But I also love it. As far back as I can remember, I’d walk into an airport, and be riveted by the names of the places up on the departure board. I suppose I’m still that little boy looking to ride the river.

I also love when the worlds in which I play swoop and dive into each other. I love when the work I do every week that I’m not packing and unpacking, on Broadway, becomes relevant in places whose names I first glimpsed on a departure board.

Istanbul now. Munich tomorrow. Berlin the day after. Krakow and Warsaw at the end of May (see here for tickets to the Hive53-sponsored event and here for CEED Regional Conference). Ljubljana last December.  I love when the talks I give, the discussions I facilitate, and the conversations that ensue move through themes common to entrepreneurs everywhere: the emotional roller-coaster; the challenge of funding, learning to balance and integrate your life;  explaining what you do for a living to your loved ones, and surviving the start-up life. For all our vaunted cultural differences, it’s the commonality of these struggles that make so much of the world—old and new, East and West—one big start-up community.

A few months back, my friend Brad–as part of his efforts to document the ways in which communities grow–built a blog to gather the common experiences. He asked me for my thoughts on building a start-up community. Thinking back to my trip to Slovenia, I shared this story.

I’m sure, as these next weeks unfold and I meet entrepreneurs in Turkey, Germany, and Poland, the stories and the themes will deepen and merge. I can’t wait.

_____________________________________________________________________

I first noticed his eyebrows. Bushy, steel-gray, they danced when he agreed with me.

It was the first of a half a dozen talks I was scheduled to give that week in Ljubljana. This night I was the guest of both the US Embassy in Slovenia and CEED and I was there to speak about the importance of mentoring in the building of start-up community. My subtler mission was to convince many in the room to be mentors.

Born in Socialist era, when Slovenia was a part of the Republic of Yugoslavia, most of the 100 or so folks in the room, it seemed from their stony faces and crossed arms, were still a little suspicious of the emphasis on entrepreneurship taking hold in the city.

“They don’t know,” I continued speaking about the young mentees dominating the nascent tech scene. “They don’t know the cost of missed football games, dance recitals, spelling bees, and dinners with the family.”

And I knew I had him. The bushy eyebrows arched so high in vehement agreement that it threw his head back. It then came down in a deep nod. “They don’t know about the dangers of disappearing into the fire.”

Even the stoniest children-of-Socialism-now-captains-of-industry were sitting up.

I moved on. I read to them from an email I’d received in April, after my first visit to the area. In that note, a young entrepreneur spoke not only of the frustration of raising capital–something he understood was a challenge everywhere-but of the alienation and isolation. Growing up in an era of small, flat worlds and in the belief that he could help create the next Google, he was disheartened by the beliefs of the older generation. That group, satisfied with lifetime employment in the Postal Service and a little house in the country, openly criticized the risk tasking, the ambitions, and the desires for something more that is such an intrinsic part of entrepreneurship.

Frustrated by this lack of acceptance, lack of understanding (manifested, for example, in a law only recently passed that forbade anyone who’d lead a business that failed from starting a new business for ten years–the law, thankfully, overturned by the Courts), he was moving to London. After all, he wrote, he wished he’d been Born Somewhere Else.

Finished with the excerpts from the email, the whole room was now sitting up. The young guy could be their son, their grandson. This young man, and the men and women with whom he struggled everyday to create an enterprise out the nothing more than an idea, these people on whom so much of this tiny country’s economic future rests, was leaving.

My thoughts about what makes a start-up community grow from a Silicon Valley-wannabe into a vibrant and integral component of local economy aren’t particularly earth shattering or unique. They stem, though, from having had the good fortune of sitting beside people like Fred Wilson and the dozens of others who helped grow this community in NY into something expansive and exciting.

Put simply, the entrepreneurial ecosystem needs seven things:

• Opportunities
• Entrepreneurs
• Staff
• Government Support
• Universities
• Local Capital
• Elders

It needs the entrepreneurs, staff and opportunities to create interesting companies. It needs the support of government (or, at a minimum, the non-interference of government where crazy laws that criminalize risk-taking are not the norm), universities, and local capital.

But, most of all, it needs Elders. That is, Mentors, coaches, Angel Investors; people who can serve informally and formally as guides. Their roles vary…from providing the seed capital to germinate ideas to providing a steadying, calm demeanor making the roller coaster of the startup experience just slightly easier to bear. “An Elder,” I say in my talks on the subject, “isn’t merely someone with grayer hair. It can be the CEO of the company next door who is two months ahead of you in their fundraising process. It can be the CTO of that failed company whom you bring in not just for their technical capability but for their experience in having lived through a failure and knowing that there’s life after failure.”

Elders come in all forms.

The day after my talk on mentoring, I ran a miniature version of my Disappearing into the Fire Workshop. The room was filled with 150 entrepreneurs, each at varying stages in their journey. And one man stood out. To my right, the bushy eye-browed grandfather–a local professor of business as it turned out–sat erect and grinning. In my mind, he’d come to personify the Elder and I was thrilled he was there.

Later, at the break, I made my way to him. Gripping his strong weathered hands, I asked if he was enjoying the talks. Yes, yes, he said, he very much understood the need for mentoring and was happy to help. But then he leaned in close to me, whispering into my ear, “But really I’m here to learn because I have this idea. I know it can be the next Google.”

Around that time, I was approached by a few people about the “scaling Jerry” problem. Kevin Friedman, who’d attended a Disappearing into the Fire Workshop Ann Mehl and I conducted at General Assembly took up the challenge. Supported by his friend Tim Pettit and my friend Dan Putt. This little band of optimists have set up a service, the intent of which is to make it possible for even more people to get the support they need on their journeys. We call it Cojourneo. The vision is a platform that will allow people to come together in a safe and intimate way (much like offline support groups) to share their experiences and get peer advice, while being supported by a guide like myself or Ann or another “elder” who’s traveled the path before.

We have no idea if this will be a business. We have no idea if this will work. We have no idea if folks will be helped in this process. And all of those unknowns make this that much more fun.

We’re finalizing the designs now and will be launching an alpha version of our first journey shortly (umm, I think this week). We hope to move quickly into a beta mode and have a series of journeys running simultaneously.

When I do a talk on the dangers of losing oneself in the fire of work, I often end with a set of recommendations to help keep oneself from getting lost. One of the most powerful of these is the notion of an ongoing support or advocacy group…especially a group of peers. Our hope is that this could be a platform for folks to do just that.

One final note, despite our lack of certainty about whether or not this will turn into anything (or, at least anything more helpful than similarly structured platforms), we’ve built a small company–a container if you will–to house the effort. And more important we’ve created for ourselves a values statement. The values have been  guiding principles behind everything we’ve tried to build and how we’ve tried to operate.

I’m very proud of the effort and even more proud of the values. Kevin and Dan deserve credit for driving these.

1. Treat people as human beings first.
1. We aspire to be a great company to work for and work with as well.
2. We aspire to bring heart and soul to uncharted territories.
1. “Call it Needs-based governance. It’s an incredibly clarifying and empowering tool. It expands the notion of the CEO…to include the notion of the CEO making certain that the great people they’ve hired (and put into the right positions) have what they need to succeed.” – Jerry Colonna
2. “Authentic leaders in every setting — from families to nation states — aim at liberating the heart, their own and others’, so that its powers can liberate the world.” – Parker Palmer
2. Life is better shared with others.
1. We aspire to find ways to make it easier, more helpful, and more fun for people to share life together.
2. We aspire to build awesome collaborative communities that change lives.
1. “The thing is, we’re all in this together. We’re a community of helpers, a sangha of fellow travelers, and we’ve got to work together. I mirror you. You mirror me. I hold your heart. You hold mine.” – Jerry Colonna
2. “The gift of giving to the Other is the most powerful salve for closing that hole in your heart.” – Jerry Colonna
3. “Depression is the ultimate state of disconnection — it deprives one of the relatedness that is the lifeline of every living being.” – Parker Palmer
4. “The key to this form of community involves holding a paradox — the paradox of having relationships in which we protect each other’s aloneness.” – Parker Palmer
3. Follow fun and aliveness.
1. We aspire to help people esteem and pursue that which they find fun and brings aliveness.
2. We aspire to remind people that loving oneself is often the best way to love others.
1. “But I think the work is not getting people to romanticize our heroes but to see the incredible in the simple act of getting along, of growing up, of becoming more and more wholly, utterly, ourselves.” – Jerry Colonna
2. “Discovering true vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be.” – Parker Palmer
3. “Vocation begins — not in what the world needs (which is everything), but in the nature of human self, in what brings the self joy” – Parker Palmer
4. “By surviving passages of doubt and depression on the vocational journey, I have become clear about at least one thing: self-care is never a selfish act.” – Parker Palmer
4. Dare to be open and honest in a safe place.
1. We aspire to build a safe place that encourages people to deal openly with the challenges of life.
1. “And I watched as this first time CEO manifested not only Connect-Think-Do but the even more powerful Connect-Think-Lead.” – Jerry Colonna
2. “There is a fundamental human gesture that must take place first, before any leader can guide, direct, or point the way. Leaders must first open. They must step beyond the boundaries of what is familiar and routine and directly touch the people and environment they want to inspire. Leading others requires that we first open ourselves to the world around us.” – Michael Carroll
3. “Pain held in is pain. Pain let out is dance.” – Mark Nepo
4. “A second shadow inside many of us it the belief that the universe is a battleground, hostile to human interests.” – Parker Palmer
5. Expect and embrace mistakes.
1. We aspire to build an environment where people have freedom to make mistakes.
2. We aspire to treat people that make mistakes with grace and love.
1. “The lesson I tried to teach was that doling out Do Overs was a powerful incentive. It mitigated the fear of failing and, more often than not, brought out the best….” – Jerry Colonna
2. “Lives dominated by impossible ideals — perfect happiness, eternal love — are lives experienced as continuous failure.” – Adam Phillips
3. “But as pilgrims must discover if they are to complete their quest, we are led by our weaknesses as well as our strengths.” – Parker Palmer
6. Be not afraid or at least admit it when you are.
1. We aspire to not let fear hinder us from pursuing our dreams.
2. We aspire to recognize that fear is not a monster but a recurring friend to be embraced.
1. “When Siddhartha woke up and became the Buddha, the awakened one, he didn’t wake to see the triumphant earthly gods and goddesses. He awoke to the utterly breathtaking beauty of the everyday person facing the truth of the pain and fear of life; facing that truth and choosing to move ahead, regardless. That feels like one heck of a small step.” – Jerry Colonna
2. “I must not fear… Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration… I will face my fear…” – Bene Gesserit
7. Be present, wherever you are, and savor the journey.
1. We aspire to help people stop and embrace wherever and whoever they are.
2. We aspire to help people appreciate every moment on the journey to their dreams.
1. “The real gift is learning to be present in whatever third you’re living. So when you’re working, work. And when you’re loving, love. And when you’re eating, eat.” – Jerry Colonna
2. “Stand still… The hard part is bearing the stage of “No action” necessary so that the right amount of data can unfold.” – Jerry Colonna
3. “We do ourselves a disservice when we look only to the extraordinary for affirmation of the incredible. We set ourselves up, then, to see that our struggles with the pathology of every day are somehow less then. And, of course, that then reinforces our own gnawing aching fears that we are never enough.” – Jerry Colonna
8. See life as a whole.
1. We aspire to help people nurture a holistic approach to life: professional, physical, and personal.
1. “But, the only real chance we’ve got of surviving, indeed maybe even thriving in, the chaos of ordinary life is to develop a centered core: A set of beliefs, rituals, and inner-knowledge that not only remains unshakable with every gut-wrenching drop but, in fact, deepens over time into a philosophy that is at once unique and lasting.” – Jerry Colonna
2. “One third taking care of business. One third taking care of the subtle and gross bodies–the inner you and the physical you. And one third for family, friends, community, the world at large.” – Jerry Colonna

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Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself“

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. Ralph Waldo Emerson  “Self-Reliance”

A good education teaches us to hold contradictions reflectively rather than reactively. Parker Palmer Healing the Heart of Democracy.

Earlier today, in a dialogue with @shawnccpr, spurred by that Parker Palmer quote, we speculated as to the root cause of our inability to countenance contradiction in the Other or in ourselves. @shawnccpr suggested that it might stem from an “overly self-centered society.” I agreed that the root is a fear but fear of what? The fear of being labeled intolerant, @shawnccpr suggested.

I don’t think so. I think the hobgoblin is a fear of indecisiveness, the fear of uncertainty.

In my work with clients, this fear—this wish to know with certainty—rears up most often in dealing with colleagues. I’m thinking, for example, of the CEO who calls me convinced that they have to fire the COO they just hired.

“The situation at the plant,” he says, “is so toxic and he’s not doing anything about it. I know it’s only been a month but I have to get rid of him.”

Wait, I say. Let’s pull this apart. “Tell me the facts,” I ask, and he starts to tell me his interpretation. I try again, “Okay, tell me a story. You went to the plant and then what happened?”

Pulled aside by some of the staff, the CEO was given a litany of everything that the new COO is doing wrong. “And meetings!” he says with drama and a bit of exasperation, “he’s having too many meetings.”

I remember when I was an active board member. I remember getting calls like this all the time from the CEO. The VP of finance talks too much. The VP of Sales disappears every Friday. The VP of Engineering, a co-founder no less, sits in the meetings and says nothing. Should I fire them, the CEO would ask. And more often than not, I’d say yes.

But I’m older now. I’ve come to realize that understanding the best course of action takes a little more work.  You have to learn to separate facts from feelings, seeing how both contribute to data, which only then morphs into information. And information then becomes knowledge and eventually wisdom.

For example, it’s a fact that you asked for the report before the VP of finance went home on Friday. It’s a fact that you need that report for the meetings with the Series B investors on Monday. But it’s a feeling that the reason this happened is because the VP isn’t suitable for a startup.

Those two things—the fact and the feeling—are simply data. To decide what to do requires separating fact from feeling, triangulating data, and searching for patterns over time. Pattern recognition is the only way to turn data into information. Then, if you’re dealing with a decision about whether or not someone should be fired, you’ve got to present the observation of the pattern to the colleague.

And out of that dialogue comes knowledge. Their response, for example, is more information; vital information needed before you decide and certainly before you act.

The problem is we all want to rush the steps. Compelled by our feelings, compelled by our fears–or those of others in the workplace–we feel we have to act or all will be lost.

I understand and admire the wisdom of the “fire fast” mentality but that wisdom is no substitute for the real work of leadership: figuring out the right people for various roles.  Often when I help a client unpack their feelings while they are  in the throes of a decision about whether or not to terminate someone, what is revealed are contradictory facts and ambivalent feelings. And too often, our discomfort with our contradictory feelings, our ambivalence, leads us to rush to judgement, destabilizing and antagonizing the entire organization.

But if we wait, if we can pause and bear the discomfort of uncertainty, then we have a shot at getting to the heart of the problem manifested in all those facts. Then we have a shot at creating the kinds of organizations that not only succeed, but embody the best of our values, the best of our aspirations.

She wrote it just days after helping a few dozen boys, students at a monastic school in Tagong, move into a new home and school–a building that a few of us came together to purchase on behalf of the monastery.

I first met the monks in Tagong in September of last year when a few of us drove for four days on fairly tricky roads to bring supplies from Chengdu into Yushu where an earthquake had destroyed so many homes. Depending on the roads, Tagong is a day or two drive from Chengdu. (See this post: How I Spent My Summer Vacation)

When I first encountered the boys, I could barely contain my desire to help. That September, though, we had another mission–to get to Yushu.

Later, last January, I came back…to Yushu, to Chengdu, and to Tagong. I wrote a post at the time asking, quoting Tracy Chapman, if you knew you would die today, saw the face of God today, would you change? I vowed to help move the boys from a shelter that was little more than tree branches and plastic sheeting into something safe and warm.

Months of discussion, planning, more discussion, lots of tea (sweet and butter), lots more discussion (this is, after all, Tibet), and just about a week ago, the boys moved into their new home–a recently renovated, three story traditional Tibetan-style building. They are warm and safe and the snows have just begun.

My new dear friend wrote to a few of us:

We just returned from a trip to Tagong to help students and teachers move to the new school. Everything went smoothly and every one was very happy about the new school…on the 9th we had breakfast at 9:00 am, and then went to the old school to help the students move. Students, teachers, and helpers from the town had already started moving…the school also had five tractors to help haul large items like furniture and firewood.

Everyone was happy to work and help with the move. Everything but firewood was moved before lunch. For lunch we had a very simple and delicious meal prepared by the students in their new kitchen. After lunch the students drew numbers for their new beds, then they made their beds and put all their things away. The helpers from town, the TVP [Tibetan Village Project] team and the teachers started moving and stacking firewood. We spent the whole afternoon on this task; it was tiring work but we are happy that students have a stockpile of firewood for the winter. We worked until 5:00pm but there was still some firewood left to move.

On the 10th we had breakfast at 9:30am and then went to the school to visit the students and teachers. It had snowed overnight, so the students were busy outside clearing the snow, in addition to stacking the rest of the firewood…on the morning of the 11th [we] visited the school’s greenhouse. We were excited to see that the vegetables in the greenhouse were growing very well…the students were still busy cleaning the new school, and they expressed happiness and satisfaction with the new school. When we asked for their opinion of the new school, they told us that the new school is warmer and bigger than the old one, and that the new school has a big yard outside where they can play, eat, and enjoy sunshine. They also said that they want to study very hard and be beneficial to people in the future.

A few weeks ago, during that last trip to Tibet, I traveled with some old dear friends. They rightly asked if, given the enormity of the poverty in the region and the systemic changes that will need to be made to create enduring prosperity, for people to move from trying, as they do now, to live on 12 cents a day to be lifted into the magical realm of living on more than a dollar a day (and thereby no longer be classified as “ultra-poor” but merely poor), did it make sense to invest in one school, one village, one building.

As I lay on my bed that night at the lovely Heavenly Jewells [sic] Hotel (by far the nicest hotel in Tagong), I came across this passage from The Gift by Lewis Hyde:

The begging bowl of the Buddha, Thomas Merton has said, “represents the ultimate theological root of the belief, not just in the right to beg, but in the openness to the gifts of all beings as an expression of the interdependence of all beings…The whole idea of compassion, which is central to Mahayana Buddhism, is based on an awareness of the interdependence of all living beings…thus when the monk begs from the layman and receives a gift from the laymen, it is not as selfish person getting something from somebody else. He is simply opening himself to this interdependence.”

I knew then that I would make the gift that would catalyze the purchase and enable the boys to be warm before the snows came.

A few days before their move into the new building, I was in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I’d been invited to come during my last trip, a trip I wrote about in the post Born Somewhere Else.

Over the course of five days I did six talks. My talks ranged from the pragmatic to the esoteric; from How to Lead and How to Raise Capital to How to Survive the Startup Life. The latter talk, essentially a distillation of the workshop Ann Mehl and I developed around my post, Disappearing into the Fire, seemed to be especially poignant for people.

The night before that talk I woke from a hazy jet-lag troubled sleep and, sitting in my room at the Union Hotel, I changed the presentation, adding some pictures from my trips to Tagong.

I was nervous when the talk began because I had shifted things and didn’t know how the 150 or so folks in the audience would respond. I had nothing to fear; from their tears I knew I had touched their hearts.

My intent was to use the photos to talk about the work being done in Tagong. I shared that work as an example of a way in which I try to embody my one-third, one-third, one-third life balance rule. One third for the inner you; one third for the outer you; and one third for the Other–those who embody our interdependence, those to whom, out of the depths of our compassion, we save not only them but, in the process, ourselves.

In my mind the Indigo Girls are singing She’s Saving Me. And the last lines–She’s saving me I don’t really think she knows it/It’s a strange way to show it as distant as last night’s dream unravels/She’s saving me I’m a very lost soul/I was born with a hole in my heart as wide as my land-locked travels–repeat as if the needle is stuck in the groove.

Earlier this week I saw my Buddhist teacher, the one who gave me the gift of “the one-third rule.” He asked me about my trip to Slovenia. With just the slightest hint of pride in his student, he said, “Ah, I see. You are giving them, the Others, the strategies you’ve used to save yourself.”

The gift of giving to the Other is the most powerful salve for closing that hole in your heart, the one that’s as wide as your land-locked travels. Placing alms in the bowl (be it a building in Tagong or a strategy to survive the every day violence of work) feeds not only the begging monk before us but the begging monk within.

Jerry Happy Birthday.

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“No you don’t,” I often say, infuriating my clients.

“But I don’t know what to do about…”–fill in the blank:

“…my job.”

“…my mate.”

“…my being lost, stuck, frightened.”

Just tell me what to do, they often implore.

And just as maddeningly I’ll say, “Tell me what you want to happen.”

Because, in the end, it’s not really that we don’t need a plan to make the change we desperately know we want. The problem is we think the plan is the answer when it’s simply a means to arriving at the answer.

The hard part isn’t coming up with the plan. The hard part is bearing the stage of “No action” necessary so that the right amount of data can unfold. And then, when you know where you want to go, where you need to be, exactly how you’d like the change to manifest, the steps to getting there lay themselves out the way the Yellow Brick road revealed itself to Dorothy.

Connect. Think. Do.

I’d first gotten the call, an inquiry call for coaching, two weeks previous. In a follow-up conversation, one of the team, one the five co-founders of a hot  local startup, came to the phone with a simple plea: “Help.”

In the year since they’d begun their efforts, they’d successfully raised the necessary capital, begun operations, and even turned a small profit. But this tight-knit team was at each other’s throats. We agreed to meet for an all-day session, all five of them, for six hours, starting early on a Sunday morning. It was about the third hour when the breakthrough happened.

The presenting agenda was, as I call it,  “The five-year old” soccer team problem: everyone wants to chase the ball and no one wants to play their position. It’s a common problem and one I felt at ease in addressing. But, as the morning unfolded, it quickly became apparent that the roots of all the fighting, all the chasing of loose balls, were layers of unmet needs.

And then there was the breakthrough.

I’d spent part of the morning briefly but consistently modeling one of the aspects of Nonviolent Communications (NVC) techniques most useful in the workplace. The aspect was around giving feedback using of the model of OFNR, Observation, Feelings, Needs, and Request. (I’d honed these skills working with my friends/teachers, Miki Kashtan, Martha Lasley, and Marie Miyashiro as they developed a program called Making Collaboration Real for using NVC in the workplace.)

As the morning progressed there came a moment when Mark felt compelled to respond to some things Nicole had done.

“Nicole,” he began with some coaching from me, “I notice that you prefer to work on a single task at a time.” He paused and I encouraged him to check that out.

“Is that right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s hard for me to move onto the next task when I feel the first isn’t complete.”

“When you do that it makes me anxious that all the things we need to do won’t get done.”

“I have a need,” he continued, “in fact, the company has a need, for multiple things to be worked on simultaneously.” Pausing to make eye contact with me, he took a deep breath—courageous conversations require vulnerability–he then made a request, “So can you tell us what we can do to help you handle more things simultaneously.”

Not bad, I thought, for a guy who’d just started the practice of giving nonviolent feedback. But then something really magical happened: Nicole’s eyes began to soften, to “shine”, as some say.

The nervousness in the group was palpable; they wanted to move on—we so often turn away from another’s pain simply because it’s not bearable to us, it’s too evocative—perhaps—of our own stuff. I knew they had to hold steady.

I checked in with Nichole; I held a space that Mark had, in fact, opened by his honest sharing of his inner motivations, his inner needs.

“Nicole, how are doing?”

“Well, I was thinking about Mark’s observations. I started paying attention to the feelings I was having, the tightness in my own chest even as he made the observation.

“He’s right,” she continued, “but I started to ask myself why I needed that. And then I realized…I’m afraid I’ll get hit if the thing I’m working on isn’t perfect.”

The pain that had been in the room had now been named and everyone in the room connected with it. Nichole told a story from her childhood of literally being hit if she didn’t get everything on her homework correct. And she wept.

Suddenly this disjointed, angry, fighting-at-cross-purposes team of brash, young, brilliant start-up executives jelled into a single, compassionate, and loving unit. Suddenly the arguments over who got to play CEO and who took notes and got coffee during the meetings became far less important and everyone, myself included, connected with that kid inside all of us who worries about failing and disappointing an aggressive and demanding parent.

The story of this team, and so many other stories from my coaching and venture practices, resonated with me as I read the first drafts of Marie’s new book, The Empathy Factor. Over the years, I’ve served on more than a few boards of directors, worked with both for-profit and not-for-profit companies. I’ve watched companies get born and grow into success stories. I’ve watched large companies falter and miss opportunities. I’ve watched small not-for-profit organizations struggle through the maturation process; some succeed, many fail. And every one of them, and every one of the people endeavoring to do the sacred work of creating something of lasting and enduring value, could benefit from the lessons laid out in The Empathy Factor. (Marie’s got a compelling video on the underlying precepts here.)

My clients, the startup team struggling to become a Team, underwent the process that Marie refers to forming as “an empathetic connection,” a necessary step before educating, explaining, or justifying; she calls it “Connect-Think-Do.”  And, in doing so, they experienced the transformative power of empathy.

She writes:

Any form of educating, explaining, defending, or justifying before someone feels heard or understood, creates more separation than connection in my experience. Therefore, I like to ask people if they would find value in me explaining something before I begin sharing the information with them. When they’re not ready to listen to what I have to say, they likely have needs for understanding, expression, more information, or the like. This is a clue for me to connect with their feelings and needs. When they’re ready to listen to me, they might pause and stop speaking in such a way that I notice they’re now open to hearing what I have to say. Many times I’ve had people say, “Now I’m ready to listen to you.”

On that Sunday morning, the team created a connection that was so powerful that when it came time to explain, to educate or even to understand, the mutual empathy was so great that, unmet needs could be spoken aloud and the foundation for those needs to be met was laid. They were ready to listen to each other.

Marie makes a compelling case for wider-spread use and awareness of the core NVC techniques not just in situations where the violence of our interactions is so apparent but also in the places where we don’t necessarily see the violence done everyday in the name of productivity:

“As I studied the model of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) that Marshall [Rosenberg] taught,” she writes, “I understood what he meant. I could see the unconscious and unintentional disregard for the feelings and needs of people, both in everyday relationships and in the world of the businesses, nonprofits, universities, and government agencies with which I worked. I observed that the workplace is full of what I call silent pain. I like to tell the groups I work with that I estimate about 30 to 50 percent of what is said in workplace meetings is not what is heard.

She goes on:

Our workplaces are two-dimensional because the process of empathic connection requires a literacy and comfort with two human qualities that have been systematically devalued and misinterpreted in the world around us. Our organizations are born out of this same consciousness and simply replicate this world condition in our workplaces. These two misunderstood qualities are:

1) Our ability to be fluently aware of our feelings without judgment of them and 2) our ability to then connect these feelings to related human needs that are being met or unmet.

 

“Our problem,” she adds, “seems to derive from our entrenched conditioning in using the emotions of fear, guilt, shame, and anger, as workplace motivators [my emphasis] instead of proficiency with connecting to our own or one another’s feelings and needs.”

Is it any surprise that people joke that work is a four-letter word?

The Empathy Factor is a call for ending the subtle, persistent, and awful violence to the Self done everyday in the name of profits and productivity. But more than a call to action, it also offers proof that–ironically–building a more compassionate, empathic workplace is precisely the path to greater productivity and, consequently, profits.

Indeed, one of the most highly regarded business writers, Warren Bennis, asserts in his classic treatise, On Becoming A Leader:

In order to lead a Great Group, a leader need not possess all the individual skills of the group members. What he or she must have are vision, the ability to rally the others, and integrity. Such leaders also need superb curatorial and coaching skills—an eye for talent, the ability to recognize correct choices, contagious optimism, a gift for bringing out the best in others, the ability to facilitate communications and mediate conflict, a sense of fairness, and, as always, the kind of authenticity and integrity that creates trust. Nothing about the world today is simpler than it was or slower than it was, which makes the ability to collaborate and facilitate great collaboration more vital than ever.* [my emphasis]

Marie details how The Empathy Factor facilitates this vital collaboration. More important, she shows how managers can build organizations where empathy is the core driver of their success.

Last week, I met with one of the team members of that original group. In the months since our first meeting, there’s been pain and growth, laughter, success and failure. As we talked about his transition, his taking of his seat as the leader of the group, he reminded me of the transformation possible by simply pausing to check in on yourself and the team. Connecting with the on-the-ground reality creates a tremendous basis for the hundreds of decisions that have to be made every single day.

We laughed as we enjoyed a moment of recognizing both the work that’s been accomplished to date and the fearsome work that has yet to be done. And I watched as this first time CEO manifested not only Connect-Think-Do but the even more powerful Connect-Think-Lead.

*From the revised Introduction to On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis, Basic Books, New York. 2003

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Relationships are hard. As Rilke wrote:  ”For one person to love another, this is the most difficult of all our tasks.” And perhaps few situations make that task more difficult than when one or the other partner is riding the roller-coaster of a startup.

Indeed, so much of the content of the work I do with clients involves clearing out feelings, the residue of struggles outside the office, in order to bring them more fully present to the work at hand. That’s why I’m so excited that my frequent partner in coaching, Ann Mehl, and the brilliant and thought-provoking Esther Perel , author of Mating in Captivity, are jointly leading a discussion at General Assembly in two weeks. In that discussion, they hope to unpack some of these issues.

I think this discussion should be a prerequisite from anyone trying to launch their own business as well as for someone living with one who’s taken that step.

One of the sweetest parts of being a parent is finding some memento from your kids’ past. My son Michael made this bookmark, probably in fourth grade. The thoughts are from his teacher and referred to a writing and reading program they’d just started.

It’d been pinned to a cork board in our kitchen for years; I’d seen it most every day. Then, yesterday, I saw it again, for the first time:

Write to be understood,

Speak to be heard,

Read to grow…

It’s really a simple mantra that covers, well, everything.

Years ago, Fred Wilson, shared a story that taught me a lot about the role of a CEO. Last year, he wrote a post about the same story:

I started in the venture capital business just as the PC hardware bubble of the early 80s was busting. Our portfolio was a mess. It was a great time to enter the business. I cleaned up messes for my first few years. I learned a lot.

Anyway back to the CEO search. One of the board members was a very experienced VC who had been in the business around 25 years by then. I asked him “what exactly does a CEO do?”

He answered without thinking:

A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.

I asked, “Is that it?”

He replied that the CEO should delegate all other tasks.

In the years since Fred first shared that story with me, I’ve come to see that articulating the role in that way is incredibly powerful; it’s simple and elegant.

More important, it’s flexible. These days, I expand on each of those functions. For example, I’ll share with a client that maintaining the culture, understanding what is the “right” way for the company to do things, is as much a part of the vision as the original eureka moment that gave birth to the whole shindig.

I also tend to point out that recruiting, hiring and retaining the best talent also means making certain everyone knows what’s expected of them and they each play their position—more like the ’98 Yankees than a five-year old’s soccer team (with each kid chasing the ball and nobody playing position).

I also expand the interpretation of the notion of making sure there’s enough cash to meaning making sure that everyone has the resources they need to succeed.

And that’s where the simple magic comes in. Most people think an organization works like this::

…when the best organizations look like this:

The difference is more than visual; it goes to the heart of the last, and arguably most important, function of the CEO.

What I’ve learned (from Warren Bennis) is that when the takes this posture, they are in the best position to ask those above them in the upside-down pyramid the best question any manager can ask: What do you need?

Call it Needs-based governance. It’s an incredibly clarifying and empowering tool. It expands the notion of the CEO making certain the company has enough cash (an important task) to include the notion of the CEO making certain that the great people they’ve hired (and put into the right positions) have what they need to succeed.

Even more, it turns on it’s head the employee-infantilization that typically occurs in a top-down, command-and-control structure and makes everyone ultimately responsible for asking the single most important question facing any company: What does the customer need?

Too often each of us abdicates responsibility for our success, our lives, and puts the focus on those whom we assume have more power, more capability. It’s understandable; withstanding the daily pressure of work—especially work in a startup—creates distress. And when we’re distressed, we regress and just want to be told what to do (and then cooperate or not, depending on whether we’ve regressed to being a teenager). But when the company is organized around this central question—What do you need to hit that impossible deadline? What do you need to double your market penetration? What do you need to recruit that top engineer or salesperson?—the regression ends and adults take the field.

Needs-based governance (and I suppose I should apply for trademark on that) doesn’t create miracles; very often needs will go unmet. But stretching your partner, your co-founder, your colleague, yourself to struggle with that question drives for a greater sense of mission, purpose.

And, I suppose, that’s a need we all share: to be a part of something just slightly better than ourselves alone.

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?—Robert Browning

 

 I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Then, later, my family hiked a glacier to climb Whistler Peak (“Via Ferrata”). Two days later, my kids stepped off a bridge more than 160 feet above an engorged river.

Standing on the bridge, watching my children fling themselves off into the air, I thought of a line from a post I’d written just a few weeks ago: “I had been inspired in small ways to live a life that would always push against the limits of my own fears.” As powerful as it is to push against your own limits, nothing beats watching your kids learn to do the same.

Lousy because I often make business decisions out of want, desire, wishes, feelings, and other heart-driven motivations. (Read my exhortation about Saying No not merely as a prescription to others but as a reminder to self.)

Still though, sometimes an idea gets fixed and I have to act. (Note to clients: Don’t worry, my attachment to the idea is loosely held.) Such is the case with the notion of figuring out Europe.

A few months ago I visited Slovenia and fell in love. The city, the people, the spirit of local entrepreneurs grabbed my heart hard and fast. Then I received a poignant email which, with the entrepreneur’s permission, I turned into a blog post called Born Somewhere Else. And an idea began to grow.

Weeks later, the incomparable Ann Mehl and I (with thoughtful and caring support from our friends at General Assembly) pulled off the second iteration of our workshop: Disappearing into the Fire: Surviving the Startup Life. Selling out quickly, we realized we were onto something. But we didn’t realize how significant an idea it was until I’d heard from the generous Kevin Dykes, challenging me, essentially to bring the workshop to his adopted home of Berlin.

Ljubljana, Berlin…cities with nascent but vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems. Hmmm. This started to sound interesting. And so we talked. And wrote. And talked some more. Kevin connected us to others and the idea looked like a real possibility. Let’s take the show on the road. And so we are.

Ann and I will be leading the workshop with support from Kevin, Stefan Wolpers of the Entrepreneurs Club of Berlin and the local whizzes at General Assembly. To maximize the trip, I’ll also be leading a breakfast discussion about the challenges and opportunities facing  entrepreneurs over there looking to raise money from investors over here.

I’ll also visit some clients and spend some time with their companies.

Sounds good, right? So what’s the lousy-business guy thing? Ever since I received his email, I’ve not been able to shake the question about what differences exist between US-based entrepreneurs those based in places like Berlin, Ljubljana, Estonia, or Tibet; what are the differences and what are the similarities. From the work I’ve done with clients outside the US, I know that the fear and the emotional roller coaster are common. But from other conversations I’ve learned, for example, that the acceptance of failure is a large cultural difference…which leads to all sorts of mind-bending for a first time entrepreneur. So following the advice of my dearest friend and former high school English teacher, I’m going to “teach the questions I want answers to.”

The lousy part is we may not make money on this. But, I know, I’ll walk away with an incomparable experience. And, ya know, that’s worth all the effort.

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I’m pretty sure it was a Philco. I know I was five and half.

It’d been a typically hot summer day where my best friend Marcus had spent much of it carving our initials in the hot, soft asphalt of East 26th street and floating wooden Popsicle sticks at the gutter river rushing out of the open hydrant. July 20, 1969.

My father calls out from the front window of our ground level apartment. ”Jerry!” he shouts, “Come inside.” The tone means either I’ve done something wrong or something important is going on. I hope for the latter.

I come  inside and find my parents, my brothers, and my sister gathered around the Philco (or was it a Dumont?). Neil Armstrong is  just stepping down the ladder of lunar landing module.

I thought of that moment years later when, after deciding to go into work a little late that day, I watched the Challenger first lift off and then explode.

And I thought of it again a few weeks ago as Hugh MacLeod talked about going to watch the last Shuttle take off. When I saw his drawing, his take on what this all meant, I understood a little more about my own experience.

Watching that one small step on the static-ky, shaky black and white TV, with the tinfoil on the antenna to get a slightly better reception, I realized I had been inspired in small ways to live a life that would always push against the limits of my own fears.

Hugh’s “Incredible Times” drawing implicitly challenges me to see more clearly, to articulate more dearly, those folks who inspire me to see the incredible, the unbelievable. Fortunately, I can see it in the everyday.

I see it, for example, in the client who discovers a tumor that needs to be removed from her liver or the friend who’s tumor is in her breast. I see it in the client who–despite the gnawing, aching fear of never being able to be good enough to please a parent–still goes in every day making, as I am wont to say, “incremental progress that is directionally correct.”

We do ourselves a disservice when we look only to the extraordinary for affirmation of the incredible. We set ourselves up, then, to see that our struggles with the pathology of every day are somehow less then. And, of course, that then reinforces our own gnawing aching fears that we are never enough.

It helps to see the incredible inspiration in the man, the artist, whose demons were so ferocious that his only solace was to drink, smoke, and sleep in a kind of hazy denial of life. When that man wakes (albeit with the shock of a fearsome medical diagnosis) and begins the painful process of reclaiming his body, and through that act reclaims his souls…well, when that happens, boy howdy, we do live in incredible times.

So Hugh is right: there is work to be done. But I think the work is not getting people to romanticize our heroes but to see the incredible in the simple act of getting along, of growing up, of becoming more and more wholly, utterly, ourselves.

When Siddhartha woke up and became the Buddha, the awakened one, he didn’t wake to see the triumphant earthly gods and goddesses. He awoke to the utterly breathtaking beauty of the everyday person facing the truth of the pain and fear of life; facing that truth and choosing to move ahead, regardless. That feels like one heck of a small step.

Ann Mehl and I were on a call with a reporter looking into doing a piece about the workshop we’re doing in a few weeks. I’d connected the two of them in a conference call while I was at LaGuardia, waiting to board a flight to Denver, for a board meeting in Boulder. The morning had been rushed. Lately, it feels, like everything is rushed.

“I’m scared,” I’d told my Buddhist teacher on Monday. “I find myself doing more and more…the calls and inquires for coaching are so much more than I can handle.” He smiled in that way that says, “I’m not going to say anything. You have to keep going.”

“I’m afraid I’ll lose myself…again. I’ll find myself overweight, sickly, disconnected from my body, my family, and back at the point where the subway tracks seem like the right answer.”

“It is different now,” he said. I waited for more and then realized I wasn’t getting any more.

The workshop sold out (as Charlie Crystle predicted). There’s talk of doing a second iteration. A new friend reached out, saying, “Bring it to Berlin.”

I’m trying to meet the need so evident in the market by working with teams, doing workshops, encouraging others to work with folks like Ann, or even thinking about ways I might help folks help each other.

It’s different now, said my teacher, because right livelihood. What I’m working towards now is less about my own ego aggrandizement (although that temptation is always there) and more about helping.

And I think again of the guy who sat on my couch on Tuesday. By all accounts, successful, his little company not only survived the recession (having been launched at the start of the collapse) but pivoted and grew. Today, with less than $2 million in capital raised, they are projecting $5 million to $6 million in revenue. And they’re profitable. And this guy spent much of his session in tears. I was relieved to see those tears because I don’t know what would have happened if he’d continued to walk around with no one to talk to, no place to put the stress.

The concept of work-life balance is bullshit. First, it presumes that work is in opposition to life. And the fact is that work is a fundamental part of life; who we are and what we do merge–sometimes with good results and sometimes with bad.

Second, the concept sets us up for terrible guilt. When I’m at my kids’ concert, I feel guilty that I’m not answering email. When I’m at my desk, I feel guilty that I’m not watching So You Think You Can Dance with my kid. You can’t win.

I like the word balance in the concept, though.  My teacher finally spoke: “One third, one third, one third.” Fucking koans.

He let me off the hook then, explaining, “One third of your time for the external you. One third of your time for the internal you. And one third of your time for the Other.”

One third taking care of business. One third taking care of the subtle and gross bodies–the inner you and the physical you. And one third for family, friends, community, the world at large.

Now that’s a balance that makes sense.

This morning, as I lay awake in my wonderfully cheap motel room in Boulder (shout out to my friends in Boulder–it’s amazing to wake to watch the sunrise reflected against the Flatirons), I realized that even that concept of balance falls short if it’s not twinned with the notion of presence.

In our vain effort to assuage the guilt of not being at the other end of work-life seesaw (regardless of which end we find ourselves on), we end up neither here nor there. Remember running back and forth on the seesaw trying to stand legs apart in the center, one foot in each world, getting both ends to balance? I remember the nasty bump I got in that vain effort.

The real gift is learning to be present in whatever third you’re living. So when you’re working, work. And when you’re loving, love. And when you’re eating, eat. As the wise old Ram Dass said: Be Here Now.

That is the only way out of conundrum, the bullshit of work-life balance.

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“I looked out at the audience and I saw you and  Eric Friedman and I knew it was going to be alright.” Eric, one of Nestio’s mentors who included The Gotham Gal, Joanne Wilson, and the brilliant, omnipresent, Beth Ferreira, sat three or four rows behind me. We didn’t plan to make certain that at least one of us were always in sight in the hundreds that crowded the floor; it just worked out that way.

“So what was it like,” I asked. “Really?” And of course I asked in that voice that, regardless of my words, tends to induce tears. (Those who have experienced it know the awesome tears-inducing power of the Yoda of Silicon Alley. To those who haven’t experienced it yet I quote my favorite Bible passage: Be not afraid. I live by Uncle Ben’s dying words: With great power comes great responsibility.)

So what was it like? “I’ll tell you. You guys couldn’t see from the audience because of the way you were sitting but when each of us would finish our presentations and make our way back upstairs to the gallery above the audience, we’d be greeted with high-fives and hugs.” The biggest, most powerful part of the Techstars experience, for Caren was the support, the camaraderie of the other companies, the “Davids,” and the mentors who made it a point to be able to make eye contact with their mentees as they stepped into the glare of the New York fundraising scene.

I contrast that with this email exchange I had with an earnest, smart-as-shit, entrepreneur trying to make it in Ljubljana, Slovenia:

Hello Jerry!

We’ve met for a couple of minutes on Friday 8th, after your presentation at the US-Slovenia business bridge in Hotel Slon in Ljubljana. You’ve met many people that day, so I don’t expect you’ll remember talking to me but I just wanted to share my opinion and feedback on your presentation, as there was not much time available at the meeting and you had to juggle with many interested in talking to you.

It was refreshing to hear from someone that not only understands, but also lives in the today’s entrepreneurial mindset. We’re used to college professors that teach entrepreneurship, but never been one, or finance guys that »direct« entrepreneurs, but don’t understand one. And we unfortunately live in a country (or region) that publicly wants entrepreneurs, but ignores what entrepreneurship is. I’m aware that it is not much different in other parts of the world, and that these problems will fade and be solved with time. And I share with you the “gut” feeling that things are changing. But the pace is way too slow for these times.

I’ve asked you only one question in our short chat; “What was driving you to invest in Twitter and Zemanta?”. You answered, without hesitating: “My gut”. Your presentation touched a topic that I believe is crucial for every entrepreneurship; “selling the vision”. It is hard to sell the vision in a region that does not value it, but only values the fast ride to profits. In the end, projects are created that have only one goal: profit. The “change the world” part vanished, or rather, never existed. Unfortunately all institutions, from the government down to universities don’t value visionaries, because they need maintenance and maintenance requires money. The money is here, but is rather spent on projects that create jobs not because they solve a problem, but just because they “modernize” the same old problem. I’m aware capitalism drives everything to profits, but I refuse to believe profit is a sole measure of success.

The glimmer in the eye of the entrepreneur, the one that triggers the investors “gut” feeling to go or no-go is a worthless distraction here. Selling the vision is regarded as impossible, because it does not fit into a business plan. Those who don’t turn to markets other than local are doomed without strong ties to those that control. That lethal combination led to a market where IT companies either work for foreign customers (mainly or only) or just ignore the local market and move to a better environment. The problem is widespread, from private companies, universities, banks, investment companies to the government itself.

The environment is key, as you said. Slovenia has a perfect position to offer the best environment for IT companies. The infrastructure is well developed (widespread FTTH, UMTS), people are hard enough to shift to new technologies to prove that if a technology passes here, it will pass in western countries. And the most important one, Slovenia is small enough to make it a “cheap playground” for new ideas and products.

I’m 27 and after more than 8 years of trying here, last year I decided to move to a new environment and my “gut” told me London is the target. I’m not seeking for easier ground, I’m only seeking for a better opportunity. I’m full of energy, full of ideas that may be worthless or golden, and I’m also full of raw passion to create and evolve. I would be more than happy to create here, prove the concept and then cash in on the big markets, but I can’t. Not because I’m afraid of failure, but because the environment is so scared of failures it simply seeks sure-bets. Pioneers are regarded as “born somewhere else”.

I apologize for taking valuable time from you with this lengthy feedback, but I wanted to share my point of view as I think it is the least I could do to return the favor after you shared your vast experience with us.

Hope you’re doing fine and enjoyed your stay in Ljubljana.

br,

Miran Hojnik

Maybe my powers work on me as well but I was moved to tears by that note. Not only for the kindness implicit in his comments about my talk but more to the point, in the all-too-common difficulty inherent in his choosing the startup life. I found this passage especially poignant:

“I’m 27 and after more than 8 years of trying here, last year I decided to move to a new environment and my “gut” told me London is the target. I’m not seeking for easier ground, I’m only seeking for a better opportunity. I’m full of energy, full of ideas that may be worthless or golden, and I’m also full of raw passion to create and evolve. I would be more than happy to create here, prove the concept and then cash in on the big markets, but I can’t. Not because I’m afraid of failure, but because the environment is so scared of failures it simply seeks sure-bets. Pioneers are regarded as “born somewhere else”. ”

Are they? I suppose they are; I suppose pioneers, entrepreneurs, people who believe they can change the world, are, as Hugh Macleod suggests, considered delusional and “born somewhere else.”

Every week I hear it, hold it, and do my best to comfort, to empathize, and then offer suggestions for living the startup life. Some weeks I hear about the Twitter-squatter who has stolen a dozen iterations on my client’s company’s name. Or I hear about the co-founder and best friend from middle school who, it’s painfully clear, needs to be fired. Or the guy whose wife is selling the kids’ clothes on eBay so they can buy food.

Of course it’s not the same stories; but it might as well be since the pain is the same.

Buried amidst the torrent of wonderful suggestions about funding, strategies, and even the occasional brilliant meme like that started by Ben Horowitz on the need for a CEO to manage their own psyche is the simple recognition that this life, this startup life, is damn hard.

Over a year ago I wrote a post called Disappearing into the Fire. It remains one of my most popular pieces. Last December,  Ann Mehl, a brilliant and wonderful fellow coach and I did a first iteration of a workshop building on that theme. We’re at it again. This time we’ll be doing a version of a the workshop in partnership with our good friends at General Assembly that seeks to address to core elements of surviving life in a startup. It’s not for everyone but it is for anyone who’s struggling with living through the vicissitudes of the roller-coaster, the psychopathology of everyday life where the payroll is uncertain, paying rent is a dream, and keeping would-be copycats from squatting your social media avatars.

I am often frustrated by time. I wish I could see all those who’d like to see me. I wish I could scale my business to a point where I can see all those who need help. The truth is, I love entrepreneurs and I want to see them succeed (however that’s defined). But I can’t. And doing these workshops helps foster a sense of collective support. Brad Hargreaves, my colleague at General Assembly, said it reminds him of the “Founders’ Therapy” collective effort that seems to have died. For me, I just want to catalyze those moments of high-fives and hugs that made Caren’s experience so powerful and, in the end, bearable.

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• The ultimate pitch: 11 startups, 8 minutes, 500 investors (money.cnn.com)

Boštjan Špetič

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“I live,” I tell him, “in the space between business and spirituality. I live in the place where who we are overlaps with what we do.”

He looks at me, blankly.

“I live in the place where money meets meaning; where soul meets spirit, where the left side of the brain finally communicates with the right, where business meets the spiritual, where meaning finds sustainability.

“My town,” I continue, “is a classic border town where cultures, values, and noises clash and synthesize a whole new experience; a dangerous town, there aren’t enough of us to translate, left to right, right to left, up to down, down and up, inside and out.”

I’m complaining I realize and of course he doesn’t expect that so I quickly add, “but we make do. Sometimes we teach. Sometimes we annotate, cogitate, ruminate. But mostly we just listen.”

There, I think, that’s right.

“Of course it can be draining, exhausting, demanding. Being present in two places, living in the Mandorla of your own being isn’t easy. Poets imply that falling towards the center of your being, melting into the heart of who you are–even if who you are is an interlocutor with a passport filled with visa stamps–is the ultimate existential expression and, therefore, is a step towards enlightenment.”

And then I pause for effect,” But I know that while it may be all that, it’s also tiring.”

“Where do you live?” the Border Patrol agent asks as I step to his plexiglass booth, fresh off the plane from Beijing, just returned from yet another trip into the Tibetan Plataeu. And I dismiss what I’m thinking and tell him my address.

“And what was the purpose of your journey?”

“What was the purpose of my journey?” I repeat, smiling to myself…

If you knew that you would die today,
Saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?

Would you?

That question’s been stuck in my head for the last few weeks as I’ve been processing my recent trip to the Tibetan Region of China. Over here are copies of the letters I sent—journal entries, really—from the trip.

Briefly, though, I went back for three reasons. The first was to revisit Yushu. The region was devastated by an earthquake last April and in September I helped bring some temporary housing to ease the suffering of some folks made homeless. I wanted to, needed to, see how things were—this despite the frigid cold and lack of power.

The second reason was to participate in a process of helping local business people, local entrepreneurs get training in business planning fundamentals and to talk about the ways to use microfinance credit while also exploring opportunities like tourism. Tourism represents a huge percentage of the GDP in the Tibetan Region of China.

Lastly, I wanted to revisit an orphanage in a remote part of Sichuan. My hope is to help in a sustained way, to work to improve their lives.

Who knew, though, that I would see the face of God and love?

Here’s an excerpt from my Letters…this is about visiting the orphanage and sitting down with the monks who run it to see what more can be done:

1/26/11

Destination: Tagong

We left Kangding early for the three-hour drive to Tagong. With us in the van was Abu. Abu had attended the training session we did in Chengdu. He’s been a friend of the NGO’s with which I’m traveling for years. He’s the Shrine Keeper at the monastery in Tagong (which means, among his other duties, he sleeps in the temple when he’s on duty.)

I first met Abu in September when I visited the orphanage in Tagong.

The drive was easy; in so many ways, I feel like a part of me comes home when I visit Tagong and that morning, I was anxious to see the boys again.

Pulling out of Kangding, I could feel my breath ease. About an hour out of Kangding, you officially enter the Tibetan plateau. The air is thinner, colder and the skies clear and the Colorado blue sky blinds you.

In the car, I think of the John Muir quote: The mountains are calling me and I must go.

We stop to use the W/C (or the rural China equivalent of) and Abu runs out of the car, sick to his stomach. Bad omen? I hope not… he comes back smiling and laughing at his own misfortune; laughing at his own misfortune.

Pulling into Tagong we drive straight to Abu’s house. His mother lives across from the monastery and we’ll be staying with her, Amma. Amma’s yak yogurt is the best in all of Kham and I take mine with just a little bit of sugar and I snack on the fried breads she’s made especially for us.

We put our bags in the guest room and head out to see the boys.

In September, when I first met the boys their schoolroom was a tree-branch-and-plastic sheeting construction in the middle of a muddy yard. When I left, I arranged for a brand new, warm 45 sq meter tent to be put up and for gravel to be put down to keep the courtyard warm.

Shortly after that, the landlord took back the land. So, again, the monks and the kids have improvised a shelter. Like so many things in this land, frustrating.

Walking in, we interrupted the boys in their studies. After some hellos, and our shaking each hand of each boy. I stood in the middle of the room and handed out the presents, the New Year’s presents I told them. A hat, scarf, pair of gloves, and pair of socks for each boy. “Good quality,” Abu said in Tibetan adding, “and not crap.”

I also tossed out dozens of toys…basketballs, soccer balls, badminton sets, ping-pong balls, puzzles and games. Within minutes the boys were all over me to help them open the damn plastic packaging.

Within minutes, I stood and watched a group of six playing with a sort of dominoes set I’d given them and I wept.

God I wish I could take home each one of them.

Later we walked with Abu and some of his fellow monks to look at land they’d like to buy. For about $10,000 to $15,000 they could buy the land and build a school room and housing for 60 kids.

We walked back to the monastery and joined the boys for dinner. Our little group, plus five of the monks and 55 kids sat in a circle. They served me first, the boys fighting to be the one to bring me my bowl.

One gorgeous boy handed me the prized bowl of watery rice with a few slices of potato. As he handed it to me, a tiny bit slipped over the side. Another boy rushed up with a tissue and wiped (or, really, polished) the side of my bowl.

Everyone else received his or her portion and then the kenpo of this monastery said a blessing. We ate silently. Some of the boys licked their bowls after slurping the dinner. Others, especially the boys who’d worked in the kitchen making dinner, watched me closely. They smiled and laughed when I told them it was good. And it was good. Maybe the best meal I’ve ever had.

Later, the boys wanted to treat me so they took turns “massaging” my back…basically punching me. I can’t remember laughing so hard.

Later still, over tea and around the hot cast iron stove burning wood, coal, dung and anything else that would burn, we worked numbers on a blackboard. What would it take to build a school that could feed and house 60 boys, whether or not they want to become a monk? How many teachers? What subjects? What about medical visits and what about clothes? (Earlier the boys all showed off the brand new Tibetan style winter-coat robes my colleagues at this NGO paid to have made for the boys).

We left the discussion with nothing resolved except that I would help Abu make sense of his long term plans (help him think about a long term plan in the first place).

Still though numbers swirled. And of course my head spun…how could I help? How can I help them get to a sustainable place? A school isn’t just about the bricks; it’s about the long-term support.

One number, though, stands out in my head. And that night, back at

Abu’s mother’s place, as I finally settled onto the bed in my sleeping bag, with the indoor temperature reading 10 degrees, one number stuck with me: 1.5 Yuan per meal per kid. That is, 23 cents.

The premise with Tracy Chapman’s question is wrong.

The implicit notion is that, after looking into the face of love, you have a choice: change or not. I don’t think you have a choice. You change. The real question then is simply this: What do you do after you’ve changed?

You integrate, process and sort through.

One day, last April, I woke to read of an earthquake in a part of the world I had never given thought. Now, less than a year later, I’m trying to figure out ways to integrate all of my experiences, all of my various past lives, to come together to solve what seems to be a relatively easy problem: how to use good, smart economic development to create opportunities for people who need a hand.

Another excerpt:

1/27

In the morning we visit an ironworker. A recipient of a microfinance loan, he’s paid back the first loan and is looking for a larger second loan so he can expand to meet demand.

His welding mask is a children’s Halloween mask (best I can tell it’s Casper the Ghost) supplement by a pair of knock-off Ray Ban Aviators (the two are taped together with black electrical tape).

He’s already employing two people and he could expand to three more. His little shop fixes everything. They make iron decorations for atop buildings; the decorations are simples of the dharma and the Buddha’s teachings (like kneeling deer that would flank a wheel of the dharma, symbol of the Buddha’s first turning of the wheel–teaching of the dharma–in the deer park at Varanasi.)

There are parts of motorbikes and stoves everywhere in various stages of repair. He’ll get the loan (of I think $1000), which will enable him to not only hire and train more people but also expand his inventory of motorbike parks. This is the type of micro finance that works. The ironworker was orphaned as a boy and raised on the streets of the village. I can see someday he’ll be the village leader.

Over dinner earlier this week, as I showed him photos from my trip, and spoke about how overwhelming it can feel when I think of the enormity of the problems, a friend challenged me: You’ve done bigger things, he said.

You’ve challenged and poked and prodded and built bridges and made connections that have changed lives before. Do it again.

Would you change?

Would you change?

Now that you’ve changed, what will you do?

I turn the questions over and over, daily.

I see connections to work I’m doing here to the work I think I need to do there. Before leaving, my Buddhist teacher, told me: Don’t you know, Jerry, your karma is to combine business with the spiritual and to make spiritual undertakings more “business-like” more sustainable?”

One foot in each of two worlds.

A last excerpt:

1/29

Destination: Chengdu

We’ve a long ride ahead of us. I’m overwhelmed with ambivalence. I know getting to Chengdu is the first part of my making my way home (to what is clearly the NEW Land of Snows–NYC).

But so many images and feelings are tied to this land, this people. David Whyte has a poem called House of Belonging and in it he writes:

This is the bright home in

which I live,

this is where I ask my friends to come,

this is where I want to love

all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.

This is the temple of my adult aloneness

and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life.

There is no house like the house of belonging.

I belong in NY. Of that I have no doubt. But it is a wondrous experience to travel to the other side of the world only to feel, again, as if I’ve entered another House of Belonging.

More photos from the trip here and videos below.

It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.  Talking to a client this morning, he reminded me that running faster often feels like working harder. “If I’m not panting,” he said, “I don’t think I’m working.”

It’s a lousy strategy: It feeds the anxiety of never enough; it gets in the way of thinking clearly; and it convinces you to mistake motion for meaning.

I understand where it comes from. First, the adrenaline is addictive; it’s such a rush to, well, rush from task to task. Moreover, it can also feed a sense of superiority: “Geez what I’m doing must be so important, look at how fast I’m moving. Look at how slowly you’re moving.”

More deeply, it’s also fed by the enmeshing between work and identity. I am what I do and if what I’m doing is fast and, therefore, important than I must be worthy enough to have earned your respect, your love.

While everyone—myself included—can fall prey to using work as a prop for self-meaning, I find that founder/entrepreneurs are particularly susceptible to this loss of self. This despite the fact that the ultimate expression of the trend is a narcissism that borders on socio-pathology; think of the many, many asses in business whom we admire precisely because they have a single-minded focus on execution, causing everyone around them to pant their way through the workday.

Of course we don’t put it that way. We admire them, we say, because they are successful.

Unfortunately then we never get around to debating the meaning of that word: successful. We too infrequently pause and consciously, and with all of our adult awareness, define for ourselves success.

Months ago I wrote about Disappearing into the Fire…the seductive lure of losing one’s self in work. This enmeshing, this panting, this forever chasing higher and tougher goals is yet another form of Disappearing.

But, but, but…there is a power in reaching; “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” said Browning, “or what’s a heaven for?”  There’s an audacity in reaching, in dreaming of a new way to change a light blub, search for something on the internet, connect people across time and space. And we should never lose that audacious reach.

But to lose one’s footing in the reaching serves no one.

Earlier this month, I stepped on a subway at the 42^nd Street station. It was the uptown No. 1 train. I felt myself shoved and looked up, angry and startled. This was no ordinary jostle.

The next thing I remember, I’m laying on my back, my head cradled in the lap of a cop, my body covered in blood. Cold-cocked. Without provocation, without warning, I’d been knocked unconscious, the soft tissue of my nose damaged, my cheek lacerated, and one tooth broken. And I couldn’t remember my name, where I was headed, or who’s the President.

Laying on a gurney at Bellevue, as my mind re-gathered itself, I considered how lucky I was to not have been pushed in front of the train or stabbed by the obviously sick and hurting guy who’d done this. In the weeks that followed, I thought often about how fortunate I was to have been able to handle taking time off from work or have the resources to see good doctors and get my body back together.

And while I’m still recuperating, still in a process of healing and pulling myself together after all this, I realized this morning that the most important thing to come from the random, senseless attack was the reminder that panting doesn’t work. That disappearing into the motions of life, losing touch with those inner worlds that define true success, is a lousy way to live.

Next month a good friend and terrific coach, Ann Mehl, and I will be running a one-day workshop on just this topic (Disappearing into the Fire—not being sucker-punched on the subway…that’s a different workshop and I think I’m particularly skilled at teaching it.). It’s a bit of an experiment. For me, it’s a chance to work through material I’ve found so powerful, so life-altering. For our clients, both current and prospective, it’s a chance to dive deep, and ideally find strategies to come home–with each other as well as with both Ann and me.