T08:30:58-04:00

(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.

Just started Twitter. So far, I could share with more people by standing in the back yard and talking loud. Appreciate you who listen!

Small seeds can create a forest.

From Cicero: If right before death, you were given the chance to start this life all over again, from infancy, would you?

Start to a philosopher’s day: First waking thought – I wonder what happens if you microwave dog food?

“Philosophy begins in wonder.” - Aristotle

“What is philosophy? Doesn’t it just mean preparing to meet whatever will come our way?” - Epictetus

***

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer

The courageous souls around us are here to remind us what we’re here to be.

Only courage will crack the thick shell of possibility and yield us the treasures within.

Courage is willing to walk in darkness while shining a light for others to follow.

Courage is something we have deep down in us when we need it – if we’ll just reach for it and act!

Courage is the power of choice even in the face of fear.

Ok, I’ll quit riffing on courage now! Thanks, you all, for the fun of doing that together!

I wouldn’t give four nickels for anyone else’s paradigms.

What I bring to Twitter amidst its growing pains: Philosophy that works in pursuit of technology that works!

***

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the least reward. - Diogenes (who looked like a stray dog).

I just caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I’m worried! Promise you’re not just following me for my beauty, ok?

I couldn’t even type that with a straight face. For one thing, it’s a little too round.

Plato believed that justice starts at home, with proper inner harmony. Let’s all make sure we’re right within today!

Aristotle: Happiness is a life of excellence. Find out what that means for you, and enjoy living it each day.

Socrates: Only a life enhanced by self-examination can attain its full potential. Ponder yourself today!

A life that isn’t dynamically balanced will never be properly full.

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly – at first, when nothing dramatic is at stake, and when you can still adapt.

Someone just said that feedback is the breakfast of champions. I like that.

Adaptation just may be the lunch of champions!

And what’s the dinner of champions, you ask? The menu says: Big, plump, pan-roasted metaphors for explaining their success.

Self-knowledge is important in life. But how can we know ourselves? We’re sometimes so elusive.

We’re all masters of self-deception, so a measure of courageous inner looking should be augmented by: listening to others.

Just jogged! Deer flies appeared magically and tragically! Ouch! Ouch! Lots of swats!

The years I walked, neighbors shouted Hi; now that I jog they slow down their cars to cheer me on, and to see if I need medical help.

Heraclitus (500 BC): Expect the unexpected!

Off for a quick early lunch snack! Keep up the love and wisdom, tweet pack!

Playing at work

2009-09-23T01:16:26-04:00

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

2009-09-22T00:11:20-04:00

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

2009-09-18T09:12:46-04:00

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

2009-09-13T22:17:26-04:00

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.

Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply. Yet food is something that is taken for granted by most world leaders despite the fact that more than half of the population of the world is hungry. Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply. During the long, obscure, dimly defined prehistoric period when man lived as a wandering hunter and food gatherer, frequent food shortages must have prevented the development of village civilizations. Under these conditions the growth of human population was also automatically limited by the limitations of food supplies.

In the misty, hazy past, as the Mesolithic Age gave way to the Neolithic, there suddenly appeared in widely separated geographic areas the most highly successful group of inventors and revolutionaries that the world has ever known. This group of Neolithic men and women, and in all probability largely the latter, domesticated all the major cereals, legumes, and root crops, as well as all of the most important animals that to this day remain man's principal source of food. Apparently, nine thousand years ago, in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, man had already become both agriculturist and animal husbandry-man, which, in turn, soon led to the specialization of labor and the development of village life. Similar discoveries and developments elsewhere soon laid the groundwork from which all modern agriculture and animal industry and, indeed, all of the world's subsequent civilizations have evolved. Despite the tremendous value of their contributions, we know none of these benefactors of mankind by name. In fact, it has only been within the past century, and especially within the last fifteen years - since the development of the effective radio-carbon dating system - that we have begun even vaguely to understand the timing of these epochal events which have shaped the world's destiny.

The invention of agriculture, however, did not permanently emancipate man from the fear of food shortages, hunger, and famine. Even in prehistoric times population growth often must have threatened or exceeded man's ability to produce enough food. Then, when droughts or outbreaks of diseases and insect pests ravaged crops, famine resulted.

...

In my dream I see green, vigorous, high-yielding fields of wheat, rice, maize, sorghums, and millets, which are obtaining, free of expense, 100 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare from nodule-forming, nitrogen-fixing bacteria. These mutant strains of Rhizobium cerealis were developed in 1990 by a massive mutation breeding program with strains of Rhizobium sp. obtained from roots of legumes and other nodule-bearing plants. This scientific discovery has revolutionized agricultural production for the hundreds of millions of humble farmers throughout the world; for they now receive much of the needed fertilizer for their crops directly from these little wondrous microbes that are taking nitrogen from the air and fixing it without cost in the roots of cereals, from which it is transformed into grain...

Then I wake up and become disillusioned to find that mutation genetics programs are still engaged mostly in such minutiae as putting beards on wheat plants and taking off the hairs.

If we are to capitalize fully on the past biological accomplishments and realize the prospective accomplishments, as exemplified in my dream, there must be far greater investments in research and education in the future than in the past.

Norman Borlaug was a man who led a revolution that was not destructive, but constructive. Through his efforts millions of men, women and children have food to eat today. He is worthy our respect and honor as one of the great leaders of our time.

Photo courtesy of the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation

The Subverting of Hierarchy

2009-09-12T07:52:04-04:00

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

2009-09-11T05:44:26-04:00

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

2009-09-09T08:03:54-04:00

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.

On any day you could probably find a couple of international discussion groups somewhere in town and on some days probably five of them. And they would cajole Americans into going downtown. It's not so much the location, it's some place in Hanoi where you're going to talk about politics and nothing else. I never went downtown. In Heartbreak Hotel a lot of prisoners only had access to this shower head that was in a regular cell with two cement seats or beds. But this was dedicated to showers, they didn't have anything else to do. So you walked in and you went between these beds and then you saw the spigot and pretty soon the water started coming out and you were to take your clothes off and he handed you the soap and the razor and slammed the door because he had other errands to do.

As soon as I could I got my head wet and lathered up, I started with that safety razor, just cutting a track down the top of my head that I judged would make it impractical for them to take me downtown. He came back to the peephole and I ducked down, just showing him my behind, which is all he could see because I was stooped over, and then back up and again. I didn't realize that I was bleeding so bad. And then he came in and grabbed me, grabbed my arm and he knew he was in trouble, too. There was blood running down my shoulders and there were secretaries in the courtyard that we went by and they were looking. That was the headquarters prison of the whole country of North Vietnam so they had offices and they had everything you can expect. He took me back into this room and boy, those two officers, they said, "How dare you? How dare you?" I just got down in the position for the ropes and he said, "You have no right to take the ropes." I knew I was getting him screwed up. Finally they said, "I got it. We'll get a hat and we'll take you down to the press conference with a hat on." So as soon as they locked the door, I looked around for something else to do damage to myself with, and I saw the old toilet can that had been there for years, and I knew every chunk of it, but that was infection and one thing -- and then I said, "Well, what's wrong with this mahogany stool?" and bang, bang, bang, bang, and the secretaries across the hall wondered what the noise was and they started shaking the door. I didn't -- couldn't see them. But by the time they got back my eyes were closed and there was no question about it. They couldn't do anything and said, "What do you want me to tell the commissar?" I said, "You tell the commissar the CAG decided not to go downtown tonight." And they went out and then they gave me -- you know, then through that -- other times I'd used other devices.

They told me, "We think they're going to put you in the mint pretty soon." And that was kind of the end of the line. There was an old privy outside, and we had this signal system. You could take a vertical wire -- the outsider wouldn't even realize it was up there -- and if you moved it this way, that meant there was an old bottle under that sink. If you had a message for Stockdale he would know that he had a message in the bottle. If it looked like it was booby trapped you'd just push it back. There was even a position for if it was okay.

So I was down there and I was exchanging notes and getting things done and then I had kind of got a nice note from a guy and I -- but we were -- what we were using for paper and pen was tough toweling that was sort -- it was the idea of toilet paper and rat manure. You'd lick it and you could print right on it and get another piece. And so a voice said -- and I was careless on this. He sneaked up under the door, and it was kind of a complicated thing but he said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm reading these letters my wife sent me," which was authorized. They would leave letters. And he said, "No, your hand was moving." Uh-oh, I knew it. Well, then he ran and he got the turnkey and they came in and they got me out and they told me to put my hands up -- this is the typical prison shake down position.

In the meantime I had had sense enough to put it in the crotch of my pants. I did that because I concluded -- and I think I'm right -- that there's a great connection between farm boys in Illinois and farm boys in rural Vietnam. They have a sense of propriety against intruding in other people's private parts. As far as I know that's true. I don't know, because I didn't have it up there well enough. As I was walking back it rolled out of my pant leg and then they had it.

There was something in the air. I don't want to make this too mysterious, but it was kind of a dark and dreary night. As they walked me over to the other side of the camp and put me in a little privy-like place I'd never seen before that's just full of cobwebs -- it would only accommodate one man -- and I think they were just doing something to get me out of that camp so that I knew I'd go in room 18 the next morning. And the man came in with leg irons and he put them on me and they were squeeze irons, built to put pressure points on your legs so you couldn't sleep that night. And I looked down there and he was, so help me, weeping, and not out of sympathy for me I'm sure, but I marked that down in my book. And then the next morning, when I was taken over to the other place to get the torture started for that day there was a couple of other people weeping. And I said, "Old Ho Chi Minh probably died last night."

I'd been unsuccessfully accosted to give them information. I could hold it back from the particular crowd that was working with me that day, they were kind of halfway friendly people. Something was wrong. The whole country was going bananas. Later that afternoon, I was just lying down on my roll, assuming that the day was over, and this guy named Bug, who was a snotty officer, he said, "Get on your feet! Tomorrow is the day we bring you down." That meant I would succumb. And he said, "This country is in mourning. There will be dirge music in the streets tonight. Ho Chi Minh died last night and we're in mourning." Well, I'd anticipated that. And then they didn't let me lie down. They put me in a chair. They said, "Put him in a chair with ropes on his arms and traveling irons for his feet." Traveling irons were what you got so you could go to the bathroom in the night. I was depressed. I said to myself, "God, maybe I'm the problem here instead of the solution. I had said, "Here's my orders. Remember: B-A-C-U-S: BACUS." It could be tapped out. "B" means do not bow in public. "A," stay off the air, never talk into a tape recorder or a microphone. "C," don't kiss them good-bye when we go home. "U-S" might be seen as United States but what it really means is "Unity over Self." That was the first order. I put out dozens of them but that was the instruction. I said, "Maybe I'm the problem, because there had been people who were killed in the ropes." And then I just said, "I do know one thing. I've got to change the status quo because I'm going to be dealing with a different country tomorrow than I was yesterday. And who knows what's going to happen? They may go bonkers."

And so I said, "I've got to change the status quo," and with that I got off from my traveling irons and went over and shut off the light, pulled back these blankets, and exposing the plate glass window, using the palm of my hand, which was relatively free -- I had enough freedom there, to get the long shards, pull the curtains back, turn on the light, get back in my chair and sit down and just start going like this. And, first of all, I started getting blue blood and I said, "Where is the blue blood coming from? We've got to get some red blood." And so I said, "I don't..." I said to myself, "Is this right? I don't know but I know I've got to..." my hands -- I had run out of ideas and I had to explore the future. You wouldn't think I had a future if you saw me. I passed out in a pool of blood.

Did you want to die, Admiral?

James Stockdale: No, I don't think so. I just knew I had to do something, and I had kind of a hunch that there might be some opening here. I went unconscious. I had a feeling that ever since I'd started this self-defacement they had a suicide watch on me. About two in the night somebody screamed "Eow," and I think that was the suicide watch. I think he looked through a peephole and saw me in that pool of blood in front of my chair.

I was groggy and I really had to be slapped awake, but the room filled up with soldiers and the doctor and some officers and a lot of guards. They were cleaning the room. They were like they were ashamed of it and they were sweeping the floor and putting fluid on it that smelled like something in a funeral parlor. The guards took my clothes out and washed them. The officers were nasty, but they couldn't figure out what to say. Finally -- I don't know the time of night, maybe 3 or 4 in the morning -- they brought in a cot and then they brought in a chair and they put a soldier in the chair and he put the rifle across his knees and they let me lie in the bed with a pillow and I passed out. "Boy, this has been a day!" I looked up at those walls and they're all covered with geckos. You see them on all of the walls in Southeast Asia and they're moving around and they snipe at one another but, God, I looked up there and to me all the gekkos were bisecting their friends! I knew I was hallucinating. I almost laughed. The next morning the door squeaks open and I look out and it's the commissar himself. He sat down and he said, "Stockdale, do you want a cup of coffee?" I said, "Yes." I don't think I had leg irons on. I went over and sat down across from him and he said, "What happened last night was a catastrophe." And he said, "You know I sit with the general's staff. A report will be written. It may adversely affect me. It might even adversely affect you. I can't say. But..." he said, "You will not stay here. We will put you back in that little place where the doctor will attend you until all traces of bandage and scars as best we can arrange it are gone." Well I was out there from September to almost Christmas and then I went back. Things had happened. I was completely out of communication there. I found out two things. One, nobody had ever been in the ropes since I cut my wrists, and secondly, the commissar had been discharged. So from then on the life was never the same. It wasn't happy, but I shut down that torture system and they never wanted it brought up again.

James Stockdale: It's just two paragraphs. They always start out the same. "For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty." Then it explains what happened, and it says, "The highest traditions of the Naval Service were upheld."

You truly suffered for your men. James Stockdale: I thought I owed it to them. I was the senior guy there. That night was not like any other night except some of the thoughts and some of the mental state. I don't think that was an exception. I guess you can say it's just dumb luck, but you never know. I gave them a problem like they'd never had before and they solved it by backing off.

You've spoken a lot about Epictetus and stoicism. What role do you think your knowledge of that philosophy had in your survival?

James Stockdale: I think it had a lot, but I never mentioned that name or stoicism, it never left my lips. I'd had experience; sometimes there'll be a man in good communication with you, and you had some sort of a -- maybe a religious experience, maybe an inspirational thought -- and you get on the wall and you start giving that stuff to him, tapping him on the wall. After he sees what you're up to, his "twos" -- which he does each time you finish a word -- get less and less enthusiastic.

You don't have to be a military officer to exhibit this sort of resilience under pressure. All you must do is determine within your own mind that "you are in control of you." That you well-being begins with your attitude, not with the conditions of your life.

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

2009-09-06T10:08:29-04:00

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

2009-09-05T22:54:14-04:00

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?

2009-08-30T15:13:14-04:00

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.