For this gorgeous Friday, I have four diverse quotes comin’ at ya…each of which, I hope, speaks to the true heart of leadership, which is service.

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”  (Mark 9:35)

“Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve.  You don't have to have a college degree to serve.  You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.  You only need a heart full of grace.  A soul generated by love.”  (MLK)

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.  The last is to say ‘thank you.’  In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.  That sums up the progress of an artful leader.”  (Max DePree)

And to these, one might add, “To succeed, assume the responsibility to communicate.  To fail, presume it is others’ obligation to understand.”

* * *

This is no great revelation, of course, but I thought I would share this way of thinking about it because, for all i know, it might come up in a Performance Review you must give today.

It's not unlike the analogy of traveling eastward and, thousands of miles later, finding oneself in the west. 

Strengths work in a similar way.

That ability you have, that talent, that gift, that natural capacity that accompanies you so effortlessly...it can, when applied beyond its appropriate envelope, be a weakness.

Are you a great listener with no voice?

Are you a great speaker with no ears?

Are you a great visionary who lacks people skills?

Are you an insightful person who decides prematurely?

Are you a wonderfully gung-ho sort who bulldozes over people?

I don't know.

Maybe you are or maybe you aren't.

But the problem is you might not even know yourself.

It's often hardest to see ourselves.

For example, I 'think' I know what I sound like when I speak.  After all, I speak daily.  But then I hear my recorded voice and shudder.  "Is that really ME?  Yikes..."

The same is often true of our strengths--we think we know them, we presume they work wonderfully for us...but perhaps we should step back, regularly seek feedback from others, and be cautious when red-lining our talents and abilities.

After all, the maxim, "If some is good, more must be better" ain't always true.

Too much medicine is poisonous.

Too much of most good things is debilitating.

Those strengths we possess, when used in moderation or appropriate situations, can be wonderful.

Just remember, they are circular, too. 

Perhaps David Banner said it best, "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."  True that.

Green is great, but even more so in small doses.

Shared with me today by a very dear collaborator, several of us found this Civil War era love letter profoundly touching; and that's saying something--because a great many of these bygone letters are highly eloquent, moving and altogether romantic, either despite or because of the circumstances in which they were written.

While most of our politicians are doing their best, it does seem as though they lose their way more often than they find it...bickering, grandstanding, politicking, posturing, oversimplifying, overcomplicating, spinning, subterfuging, zero-summing.  And all, allegedly, under the guise of 'good faith negotiations' and at the behest of some vague, amorphous electorate who issued an oft-invoked referendum on taxing and spending.

Though I write tonight while Congress haggles over increasing the U.S. debt ceiling, leadership squabbles--and political ones--are timeless and unceasing. 

For this reason alone, I personally find Major Ballou's letter to his wife, Sarah, a great reminder of why patriots do what they do.  Or should. 

It's a clarion call, indeed--or a North Star, or a lighthouse, or a touchstone or, at the very least, a glimmer that catches one's attention and brings his eyes back to the road.

I'm sure it will do the same for you: MyVeryDearSarah.pdf (141.70 kb)

Not quite, but my promise to you today is one of pithiness.

Of all the words that have been written about leadership, performance and the like...of all the 'ornamentation' we hang here and there to garnish the tree, it always comes down to this:

CONNECTION & CONTRIBUTION within RELATIONSHIPS defined by TRUST.

End of story.  Period.

We all desire a sense of connection--to others, to purpose.  To make a difference, to contribute something.  To buzz the work and get 'r done.  To see, as Steve Jobs wrote, "a dent in the universe."

"I made that," the credit rolls...

If we can truly connect to someone and something--and be trusted to achieve worthwhile outcomes, life is good.

Don't believe me?  Read any study, particularly longitudinal ones like Harvard's 70-year-old 'Happiness Study.'  Or faster yet, ask an unemployed person why he or she is periodically depressed.  "I'm drifting, untethered.  I feel emasculated and small.  I want to engage and provide and be counted."

Whether we look at it as a parent, sibling, child, employee, citizen...it makes no difference.

To reach our potential, to sing our song, to paint our masterpiece, to live life to the fullest--this organism requires connection and contribution within relationships defined by trust.

Now go get yourself some air, water, sunlight and soil.  Plug-in and power-up.

And if or where you struggle, don't lose hope or give up the fight.

Even weeds find sunlight through concrete, and so do we.

Connect and contribute in even the smallest of ways and, like a spark in the night, the rest often takes care of itself.

Several days ago while differentiating Good vs. Poor Leaders, I committed to write a bit more about leadership. 

In keeping that commitment, allow me to share the following model which has proven helpful for several groups over the years.

Beyond 'arguably,' there are certainly a number of key leadership competencies unaccounted for here (like systems thinking and change), but we can dive into those another time.

What the model here does do, and simply, is capture 2 key axes, 4 diverse endpoints...and all this while reminding the leader the importance of stability.

Let's start with the 2 axes, Results and Relationships. 

Notionally, the premise of Results and Relationships (like Yin and Yang) alerts leaders to mind these two very unique yet interrelated dimensions. 

On the one hand, great leaders have got to be adequate (or, more ideally, exceptional) relationship-builders.  For those leaders who like to think programmatically, linearly or via 'building blocks,' understanding that he or she can build relationships in two ways often proves constructive. 

For example, on the one hand, a leader can build and improve relationships by focusing on how he or she Collaborates with others.  Collaborate is a straightforward word -- it means to "co-labor" or "work together."  Two practical ways to think about this include: (1)People do not resist their own ideas and (2)People like to see their photo...or 'DNA' in the scrapbook.  In short, to be a better leader, co-labor with others in ways that allow them to contribute and see their contributions.  It's as simple as that, and yet a huge portion of the 'leadership population' does not operate this way.  Instead, they place themselves at the center of everything, marginalizing those around them as grunts and missing tremendous opportunities to facilitate dialogue, contribution, better solutions and support.

A second way for a leader to build and improve relationships is through Communication.  Here's a neat way to think about communication: (1)Awareness occurs through the senses, (2)Understanding occurs in the mind, (3)Belief occurs in the heart and (4)Behavior occurs through the hands.  Pragmatically, this means more than time permits us to unpack today...but imagine a company that seeks to 'communicate' through posters in the cafeteria, name badges, mouse pads or screen savers.  Will people be 'aware' of the company's direction?  Perhaps.  But will they integratively understand, believe and demonstrate that direction daily?  It's doubtful.  To improve the odds, the organization should learn to communicate in ways that involve people and breathe life into the ideologies by animating and modeling beliefs and behaviors.  The Confucius maxim, "I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand" holds water.

But communication is about a lot more than 'spewing or sensing.'  I believe that, as is the case our entire lives, we learn more by doing than seeing or hearing.  Said more plainly, if you want to communicate effectively, involve another person in the decision-making or delegation of a task.  (Like mathematics, you don't really know whether I understand the problem's nuances until I show my work.)  And while I have you here, let me add one more morsel: Deciding and Delegating are two of our strongest methodologies for Developing people.  Lots of leaders 'miss' this, making too many decisions themselves or seeing delegation as a way to clear their plate.  This is a huge mistake.  Instead, approach each task and ask yourself, "How can this serve as a developmental opportunity for someone else, too?"  Then, draw others into the decision-making process or delegation loop purposefully.  (The sign of a great leader is increasing irrelevance.  The sign of a poor leader is unending dependence.  Great parents teach this, starting with removing the training wheels.) 

Continuing now, any leader must accomplish results.  I have often viewed results as occurring across two common categories of activities, distinguishable along a scale of management and leadership.  The teeter-totter image below should prove a helpful tool for your further consideration of this idea. 

At the core of the first model, though, are values & ethics.  These alone are an entire field of inquiry that Aristotle himself didn't finish pondering.  One's own values and ethics warrant a lifetime of exploration and commitment.  They unquestionably serve as our compass' True North position, without which we wander, wonder and succumb to all manner of mirages and temptations.

I know it's not true in the purest sense, but I have always been predisposed to believe that if it's easy or convenient, it's probably wrong.  Those things in life which prove virtuous or right generally seem to be more difficult or inconvenient.  Diet, exercise, discipline, meaningful communication, giving others the benefit of the doubt, turning the other cheek, being selfless, meeting others' expectations, checking one's work, proofreading, going slowly now to go faster later, saving money, finishing one's homework proactively rather than procrastinating, loving thine enemy, living a whole and undivided life (walking the talk), dying unto oneself, checking one's ego at the door, truly listening (vs. reloading), being creative rather than a revisionist....  These are difficult things, and right.

In summary then, if you aspire to be a better leader, don't forget these 'minima:' Create better relationships through more purposeful collaboration and communication.  Achieve results through a proper mixture of management and leadership.  And all the while, drop your anchor deep into a stable, unchanging bedrock of consistent values and ethics.

Do these and you'll be more consciously-competent than half the leaders on the field.

Remember 1982 and that brain-rut-inducing Thomas Dolby song, She Blinded Me with Science? 

Science can be blinding--and blind--but today let's explore how Emotions can be, too.

(Science, of course, can be blind because it presumes itself to be the determinant of what is real.  It is the great judge, jury and executioner.  And yet, on matters such as art or ethics, science has little if anything to say.  Genomes or no genomes, deconstruction is no panacea.)

But what do I mean by "Emotional Impairment" or "Emotional Blindness?"  Simply put, I mean that emotions can swallow us whole and, once enveloped within their darkness it is virtually impossible to see our hands in front of our face.

There's a great book that describes similar phenomena, but let me attack it this way...

Forget for a moment the limbic system and all the hormones (which play absolutely vital roles in emotion) and let's just focus on two psychological elements: (1)Loss Avoidance and (2)Commitment.

As denoted by the image below, when one's "Opposition to Loss" (loss avoidance) and "Commitment" escalate, we have a recipe to brew disaster.

Examples are ubiquitous, from gambling and airplane crashes to suicide and high-risk behaviors.  Wherever we see an individual tied to high-stakes, we are right if we see trouble.

Let's take a current example, one that I'm sure has universal applications: War.

Whether we look at "Civil" Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq...or the thousands of wars that have been waged non-stop since the dawn of humankind, we see leaders in the crosshairs.  Leaders like Lyndon B. Johnson, who felt a tremendous pull between the war in Vietnam and his commitment stateside to create the Great Society.  Here's a great, representative quote from LBJ in 1968.  At the time, America had 500,000 troops in Vietnam and there had been tens of thousands of U.S. casualties:

“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved.  If I left the woman I really loved – the Great Society – in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home.  All my programs, all my dreams to provide education and medical care.  But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, there would follow in this country an endless national debate – a mean and destructive debate – that would shatter my presidency, kill my administration, and damage our democracy.”

What happens when we, as leaders, become consumed by Loss Avoidance while simultaneously Escalating our Commitment?  We go blind.

We send more and more troops into un-win-able wars.  We change mission.  We broaden mission through scope-creep.  We change the game.  We change the rules.  We change the scoreboard.  We sell, we push, we spin.  We beg for more.  We ask and take and dicker and steal and we, along with all those around us, go up in flames.

I have a sweet friend whom everyone calls, "Zippo."  Why Zippo? 

Because every time he opens his mouth, he lights himself on fire.

He has no (in the words of my mother) "governor."  No filter between his brain and his tongue.  Or, perhaps too permeable a filter.

We all know Zippos.  "Did he just say that?" we ask ourselves.  And maybe, just maybe, it occurs to them after they've said what they've said..."did I just say that out loud?"

Beware your emotions.  Yes, they serve a prehistoric purpose, without which you will win the Darwin Award.

As human beings, it is true that our emotions often supersede rational thought.  We are reaction machines, our pulse often telling the story before we ourselves are attuned to our anger.

Be vigilant and self-aware, especially when--while reaching for the prize--you scale to the tippy-top of a precarious ladder comprised of self-justifying rungs named "I cannot lose" and "No turning back."  The air up there gets very, very thin...and where so, we stop thinking, stop seeing clearly and become blind to our own emotionality.

Surround yourself with buddies, fail-safes, ejection seats and fire extinguishers.  People who can say, "What are you thinking?  What are you telling yourself?  Why are you acting like this?  Who have you become, Mr. Hyde?"  And mechanisms designed to break the glass and douse the flames while you extricate yourself from your burning building and all that you have wrought.

While literally countless important questions swirl around us every day, there are few that stimulate me as much as, "What makes a great leader?"

It's a loaded question, of course, because embedded within it is another question, "Are leaders born or made?"  (The short answer, for today, is—"Yes."  But more on that Russian doll another time.)

Leadership is such a perennially important issue and this year is no different.  Every generation believes its time is unheralded and novel, and ours is not unique: we continue to live in undeniably tremendous times—an era of explosive growth, ceaseless change and limitless potential.  (But again, the same could be said 4,000 years ago...2,000 years ago, and again during the Renaissance...it is no less true today.)

As always, we need great leaders and greater leadership if we are to continue progressing in fields and practices as diverse as geopolitics, science, economics, finance, spirituality (yes, spirituality), innovation and sustainability.  From natural to man-made disasters in Alaska, New York, Sri Lanka and India to Thailand, Haiti and Louisiana, the importance and effects of leadership (or its absence) are—if we are fortunate—a broadcast away. 

In future blogs, I commit to writing more extensively about leadership at large, but today I will limit my thoughts to the importance of formal education (e.g., the University) as a mechanism and greenhouse for creating and growing tomorrow's leaders and will then conclude with a rough table differentiating poor from great leaders.

My preliminary comments are inspired today by John Sexton, President of New York University ("NYU").  My later comments are inspired by John Maxwell, author of 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership (among other books). 

Though I believe there are indeed few 'new things' under the Sun, to the extent these men's ideas are held tenably together, I am to blame.

Universities for Tomorrow

Describing the University for Tomorrow requires a few thousand dissertions and years of research, to be sure, so I will simply take a slipshod whack to get your mind whirring.  You, along with millions of others who are already studying this opportunity, can do the remaining 99.9999% by filling in the gaps.

Fact #1: 70 of today's 85 oldest organizations are, in fact, universities.  (Vatican City and Parliament are examples of the other 15.)

Fact #2: If you want to create a vibrant 'center of thought,' create a great university and wait 200 years.

Fact #3: The universities-within-walls which brought us this far will not lead us into the future.

What NYU is doing in Abu Dhabi is right on the money: it's primarily about people, programs, teaching and research (and just so happens to serendipitously be what my doctoral program was, but on steroids to the 100th power).  I attended the modest Union Institute & University, the first "University without Walls" and participated in classes hosted in Brattleboro, Montpelier, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Miami.  We regularly embraced eccentric professors on sabbaticals from the Ivy League who operated 'unfettered' from many of the restraints they described occurring in Cambridge, New Haven, Providence, Princeton, Philadelphia, Hanover, Ithaca and NYC. 

...but I digress...

What encouraged me about Mr. Sexton's comments was the notion that tomorrow's university is an open, diverse, ecumenical, organic circulatory system of ideas and best practices that will focus on creative, exploratory thought and nuanced discourse.

I couldn't agree more. 

Indeed, any university, even the ones mired in the past (the ones we revere, historically) are mandated to help students learn to think (and critically) for themselves.  But my impression, far too often, is that university life can quickly become High School 2.0, packed to the gills with memorizing facts, completing rote work, regurgitating information or defending knowledge.  Unquestionably, we should possess societal standards of 'minimum knowledge,' but I expect this work to occur more fully in grades K-12.  The undergraduate years can round-out this process, but the fact that today's ACT and SAT tests still emphasize standardized knowledge, facts, reading, mathematics—and some writing (though many admissions boards admit they don't quite know what to do with this element yet)—I remain concerned that our perspectives are deficient.

While the United States is proceeding toward national standards in 48 of the 50 states, China is migrating toward a more exploratory curriculum designed to create great THINKERS and INNOVATORS rather than fact-regurgitators.  The ideal approach is, of course, a hybrid that includes the best of both.  We need a hygiene-oriented 'bare minimum' (which should be rigorous, not minimalistic; a 'threshold knowledge base' if you will) combined with strong creative and critical thinking skills.  IQ has never been a predictor of leadership success and it never will be.  Similarly, while standardized admissions are undoubtedly sufficient at predicting university success, they are representative solely of the coursework comprising undergraduate schoolwork—which illuminates my point and the 'smallness' of what we expect today.  Moreover, IQ and standardized metrics will never wholly predict a leader's ultimate societal contributions, service to humankind or general performance, so whatever the University of Tomorrow intends to look like, it must quickly learn to shed historic metrics in favor of indices that get at meaning, contribution and potential.

The single greatest determinant of student performance in the classroom is the teacher's expectations.  Knowing this, we should ourselves have the highest expectations for tomorrow's teachers, educators, instructors, professors...and each and every one of them should be well-versed in the Pygmalion Effect.

Finally, the university of tomorrow should be a bastion of deep discourse, not soundbytes.  Mr. Sexton described at length the disadvantage that today's thoughtful politicians start from when they find themselves embroiled in conflicts with opponents adept at dumbing down exceedingly complex issues.  The media loves sticky slogans ("It's the economy, stupid."), but we must have an appetite for prolonged, nuanced, systemic dialogue if we are to more fully understand issues, one another and create students and leaders capable of doing the same.

Poor vs. Great Leaders

Perhaps contary to popular opinion, the leader at the helm of such a university is not terribly dissimilar from the sort of leader who thrives in enterprise.  In the comments of John Sexton and the work of John Maxwell, I see similar threads regarding how students, university officials and tomorrow's leaders interact with the world around them. 

In this light, I conclude today's very embryonic blog with the following table differentiating 'poor' and 'great' leaders.  I trust that it might prove handy somewhere along the line.

More on these and adjacent thoughts in the weeks to come. 

The matter of 'workplace' and 'personal' motivation comes up a lot.

Here's one of the more pleasurable explanations that I've come across.  My thanks to a dear colleague for sharing it.

Enjoy! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

It's been raining for days in North Texas.  We get rain here, but rarely like this.  Everything feels cool to the touch, moist, and downright soggy, from my shoes in the closet to the oversaturated yards across the street.

One of the interesting byproducts of such rain is the mushrooms.  They are growing everywhere.  Here are a few from our neighbor's house:

The mushrooms remind me of a story.  Several years ago, I found myself a thousand feet below the earth's surface, working with colleagues and interviewing several miners about their employer.  I asked an innocent question: "How clear is your organization's vision?" 

"Wow," a miner shouted back, standing knee-deep in an echoey ink-black cave...water dripping from the 'ceiling,' his headlight beaming me in the eyes, "that's a joke, right?  They treat us like mushrooms around here."

"Mushrooms?" I asked.  "What do you mean, 'mushrooms?'"

"They keep us in the dark and feed us sh_t."

"Ah, mushrooms.  Got it."

And away he picked.

Note to self and all leaders: Do not treat people like mushrooms. 

Fertilize, cultivate, and nurture people, yes.  But equally important, communicate, give 'em plenty of air, and let the light shine in.

Here's a fun article about Gen-Y and reading (or not) non-verbals. 

Gen-Y Johnny.pdf (168.09 kb)

Someone I respect shared it with me and, so, I share it with you.  Also because it references the late, great Ed Hall, one of America's premier anthropologists.

Enjoy.

I’m on an airplane now, straddling three cities in two days, and just wanted to share a few thoughts before they broke free like so many logs trapped in a tide pool.

In the early 90s, I had the great fortune to serve as one of several facilitators for a War Game hosted by Kodak in New York.  In attendance were executives from Hallmark, Wal-Mart, Apple, Sandia National Laboratories and, of course, Kodak.  Former PepsiCo CEO (then Apple CEO) John Sculley was there, along with other key industry leaders and thinkers. 

The topic was futuring, and I remember like it was yesterday – the CEO of Kodak stood before this group of eighty luminaries and commented, almost offhandedly, “I can’t envision the day when consumers won’t want to hold a photograph in their hands.”

Ooops.

I was stupefied.  Even little ‘ol me could see how wrongheaded this was, and I was a green outsider with nary three years’ experience.  Granted, the digital era was just upon us – cell phones were still the size of shoe boxes and Polaroid photos were cool at parties, but nonetheless, the outlines of the future were clear enough – hence, the War Game.

Fast-forward a decade.

Down from 57,000 to 10,000 employees or so – with the photography market primarily digitized now – Kodak failed to realize they were in the ‘memories’ business.  They mistakenly believed they were in the ‘photograph’ business.  The 2009 demise of Kodachrome color film (a seventy-four year success) is representative of their tragic and disappointing fall.

And the Ray-Ban that was once owned by Bausch & Lomb failed to realize they were in the ‘fashion’ business, mistakenly believing they were in the ‘highly engineered eyewear’ business.  That’s why today, the Ray-Ban we all grew up with is now owned by Italian behemoth, Luxottica.  (Oakley and the like cleaned RB’s clock in the late 90s and Luxottica gobbled up B&L’s namesake for a song.  But hey, maybe that’s okay; it’s easier to profit from salt-water solutions than try and manage unnecessarily complex, multinational eyewear manufacturing sites.)  To add insult to injury, Luxottica has now purchased Oakley, too, making the Italian manufacturer the largest eyewear company in the world.   

By the way, Avon and Mary Kay are not in the ‘cosmetics’ business, they are in the ‘hope’ business.  As long as they remember this, all the better. 

I see at the magazine stand the latest Fast Company issue noting that Nokia (who entirely upended Motorola by providing digital phones when analog was all the rage) is realizing they should be a ‘media’ company, not a cellular phone manufacturer.

Bingo.  Welcome to the epiphany, guys.  Enjoy competing with Apple, who realized this long ago.  And with NBC/Universal/Hulu and Google and Microsoft/Yahoo! and so many others who also populate the field.  It will be tough slogging for all players.  But it’s a game worth playing and one that must be played in order to survive.

I wonder who – which company – ‘known’ or ‘unknown’ will upend the media market for the next decade....

There are few, if any sanctuaries from the battles; no tide pools for organizations who want a breather.

So on and on it goes – organizations realizing more and more what business they should be in, or actually are in.

I wonder where Amtrak would be if, decades ago, they had thought to be in the ‘transportation’ business rather than the ‘railroad’ business.   

Whether you are the Girl Scouts of America, the University of Michigan, NASCAR, or the Catholic Church – you better know what ‘business’ you’re in¹.  What do you produce?  Whom do you serve?  What do you provide?  What (gag me with a spoon) is your ‘value proposition?’ 

Whether we like the jargon or not, we avoid the question(s) at our own peril.

(And don’t bother being the world’s best buggy-whip maker.  That market’s taken, and it’s a limited one.)

So how shall you proceed?

As usual, start with the simplest question: “If we went away, who loses what?”

Whether your organization is a synagogue, a national park, or the world’s best widget manufacturer, all must ‘serve some purpose’ and ‘answer some calling’ and ‘provide some value.’   Consider the market, unmet or unarticulated consumer/client/customer needs, and what benefit(s) you can provide in effective, efficient, unique, meaningful, or advantageously sustainable ways.

Because remember, the day will come when people won’t need to hold a photograph in their hands and, when it does, it’d be nice to know you’re still in the picture.

¹Relax – I don’t mean this ‘literally’ as in – “Business” with a capital B and ‘for profit’ and all that.  I just mean – know what you’re doing and why and for whom.

A woman, very important to me, recently shared this story:

"I spent last evening with my friends of fifty-nine years and drove home in the fog.  During the drive, I was thinking, 'Can it be that when I was eight and putting my books in my cubby in elementary school, one girl, who just sat across from me at dinner, had first approached me and asked, 'Some of us go out and play and talk on the playground now during recess.  Would you like to come?'  Well, I had experienced a horrible couple years in kindergarten and first grade at another school, though no one knew that.  I had worried much about the playground, and even planned to hide behind a tree!  But, there I sat last night with seven friends of fifty-nine years who had invited me out to the playground.  They had made all the difference decades ago, but the eleven years we spent together in school have paled in comparison to the lifelong friendships we have experienced ever since."

To varying degrees, everyone has a need for friends and friendship.  While some people need friends to survive, others need them as touchstones.  Either way, their place in the human experience is undeniable.  It is these connections that provide a sense of belonging, acceptance, and affirmation.

Some friendships are not; they are -- instead, one-way.  One person does all the giving, while the other does the taking.

Some are destructive and cancerous.

Some are shallow and predictably splinter upon the rocks.

Some last for moments, while others last a lifetime.

In the end, those that prove the most fruitful are the ones in which each person is refined and made better as a result of the relationship.  I have met too many couples and 'friends,' for example, who simply pollute one another or prove toxic.  (I am most haunted by a woman I counseled years ago who said, "My husband hurts me.  I feel so ashamed."  In Battered Person Syndrome, as in unhealthy friendships, the beater beats and the victim apologizes.  These are not friendships; these are cyclical-crimes that feed on themselves and only worsen with time^.1)

A good friend once asked, "What sort of person should I marry?"  My only advice at the time was, "Marry someone most beautiful on the inside." 

The enduring, adhesive (sticky) friendships bring each person closer to greatness than before.  (Jerry Maguire wasn't too far off base.) 

Just recall the slogan, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk."  Said conversely, "Friends are the means to make you better (not worse)."  They mean you no harm, have your best interests at heart, and serve to help you fulfill your destiny.  The same is true of great organizations, great employers, great supervisors/managers/leaders/colleagues.

For several years, we all heard the mantra, "There is no 'I' in TEAM."  A colleague of mine most effectively addressed the shortsightedness in this logic when he said, "The greatest teams 'sponsor' individuals who -- together -- become much greater than the sum of their parts."

I've always liked that idea -- that the greatest teams make individuals better, pull them to greatness and, generally, 'sponsor' them... their personhood, their character, their integrity, their value, their potential, their humanity.

As leaders, just as parents, we sometimes resist creating friendships with employees, believing such a dimension might alter or complicate an otherwise simpler relationship.  I understand this conceptually, but have found that some of the greatest leaders and parents are friends (not exclusively, primarily, or predominantly), but also.

In the words of the beautiful Maya Angelou, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Now, go befriend someone, maybe a newbie.  Ask them to lunch, to join you during recess, or to save you a spot in the next meeting.  You never know, it might just lead to a decades-long rapport or relationship that brings you or them out from behind that tree, or makes you both better individuals than you are today.

Workplaces are grapevines; that's just the way it is.  Sadly, there are too few exceptions to the hypothesis that, "Where there are three, there gossip be."

Turn on practically any TV channel or Radio station: innuendo, rumor, speculation, gossip.

See countless Websites...

Countless News programs...

Countless 'Reality' programs...

My feeble Blog entry for today won't do one iota to stop gossip from metastasizing, but if it underscores the importance of not gossiping, abiding gossip, or feeding the gossip machine for even 'one day,' all the better.  A chain only works when each link does its part.  By refusing to engage or tolerate gossip in your workplace, you not only differentiate what IS and IS NOT appropriate, productive, and right, but you sometimes preserve a person's reputation.

And THAT is something which, once tarnished, dented, or broken, suffers from Humpty Dumpty Syndrome:

In Doubt, the haunting play and film by John Patrick Shanley, there is a wonderful sermon delivered by the character Father Flynn.  I will close with it, as it so powerfully captures the viral and infectious nature of gossip:

A woman was gossiping with a friend about a man she hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this - that night she had a dream. A great hand appeared over her and pointed down at her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O’Rourke, and she told him the whole thing.

‘Is gossiping a sin?’ she asked the old man. ‘Was that the hand of God Almighty pointing a finger at me? Should I be asking your absolution? Father, tell me, have I done something wrong?’

(Irish Brogue)
‘Yes!’ Father O’Rourke answered her. ‘Yes! You have borne false witness against your neighbor, you have played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed!’

So the woman said she was sorry and asked for forgiveness.

‘Not so fast!’ says O’Rourke. ‘I want you to go home, take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me!’

So the woman went home, took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to the roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed.

‘Did you gut the pillow with the knife?’ he says.

‘Yes, Father.’

‘And what was the result?’

‘Feathers,’ she said.

‘Feathers?’ he repeated.

‘Feathers everywhere, Father!’

‘Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it can’t be done. I don’t know where they went. The wind took them all over.’

‘And that,’ said Father O’Rourke, ‘is GOSSIP!’

What a difference seven months make.

In October, as the unwinding of our world's economy became crystal clear, so many perceived it as 'temporary.'  "The prey must make its way through the python, then all will be well in the end," they seemed to say.

And perhaps that is entirely true.  2010, 2011, 2012... I suppose things could return to 'normal' by then.

But I think not.

I think what's done is done, what was was, and we've entered a New World Order.  I believe the 'unwinding' was, in fact, a re-calibrating. 

I believe the waterline of the former market was, for all intents and purposes... former.  And we may not see Dow Jones at 14,000+ for another generation.  Call me a heretic, an idiot, or a doomsday-sourpuss-naysayer; I've been called worse.  But I believe the snake oil salesmen who are selling fiction disguised as hope are unrealistically optimistic or altogether deceptive. (I see the difference as their 'knowledge' x their 'intent.')

I attended an economic conference several weeks ago, and ALL the economists were prophesying, "This will blow over in a few months.  Q3 2009 will see a return to business as usual," guess-hypothesis-theory-lie.  I'm sorry; I just don't buy it.  While I fully understand FDR's lamentations about 'fear itself' and the need for positive psychology to lead the market, I believe it's time to come to terms with reality and adapt rather than hope for stable sand castles found primarily in Utopia. 

I imagine the market as we knew it before -- with easy loans, bottomless debt, and raging home sales -- is a thing of the past. 

Is the bottom near?  Perhaps, though I agree with Warren Buffett's sentiment that we probably won't experience it until the Government stops reaching in and tweaking the knobs.  At some point, probably where 'rescue' and 'reality' intersect, we will indeed experience a legitimate transition, but I don't think 'bottoming, leveling out, and climbing' are synomymous with 'back to business as usual.'  (At least, not for everyone.  One of the great ironies of this current economy is the disparity between the haves and have-nots.  While many people and clients and states I interact with are STARVING, many others are THRIVING.  On the one extreme I hear, "The sky is falling!" while on the other extreme I hear, "Crisis, what crisis?  We have so much money we don't know where to spend it all!")

Some might argue that I am sounding a bit like Chicken Little, but I believe that history and conventional wisdom will reveal that I am among an unintentional chorus of Shepherd Boys who would rather be wrong.  And by unintentional, I mean to say, "non-economic types" who wind up being in the majority and on the side of right, not because of knowledge, but because of intuition. 

I believe we're entering an era of Business as Unusual or, said another way, The 'New' Economy is The Economy.

2,600 years ago, the Greek slave, Aesop, wrote well over 200 brief fables, and many of them specifically for children (though they apply to most everyone).  Among them is The Shepherd Boy & the Wolf, more commonly remembered as The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  The theme of the story is best recalled in the final line of the fable:  "Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed.  The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth."

Only time will reveal whether the 'renowned and expert economists' are right (and Q3 2009 will reveal a miraculous, magical, and unheralded 'market bounce' that eventually leads us back to earlier Dow Jones health, employment, and worldwide productivity as before) or if those who said once and twice (without knowing why), "the world is changed for a generation" will be deemed right.

Again, I would prefer to be wrong.

At this point in life, most of us have endured one sort of surgery or another.  I equate today's Shepherd Boys as those who scratch at our scar tissue.  What was once sensitive and irritated (October 2008) is slowly becoming thick and numb (May 2009).  The 'jump' in our step has faded a bit, we've ignored the alarms for too long, and many are awakening and coming to grips with a potentially new reality.  A sense of, "Okay.  Um.  So, this REALLY isn't going away next month?  It wasn't just a drill?  All righty then, let's see... what shall I do now?"

History has an enviable way of efficiently and accurately sorting the misfits and malcontents from the rest.  I know most of us would LOVE to see a return to a pre-9/11 or pre-2009 economic world order, but the hairs on the back of my neck just don't sense that coming anytime soon.  Do yours?   

Meanwhile, whether it's only a few years or an entire generation plus, I suppose we should return to our work, reprioritize, rebalance, and find ways to survive through and thrive within a minor economic winter.  There is plenty of work to be done, there are many fields still lacking qualified applicants, and as Nature reminds us, life is binary.  It's either 'find a way to Grow' time, or 'embrace the slumber that has no end' (e.g., die). 

I elect to fight, as I'm sure you do, too.  It's buckle-down time.  Not for an illusory and fabled 'comeback' of lore, but in pursuit of creating a more sustainable future for our children, our customers, our constituents, and all those we hope will follow.

Onward.  Perge.  Semper fidelis.  It's on.  Let's roll.  Bring it.  Go time.  All that jazz.

Sometimes the smallest, simplest things catch my attention.  I don't know why, but it intrigues me, as do the teensy lessons the things themselves reveal.

Last week, Lowe's delivered several pallets of mulch to our driveway.  Once the bags were emptied and spread, I began to wonder what we might make of the remaining wood from the pallets themselves.  Coincidentally, my wife, Dawn, had been talking about a "flower wagon" for our front porch for several days.

Though it took a while for the cogs to engage, eventually... klunk-kerplunk, eureka... Mother's Day is coming. 

She printed a photo from the internet, and bam -- I was off to the races.

From Friday evening through Sunday, I became a man possessed.  My aged and creaky body beneath me, I painstakingly broke down the eight pallets with a hammer, crowbar, pliers, and ripsaw.  Our family ran the errand to Lowe's and purchased chain, hinges, angle brackets, more screws, a second drill, and another saw blade.  Three days later, we have five wagon-bodies awaiting the arrival of their axles and wheels.  Upon completion, we'll distribute the wagons around the yard and load them up with flowers, grasses, watermelons, or pumpkins as the seasons dictate.  In time, and with age and weather, we think they'll work well.

But as I was bending, standing, hobbling around my sawhorses, experimenting, screwing up, starting over, measuring, re-measuring, marking, cutting, re-cutting, drilling, screwing, sanding, and spraying, my mind was free to drift and float.

On Saturday night as I did 'bedtime' with our six-year-old daughter, Lauren, we played a memory game.  She's working on her math and, as we wound-down for the evening, with all the lights off in the room, she said, "Let's play a numbers game.  I need to work on my math, okay?" 

Into the ink-black darkness I said, "Okay.  How many curtains are in your room?" 

Her mind whirred through the room and she said, "Five."

"Yes, five," I replied.  "That's right.  Good.  Okay.  How many doors do we have upstairs?  Downstairs?  Be sure to count the closets, attic, and doorways with no 'literal' doors, okay?  And how many gates do we have outside?"

In time, she gave me great numbers for every question.  She was right-on.  And then she said the coolest thing,

"Isn't it neat that while my body is here in bed, my mind is roaming the house and yard?"

Y e s    i t    i s

It is, literally, mindblowing.

And as my body and hair and eyelashes and shoelaces and fuzzy legs and arms became covered and more covered with fine sawdust, my mind traveled to Beijing and Paris and London and Toronto and Phoenix and Toledo and Orlando and to the movie and grocery stores down the street and the mall across town and that terrible O'Hare which always strands me.  It roamed to cars and planes and people and politics.  To religion and mailboxes and dogs and squirrels.  To the wind that blew and the rain that fell and nearly ruined my tools, to the neighborhood boys revving their engines and blaring their tunes, to birds and ants and leaky roofs and mosquitos, and to the meals I could smell through the windows and the shower I longed to take when I was finished each evening.

And like our precious Lauren, growing inch by inch and word by word, I thought to myself, "Isn't it neat that while my body is here, my mind can go anywhere."

Y e s    i t    i s

The mind is a terrible thing to waste, but too often, I see organizations and leaders who don't allow (much less expect... demand...) their people to hope and dream and think.  And we confine people, and their minds, to cubicles and repetition.

Henry Ford once lamented, a century ago, "Why, when all I need is a pair of hands, do I have to get a whole person?"  (Yes, people are complicated, but oversimplifying the workplace so people can solely be more effectively 'managed' borders on malpractice.)  Toyota, and countless companies defined by 'predictability,' have found ways to ensure job enrichment and variety.  Have you?  After all, though it is indeed complicating, you get much, much more from a person when you demand they also think creatively and constructively about your business.  And yes, sometimes the most constructive changes arise like a phoenix in the face of 'creative destruction,' not unlike Market Darwinism and what we are seeing in broad scale around the world today.  

(There is an anecdote that Bill Gates, Sr. tells about his then-adolescent son.  After repeatedly yelling up the stairs at Bill, Jr. to come down and get in the car, his exasperated mother inquires, "WHAT are you DOING?"  "I'm thinking, Mom.  Don't you ever do that, too?" he replied.  Later that evening, his mother and father admit to one another, "No.  We really don't take enough time anymore to just think.  Just think.")

And no, I am not advocating 'daydreaming,' but I am encouraging you -- as a leader -- to facilitate and foster an environment in which people can indeed imagine and think, wherein you allow their minds to explore new and heretofore uncontemplated opportunities.  As they do at W.L. Gore, we should consider allowing people 'dabble time.'  It's where Gore finds breathable plastics and 3M finds Post-Its.

And for all of us, including my daughter and me, it's where we find doors and freedom.

Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake, but having heard this sentiment three times this past week from employees in different organizations, “message received!”

Indeed, there are many loser-bosses.  Why so surprised?  The rungs of leadership and management are not immune to the bell curve of life.

The succeeding questions, however, are what matter more: “Why?”  and more audaciously, “How can I remedy this?”

First, to the Why.  There are generally 5 Root Causes for Leadership Failure.  Quickly (lest this become a 10,000 word essay), they are:

1.     Selection: We’ve started with an acorn, hoping it will grow into a pecan tree.

2.     Understanding: The individual fails to grasp, intellectually, what is expected as a leader. 

3.     Behavior: The individual fails to acquire or master the skills required to blossom into leadership competence.

4.     Barriers: Whether personal (e.g., drama) or organizational (e.g., hierarchy, ambiguity, limited resources), there is an Achilles Heel that continually pulls the leader down and away from performance.

5.     Desire/Motivation: Sometimes resulting from the preceding, but often evolving from burnout or rustout, the leader simply fizzles out.

Considering these root causes and their branches, it’s relatively simple to pinpoint an individual’s reasons for failure.

And now, a tad on Remedy.  I will provide only the broadest of strokes and address just three factors here, because entire FIELDS and INDUSTRIES exist to fully remediate leadership deficits.

To develop a leader, just like a diamond, three key ‘environmental factors’ are helpful.  (This is to say ‘nothing’ of the perennially important ‘nature vs. nurture’ dialogue and innateness.) 

1.     First, great leadership generally emerges over Time if it is to sustain deep roots and broad leaves. 

2.     Second, enough Pressure must exist – in terms of consequences – to berm, direct, and focus leadership talent.  (This is the ‘push.’)

3.     Finally, enough Heat must exist – in terms of personal drive – to regularly motivate and inspire oneself to achieve, ascend, serve, contribute, sacrifice, whatever.  (This is the ‘pull.’)

From within environments where adequate mentors, coaches, and role models exist… where there is solid feedback and developmental opportunities combined through education and experience, organizations are more inclined to breed leaders.  All the more so when these leaders overcome the five roots of failure and experience the time, consequences, and motivation consistent with aspects of pressure cookers, kilns, or crucibles.

In short, if you want fewer “loser bosses,” start with the right seeds and afford them the right mixture of soil (which includes water, oxygen, sunlight, etc.) and fire.

Wow, do we have ambiguity in spades today, or what? 

Surely it’s not just my own little perception!

Surely not.

I’ve heard it by the truckload lately.  Here are four quotes from four different clients:

“There’s so much ambiguity that we cannot make decisions.”

“Our environment is rife with ambiguity; our people are wandering aimlessly.”

“We’re waiting for direction we know will never come.  Can you help us help our people to ‘lead through ambiguity?’”

“Until this economic mess clears up, we’re flat-footed.  We can’t seem to catch, roll, or run.  If it’s 2011 or 2012 by the time things improve, we’ll be long-dead by then.” 

What are leaders, organizations, employees to do?

The short answer is, “Leverage what you’ve got.”

As I described with one organization this past week, many entities currently resemble Swiss Cheese.  They’ve got ‘some’ of the answers, but not all.  Opportunity, challenge, and competitive advantage are found by those organizations FIRST able to fill in enough of the voids to move on.

It’s true… we NEVER have all the elements we need to form a perfect or complete answer.  But yes, we generally have a much clearer vision than today’s “survive.”  In lieu of that clear vision, there are many aspects of direction that we CAN marshal from the cheese.

For example, a sense of Purpose or Calling.  Values.  Key Strategy Categories like Talent Development (which includes dozens of helpful touchstones like recruitment, selection, development, appraisal, promotion, compensation, and succession planning), Image (branding, marketing, messaging, advertising, and promotion), and Financial (business economics, accounting methodologies, and anything remotely sales or revenue-related).

Sure, we may not have a full set of maps or navigational equipment, but we’ve been in the ocean before and we can generally make out a flicker from the distant lighthouse.  Knowing the storms are striking each market and industry differently, some organizations will need to identify and pursue entirely different beachheads and destinations, while others simply need to decelerate, accelerate, or make tiny course corrections. 

In the process of “organizational evolution” (lest one experience Market Darwinism and risk extinction through failing to adapt), we accept that DNA adapts slowly where at all.  Sweeping changes are less realistic or required than pivotal 1° tacks which, in the aggregate over time, generate significant transformation and success, all the while holding onto the riggings of what is familiar.

We know that for every sixty miles traveled, each degree of change throws us off course by one mile.  Said another way, even the smallest tweaks can take us to an entirely DIFFERENT, NEW, or BETTER destination.

Don’t let ambiguity cripple you or your organization’s ability to remain fixed on a long-term objective while accomplishing small and short-term wins.  They are indeed there, hoping against hope to be found.

I recently visited with an Operations Manager in a factory who was clearly distressed.  “But I learned something long ago that serves me well in times like these,” he said.  “Never get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, or Scared.  As long as I manage H, A, L, T, and S, I’ll be fine.”

Knowing that few things in the universe are ‘original,’ I Googled this acronym and discovered it originated as a mnemonic in the treatment of substance abusers, be they alcoholics or drug addicts.

Whomever it was originally designed to help, I love its simplicity, ‘memorability,’ and relevance.

Indeed, when we are too hungry – be it for food, drink, or practically anything, we make poor, immediate, irrational choices that we predictably regret later.

When we act out of anger, we are really re-acting.

When we become too lonely, we succumb to poor choices, depression, and thoughts of failure or inadequacy.

When we get tired, everything collapses.  We become agitated, distracted, and shadows of one’s self.

And when we get scared, we convert shadows into monsters and make big decisions in belittling ways because fear reduces us to fight or flight instincts.

H.A.L.T.S… I just love this handy little reminder, and hope that – while ideally you would never require it – perhaps it will serve you well in a needing moment.

As I listen to and exchange ideas with contemporary leaders on the front lines of today's economic battlefield, I am encountering a troubling theme. 

It revolves around a notion I wrote about several weeks ago... the 'treading water' phenomenon. 

So many leaders are 'waiting to see' what the new world of work will look like... that the 'see' is being thwarted and delayed!  It is a vicious, self-fulfilling cycle not unlike the 'prior experience required to be hired' dilemma we all faced as we exited school. 

To provide answers/clarity/solutions for clients and colleagues, we intend -- in the coming weeks -- to embark on a new Research Project. 

Here's where you come in.  We are in dire need of your help. 

We are in the early, embryonic stage of crafting, honing, and refining the Research Question itself.  Currently, it messily goes something like this:  

"What are the most burning Issues or Questions leaders need Answered for the burgeoning 'new world of work' and the 'to-be-determined' new 'social contract' between Employees and Employers to manifest?"

In simpler terms, "What the heck do employees need or expect from their 'bosses' in order to engage, thrive, re-commit?"  Or, "In our unstable environment, what can leaders and organizations realistically do to gain focus and performance from employees?"

But now I'm starting to put words in your mouth.  Here's the 'call to action;' the specific Ask and How You Can Help:

Please email us a stronger Research Question or whatever Issues or Questions you would like to better understand to more effectively lead your people in the 2009-2011 timeframe.  As our economy ebbs, flows, and ultimately reshapes itself, what burning Answers do you require?  What do you wish to understand?  Have a better handle on?  Need in order to more effectively lead your people?

Based on your responses, "TBLG" (The Blake Leath Group) will refine the fundamental research question with the most value to the most leaders -- and launch a research project that we hope will provide CONTEMPORARY (not re-hashed) tools, frameworks, or answers to serve you through this volatile season of ambiguity.

We are searching for both new wine and new wineskins and hope to make a statistically-oriented contribution that is equally scholarly and pragmatic in nature. 

Step 2 will be to ask you to recommend 5-10 leaders to participate in a subsequent Survey/Assessment/Questionnaire to be predicated on the final Research Question.

We anticipate a broad Umbrella Topic and various Sub-Topics, and TBLG will publish its findings in ways to be identified in coming weeks.

Thank you, in advance, for your responses.  Please email them directly to bleath@blakeleath.com.

"Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties."

                                                                                              J.A. Froude

Earlier today, I spoke with a man in Westford, Vermont.  "It's damn cold here," he shared.

Cold.  Yes, I remember that feeling.

But last week I was in Hawaii, this week I'm in Texas, and next week I'll be in California, which I'm sure will be glorious.

Several years ago, I attended a workshop in Montpelier, Vermont.  It was colder-than-cold.  (I don't fare too well in the cold.  Some people thrive, but my blood's so thick that I sputter and shake.  It's as if my fluids turn to sludge and the 'ol body just sorta seizes up.)  But wow, Montpelier was gorgeous, and it wasn't even Spring yet.  I'd love to go back some day.

I've spent my fair share of time in the cold around the world... scraping windshields, trudging through snowdrifts, fighting to open doors in the howling wind, wishing I had galoshes or waterproof socks, and sitting on miserable airplanes after midnight -- waiting for the de-icing machine to make its third pass.

But today, my observation is one about Weeds -- the sort that have been recently exposed across the blanket of our lawn as Spring hits our region.

Texas weeds are world-class.  Enormous, like the State they occupy.  And my, oh my, have we got some weeds in our yard.  As I gingerly wandered around our yard this past Sunday, I found weeds of all sorts and stripes. 

Broad, squatty weeds... the kind that hug the ground and hide too low to be whacked by the mower.

Circular, spindly weeds... the kind that run and shoot and trail off in countless directions like an octopus.

Bright, flowery weeds... the kind my daughter plucks and mistakes for flowers.

Tall, milky weeds... the kind that catch on your armpit as you wade through what might as well be a cornfield.

And dandelions... the kind of weed that reproduces so amply that rabbits and the octomom herself are shamed.

Meanwhile, in Vermont, it's cold.  And weeds will not be seen for weeks.  (This may be one instance where the grass really is greener somewhere else.  Or perhaps not.  The weeds certainly are.)

I think this contrast of Vermont v. Texas is a good reminder for us all.

Everything is seasonal.

Things grow, things die.  What came, went.  What is not, will be.

For many, it's still Winter.  For some, it's Spring.

And with Spring come Weeds.

As the tide turns with our economy (and it will, one day), the greener pastures we've been longing for all winter will be accompanied by weeds.

Some of us will greet the green with open arms like Puxtahawney Phil, eager to crawl out from the dark lair of winter.

But some will greet the green with derision, turning their noses up at imperfections and commenting snootily (as the critic Anton Ego in Ratatouille, played brilliantly by Peter O'Toole), "Oh.  Weeds."

I understand this.  This is human nature.  It is captured by turn in the notions of Selective Perception, Broken Windows Theory, Boiled Frog Phenomenon, The Pygmalion Effect, Target Fixation, and Chevreul's Pendulum.  Some people are simply inclined to see the smudge on the Rembrandt. 

No matter; it is what it is and they are who they are.

But alas, for you and me -- however frustrated we might be when Spring is accompanied by those buggery, parasitic Weeds -- let us revel in the fact that Winter has gone and Summer is but a couple months away. 

The world is full of people who only see the weeds in the meadow.  So be it.  Though they themselves might very well be weeds in our own organizations, everything and everyone has a purpose.  With the toil that is required to remove or tame whatever challenges lie in our path comes the appreciation of all we have and the joy its beauty brings.

In these days when our respective governments are taking actions to curtail, quarantine, and repair our ravaged economies, I cannot help but equate their work with plastic surgeons.  Plastic surgery seems to be one of those very delicate pursuits.  With just the right nip or tuck, ducklings might become swans.  But too many surgeries, or too radical... and we have a Michael Jackson problem of disfiguration.

There are no panaceas for the ills that have befallen us.  What is required is transformative, systemic, holistic change that will take years of exercise and diet to manifest fully into a healthier global economy.  This is perfectly representative of one situation in which morality must indeed see farther than intellect, because there is no chance that everything that will be tried will work right out of the chute. 

There will be foibles and mis-steps, errors and blunders.  Such is the case with governing, with public policy, and with complex issues that span countries, cultures, and currencies.

But as the gardeners demonstrate, with a little patience and pruning, together we can plant and nurture a healthy and lush field everyone can enjoy.

This is a first-hand account from a passenger (Gerry McNamara) aboard the infamous US Airways flight 1549.  Mr. McNamara is a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles in NYC. 

Several weeks ago, we learned a great deal about Captain "Sully" Sullenberger, the heroic pilot who handily guided the plane to safety. 

I thought you might enjoy another perspective, which follows below and comes in the form of an internal correspondence that Mr. McNamara shared with his colleagues.

Of particular interest are Mr. McNamara's lessons, shared at the end.

Thursday was a difficult day for all of us at the firm and I left the Park Avenue office early afternoon to catch a cab bound for LaGuardia Airport.  I was scheduled for a 5pm departure, but able to secure a seat on the earlier flight scheduled to leave at 3pm.  As many of us who fly frequently often do, I recall wondering if I'd just placed myself on a flight I shouldn't be on! 

Just prior to boarding I finished up a conference call with my associate, Jenn Sparks (New York), and our placement, the CIO of United Airlines.  When I told him that I was about to board a US Airways flight, we all had a little fun with it.  I remember walking on the plane and seeing a fellow with grey hair in the cockpit and thinking "that's a good thing... I like to see grey hair in the cockpit!"  I was seated in 8F, on the starboard side window and next to a young business man.

The New York to Charlotte flight is one I've taken what seems like hundreds of times over the years.  We take off north over the Bronx and as we climb, turn west over the Hudson River to New Jersey and tack south.  I love to fly, always have, and this flight plan gives a great view of several NY landmarks including Yankee Stadium and the George Washington Bridge.  I had started to point out items of interest to the gentleman next to me when we heard a terrible crash -- a sound no one ever wants to hear while flying -- and then the engines wound down to a screeching halt.

10 seconds later, there was a strong smell of jet fuel.  I knew we would be landing and thought the pilot would take us down no doubt to Newark Airport.  As we began to turn south I noticed the pilot lining up on the river -- still -- I thought -- en route for Newark.  Next thing we heard was "Brace for impact!" -- a phrase I had heard many years before as an active duty Marine Officer but never before on a commercial air flight. 

Everyone looked at each other in shock.  It all happened so fast we were astonished!  

We began to descend rapidly and it started to sink in.  This is the last flight.  I'm going to die today.  This is it.  I recited my favorite bible verse, the Lord's Prayer, and asked God to take care of my wife, children, family and friends. 

When I raised my head I noticed people texting their friends and family... getting off a last message.  My blackberry was turned off and in my trouser pocket... no time to get at it. 

Our descent continued and I prayed for courage to control my fear and help if able.  I quickly realized that one of two things was going to happen, neither of them good.  We could hit by the nose, flip and break up, leaving few if any survivors, bodies, cold water, fuel.  Or we could hit one of the wings and roll and flip with the same result.  I tightened my seat belt as tight as I could possibly get it so I would remain intact.  

As we came in for the landing, I looked out the windows and remember seeing the buildings in New Jersey, the cliffs in Weehawken, and then the piers.  The water was dark green and sure to be freezing cold.  The stewardesses were yelling in unison: "Brace! Brace! Brace!" It was a violent hit -- the water flew up over my window -- but we bobbed up and were all amazed that we remained intact.  

There was some panic -- people jumping over seats and running towards the doors, but we soon got everyone straightened out and calmed down.  

There were a lot of people that took leadership roles in little ways.  Those sitting at the doors over the wing did a fantastic job... they were opened in a New York second!  Everyone worked together -- teamed up and in groups to figure out how to help each other.  I exited on the starboard side of the plane, 3 or 4 rows behind my seat through a door over the wing and was, I believe, the 10th or 12th person out.  I took my seat cushion as a flotation device and once outside saw I was the only one who did... none of us remembered to take the yellow inflatable life vests from under the seat. 

We were standing in 6-8 inches of water and it was freezing.  

There were two women on the wing, one of whom slipped off into the water.  Another passenger and I pulled her back on and had her kneel down to keep from falling off again.  By that point we were totally soaked and absolutely frozen from the icy wind.  The ferries were the first to arrive, and although they're not made for rescue, they did an incredible job.  I know this river, having swum in it as a boy.  The Hudson is an estuary -- part salt and part fresh water -- and moves with the tide.  I could tell the tide was moving out because we were tacking slowly south towards Ellis Island, The Statue of Liberty, and The Battery.  The first ferry boat pulled its bow up to the tip of the wing, and the first mate lowered the Jacobs ladder down to us.  We got a couple people up the ladder to safety, but the current was strong pushing the stern of the boat into the inflatable slide and we were afraid it would puncture it... there must have been 25 passengers in it by now.  Only two or three were able to board the first ferry before it moved away.  Another ferry came up, and we were able to get the woman that had fallen into the water on the ladder, but she just couldn't move her legs and fell off.  Back onto the ladder she went, however, the ferry had to back away because of the swift current.  A helicopter arrived on station (nearly blowing us all off the wing) and followed the ferry with the woman on the ladder.  We lost view of the situation but I believe the helicopter lowered its basket to rescue her.  As more ferries arrived, we were able to get people up on the boats a few at a time.  The fellow in front of me fell off the ladder and into the water.  When we got him back on the ladder he could not move his legs to climb.  I couldn't help him from my position so I climbed up the ladder to the ferry deck where the first mate and I hoisted the Jacobs ladder with him on it... when he got close enough we grabbed his trouser belt and hauled him on deck.  

We were all safely off the wing.  We could not stop shaking.  Uncontrollable shaking.  

The only thing I had with me was my blackberry, which had gotten wet and was not working.  (It started working again a few hours later).  The ferry took us to the Weehawken Terminal in NJ where I borrowed a phone and called my wife to let her know I was okay.  The second call I made was to Jenn.  I knew she would be worried about me and could communicate to the rest of the firm that I was fine.  

At the terminal, first responders assessed everyone's condition and sent people to the hospital as needed.  

As we pulled out of Weehawken my history kicked in and I recall it was the site of the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804.  Thankfully I left town in better condition than Mr. Hamilton who died of a mortal wound the next day!  

I stayed with my sister on Long Island that evening, then flew home the next day.  I am struck by what was truly a miracle.  Had this happened a few hours later, it would have been pitch dark and much harder to land.  Ferries would no longer have been running after rush hour and it would not have been the same uplifting story.  Surely there would have been fatalities, hypothermia, an absolute disaster! 

I witnessed the best of humanity that day.  I and everyone on that plane survived and have been given a second chance.  

It struck me that in our work we continuously seek excellence to solve our client's leadership problems.  We talk to clients all the time about the importance of experience and the ability to execute.  Experience showed up big-time on flight 1549 as our pilot was a dedicated, trained, experienced professional who executed flawlessly when he had to. 

I have received scores of emails from across the firm and I am so grateful for the outpouring of interest and concern.  We all fly a great deal or work with someone who does and so I wanted to share this story -- the story of a miracle.  I am thankful to be here to tell the tale. 

There is a great deal to be learned including: Why has this happened to me?  Why have I survived and what am I supposed to do with this gift?  For me, the answers to these questions and more will come over time, but already I find myself being more patient and forgiving, less critical and judgmental. 

For now I have 4 lessons I would like to share:  

1. Cherish your families as never before and go to great lengths to keep your promises.  

2. Be thankful and grateful for everything you have and don't worry about the things you don't have. 

3. Stay in shape.  You never know when you'll be called upon to save your own life, or help someone else save theirs. 

4. When you fly, wear practical clothing.  You never know when you'll end up in an emergency or on an icy wing in flip flops and pajamas and of absolutely no use to yourself or anyone else. 

And I'd like to add: Fly with gray-haired pilots!

Knowing NOTHING about Jackson Pollock, his place in the pantheon of American artists, or the fact that one of his paintings sold for $140 Million U.S. Dollars, I subsequently watched Pollock, directed by and starring Ed Harris. 

When it was over, I had one distinct reaction: Disappointment.

Not in the movie, which was fine enough, but in the life and loss of Jackson Pollock himself.  The absolute 'unrealized potential.'

I know that may surprise, given his work and how highly art critics, collectors, and historians regard it, but setting all that aside -- the man's LIFE was tragic.  Manic depressive, alcoholic, philanderer... just lost and wayward.  Read for yourself, if interested. 

Thankfully, he found what appeared to be some periodic, transient (though ultimately fleeting) moments of peace in the faithfulness of his wife and fellow artist, Lee Krasner.

It's impossible to complete the documentary and movie without thinking of others who experienced the "Behind the Music" arc of Obscurity, Struggle, Moonshot Fame, Excess, Demons, Loss, Collapse, Dissolution.  (Beyond question, fans are fickle and fame is fleeting, but that's not my focus here today.  Nor is the undeniable amount of collateral damage that one individual creates through his or her own self-destruction.) 

The dubious 'honor roll' of those who died as a result of their own doing, who regrettably and tragically saw their Gifts and Talents pass through their fingers like fists of sand is a long list indeed.  Too long.

And then there are those who remain among us, but whose lives of unrealized potential linger on, zombie-like.  Their possessors are alive, but the talents themselves appear dormant or atrophied, like a limb exercised infrequently or none at all.

I think, too, of Dennis Rodman, Mike Tyson, and the countless other souls who, despite their once-greatness, find themselves 'cast' in what appears to be some recurring, off-Broadway play entitled, "Good Once, but Gone Now."

When I think of these lives, I'm not pacified with the contention that they were "awesome in their day or way."  Instead, I always wonder, "But what might they have been?  What could they have accomplished, given healthier upbringings, robust life-management skills, stronger coping mechanisms, broader perspectives, or even hope or meaning or garden variety love?" 

Would they still have hungered... had the fire in their bellies to achieve 'exemplarity' in the first place?

Perhaps.  And perhaps not. 

We'll likely never know, and the phenomenon will continue in perpetuity, a constant virus in the strain of life.

But there are those who accomplish many great things and carry on -- carry on for years and years, slogging through the quicksand and briars of life -- with grace and perspective in equal measure.

I know the legacy of Abraham Lincoln has received a renewed heaping of appreciation these recent months, but it gets me thinking.  What tragedies he sustained, what depression he and his wife fought, what sadness he experienced, including the greatest loss any parent can endure, the death of a child.  And in the White House, no less.  The apex of achievement, rendered potentially meaningless by such catastrophe.

But he rose.  Again, and again, and again, Mr. Lincoln rose. 

Among so many other admirable qualities, it's his perseverance that marks me the most.

I'm reminded of a childhood football coach who once admonished, "Leath, I don't care how many times they take you to your knees.  I care how many times you rise to your feet."

Let's commit to encouraging one another, to realizing our potential -- whatever we understand it to be -- and in the doing so, to achieving in reality what we possess in potentiality.

Several days ago, our six-year-old daughter brought home her most recent Report Card.

The 'Academic Subjects' include Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Composition, Reading, and Spelling.

The 'Fine Arts & Specials' include Art, Music, Spanish, and Physical Education.

And then there are a dozen or so 'Life Skills' that include things like 'Accepts Responsibility, Demonstrates Organization, Exhibits a Positive Attitude,' and so forth.

She brought it home as she always does, given she is in First Grade... with beaming hope and curiosity, not knowing what it means or how she did.  Ah, the innocence of youth.  Soon enough, the world will clamp down upon her, and Report Cards will become more than they ever should be; they will become perversely internalized -- as they are by too many -- as a measure of one's own worth.  I did that; perhaps you did too.  Get straight A's, and all is right with the world.  Get a C, and the end is near.

So there we stand, all three of us in the kitchen.  My daughter has placed the Report Card on the kitchen table, that her mother and I will review and interpret it.  And so we do.

My eyes scan the categories.  Making sense of them, I then scan down the columns, quickly taking in the grades.  97, 98, 99, 96, 97, 99, 97...

Fixating first (and solely) on the 96, I say into the face of my beaming daughter, "96.  Talk to me about 'Language Composition.'  What's going on there?"

And so we talk for a few minutes about this lowest grade.

After a few minutes, my wife elbows me in the ribs.  Clearing her throat, she looks at Lauren and exuberates, "Wow, you're doing really great.  You must be enjoying yourself; just look at all these awesome scores!"

See the difference?  (Just recounting it makes me feel so ashamed of myself.)

I, like most people, fixated immediately on the 'lowest marks' and the 'perceived failures,' working immediately to understand them, in hopes that they might be improved or repaired.  (As if a 96 in First Grade is anything worrisome.)

My wife, however, focused on the exemplarity of Lauren's scores, affirming and encouraging her.  (One can see so readily how the slippery slope of well-meaning but poorly executed 'parental Report Card reviews' begins.  Left to my own devices, I'm sure that by the 3rd grade, Lauren would twitch as she approached me... sheepishly handing me her Report Card with her eyes cast downward!)

Realizing my own error, I quickly caught on and joined my wife's tact and together we worked with Lauren to understand ALL of her Report Card.  By the end, she was indeed where any parent would like for his or her child to be: affirmed, encouraged, educated, and aware of the opportunities and strengths and prepared to address and extend them all.

The clarion irony is The Lesson Was On Me.

On a regular basis, I am teaching the lesson that my wife had to demonstrate for me; the very same lesson that Marcus Buckingham and countless others have written about.  From Selective Perception, Broken Windows Theory, and the Boiled Frog Phenomenon to the Pygmalion Effect, Target Fixation, and Chevreul's Pendulum... we see again and again the relationship between Vision, the Mind, and Behavior.  We know that we are to acknowledge and address shortcomings, but more importantly, that we should focus upon and extend strengths with great fervor, as these are indeed Talents that should not go unexploited.

Over the years, having supervised dozens of trainers, teachers, and consultants, I have seen all of them periodically deflated or devastated by 'course' or 'project evaluations' that were not 100% positive.  It's amazing (though totally understandable) to see a forty-year-old professional, adept to a zenith of near flawlessness, emotionally decimated by a handful of poor or low 'scores' received out of hundreds. 

Specifically, there is one course in particular which comes to mind that five of us team-teach twice annually.  This class generally has around 150 participants.  By way of a representative example, I recall the Friday evaluations after a long week of instruction a few years ago.  One of my colleagues received a '5' (perfect score) from 138 participants.  A handful of the remaining scores were 4's, and there was one 2 and one 1. 

That's amazing.  92% of the participants perceived this instructor as Excellent... essentially without demerit.  7% perceived him as Above Average.  Approximately 1% of the participants were critical.

In short, the instructor blew the socks off nearly everyone.  A few important outliers disagreed, yes, but that's it.

In my book, that's irrefutable success, because to my way of thinking, when an instructor gets perfect 5's across the board, he or she is not taking enough risks.  Not challenging the students.  Not questioning them, pushing back, calling them on the carpet.  Not probing their paradigms or pushing for change.  Generally, he or she is 'entertraining...' performing a well-rehearsed routine or shtick, playing for some broad laughs along the way, but not really consulting.  I've seen it far too often.  A student provides an anemic answer (however well-intentioned it may be), and the instructor congratulates him rather than converting it into a teachable moment. 

Or a facilitator refuses to deviate from the pre-printed lesson plan, thereby missing the real-time moments to address immediate and expressed needs.  Any material exists only to serve us, not the other way around.  The most powerful sessions I've ever attended were often those during which the facilitator took a risk and said, "Tell you what.  I'm observing all sorts of issues that our planned agenda won't address.  Out the window it goes; let's get real with each other and start over.  Where shall we begin?"  This responsiveness differentiates professionals from amateurs, so don't be hard on yourself when improvising; it's the hallmark of a good teacher. 

When entertraining, the entire potential of a given course is essentially betrayed by the pursuit for comfort, likability, popularity, fun, appeasement, and accommodation.  (Limited learning occurs, but the instructor sure was cool!)  And when sticking so closely to a training script as to not deviate when necessary, a teacher misses untold extemporaneous opportunities to meet students where they are.  ("I didn't resolve any pressing needs, but at least I covered all my slides and the pages in the binder.  Yea me!")   

Mark Twain wrote, "If we both agree, one of us is unnecessary."

Differences of opinion are the starting point of knowledge, and it is through the expression of varying perceptions that we grow and learn from one another.

The key, as my wife gently prodded me while reviewing the Report Card, is to retain perspective.  To see beyond the outliers or perceived deficiencies to the massive trend of successes and strengths.

My conscientious instructor, the one who received poor feedback from 1% of our participants, called me on Saturday after our long flight home.  I was exhausted and recuperating, and his voice sounded thin and tired like mine.  "I've been thinking," he began.  "Do you think I'm really cut out to do this?  I feel that I failed you.  The team.  The client, even."

"Oh, my.  No, no, no, no," I responded.  "Listen, it may take you several days and one unicorn success to put this behind you.  I understand; I've been there, too.  Anyone who tries has.  The short answer is: 92% success is not failure.  I'm proud of you; you were superb.  You invested the hours to prepare, you had your A-game on, and just because a few people didn't fall in love with you does not approximate, in any conscionable way, a failure."

We spoke for quite a while.  It took some time to talk him off the ledge he had wandered upon.  It wasn't until he had succeeded 'wildly and on his own terms' some days later that he regained his confidence.

Participants, managers, employees, spouses... individuals of all sorts and stripes can be very critical and judgmental.  They are not to be faulted, as it's human nature to judge others.  We come by it quite naturally, though that does not make it right. 

Sit 100 people down in front of a flipchart pad with a small blue dot on it, and what will 99 people say they see?  "A blue dot."

How many will say, "I see a whole lot of white space, and a blue dot."  About 1 in 100.  (Try it; you'll see.)

One of our responsibilities as leaders is to demonstrate grace, understanding, and humility.  We are all flawed, horrifically so.  And we all rely mutually on one another to succeed.  Today's economic environment is difficult enough; employees don't need another knife in their back.  Learn from my mistakes and be better -- be a constructive conduit, not a critic.  Give people the benefit of the doubt, and realize that the appropriate and logical slack you cut another for his or her human-ness is the slack you'll desire for yourself one day.

My final encouragement to you is to realize the vast capacity and successes of yourself and those around you; to acknowledge the A's (and affirm them) and keep the C's in perspective.  Don't let your shortcomings consume your magnificence.

If any of us is expected to achieve 100% perfection, I can guarantee a life of misery and unslakeable thirst that contorts one's existence into a twist of perpetual disappointment like the ouroboros... the snake always consuming its own tail.

Be lifted, as I have been by those who love, coach, and care for me along the way.  Work to improve your shortcomings, as we all must, but take great joy in your talents, gifts, and successes.  Life is rife with joy-robbers and critics, but as Teddy Roosevelt reminded us:

Lots of folks are requesting literature like this.  I hope it falls on big eyes and itching ears.

Five Missteps to Avoid in Volatile Times.pdf (118.98 kb)

My father shared an interesting story with me the other day about a dear family friend who passed away.  Fortunately, upon hearing of his illness, my parents moved quickly -- rushed to the hospital to be at his side and to visit with his wife.  He died later that same evening.

Today, I have attended several meetings.  The first one included an overview from an architect and emphasized the importance of a Master Plan for a potential project.  The second described the necessity of a Project Plan for a particular project.  The third detailed a specific Plan for an ongoing project, and the fourth meeting -- you guessed it -- included an Overview & Status Update on a current project!

In each of these instances, the words of my mother ring true: "Better to overdo than underdo."

In the case of the Master Plan, we know the additional expenses and change-orders that arise in the absence of pre-planning can be exorbitant.  In the cases of Project Plans and ongoing Status Updates, I am reminded of the carpenter's colloquialism, "Measure twice, cut once."

This very day, our Senate is wrestling with an Economic Recovery Package/Stimulus Plan.  If our lawmakers are not careful, they might very well make things worse.  (a big surprise for some of you, i'm sure.  unfathomable, isn't it?)  Harvard economist Martin Feldstein commented the other day, "$800 Billion is a terrible thing to waste."  And Larry Summers (controversial former President of Harvard University and current Director of the National Economic Council in the Obama Administration) commented that whatever government does, it should be "targeted, timely, and temporary."  Amen.

To my way of thinking, I like the potentially paradoxical combination of these three ideas:

1. Better to overdo than underdo.

2. Measure twice, cut once.

3. When rescuing, be targeted, timely, and temporary.

A dear friend of mine, who today is wildly successful in every sense of the word, grew up impoverished.  Many years ago, as he and I were discussing welfare and the like, he commented, "The poor need a helping hand, not a handout.  Just facilitate, don't rescue.  It preserved my pride and gave me all I needed -- opportunity and access."

As leaders, this crisis is alchemy -- the opportunity to take ordinary parts and create an extraordinary whole through the right combination of support + access.  What began as a mortgage collapse exacerbated by credit default swaps and a full-scale financial and economic embolism provides a phenomenal OPPORTUNITY for the United States to right the ship.  But haste makes waste, and while there is very little time remaining to 'move quickly,' it's key that whatever will be done... be done well.  Otherwise, we'll simply add insult to injury and worsen an already complicated morass.

But from the individual perspective, which is the only one we control, I propose we focus on doing right in all the little things; erring on the side of exceeding customer expectations, building strong and informed plans (pre-thinking as much as possible), and being targeted and timely.  

Like a child's training wheels, they've got to come off some day.  Our responsibility is to ready the rider for independence so he/she can perform beyond our existence... and this can most effectively happen when we err on the side of "pre-habilitation and pre-planning," lest we remain forever in the process of "re-habilitation and rescue."

Like food coloring or plastic surgery, if we're not careful -- we'll add just one drop too many; perform one surgery too many -- and create an unintentionally eugenicized country that was neither what we settled, nor what our founding fathers set out to create.

Tomorrow is Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009, and while I am no Presidential scholar, I sense the weight and significance of the day deep in my bones.  Perhaps more importantly, I sense the promise.

I know that many are hanging great hopes on President-elect Obama, hopes that are unlikely to be achieved by any mortal.  Likewise, many others write derogatorily about him, continuing the whispering campaigns that began 2+ years ago now.

But my comments today are apolitical and apartisan.  Instead, I mean to reflect on the forthcoming Obama Administration from a Leadership perspective.  Admittedly, when I watch the news at night, as I did last night, there are so many nuances to the political machinery that is the United States that I periodically find myself recalling the words of Oscar Wilde, who once wrote, "I am not young enough to know everything."  Regardless, there are things I do understand -- that we ALL understand deep in our souls.  It is a few of these understandings that I wish to mention, however briefly, today.

First and foremost, on January 15, 2009, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 80 years old.  He gave his infamous, I Have a Dream speech 46 years ago.  A number of people were interviewed on TV last night describing the significance of this Presidency, and as tears flowed and the history of slavery in the United States was recounted from the year 1619 forward, the profundity of Inauguration Day was palpable.  By now, we all know Obama's history quite well... white mother, distant father, raised by Grandparents, Hawaii, Harvard.  Arguably, this arc could become as well-known as Lincoln's one day. 

Which brings me to a second observation.  As Obama stood in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial yesterday and addressed the crowd, those who had just moments prior tuned-out U2, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Usher, and other musicians, the contrast was stark.  When Obama took to the podium, all eyes were fixed on him and the crowd grew silent.  All of us who have respected and read Lincoln with admiration could not help but be moved by the fulfillment of Lincoln's aspirations in our soon-to-be 44th President.  It took us long enough to get here, but we're well on our way now.

And so, a third point.  There are many in the halls of academia, politics, popular culture, the media, and the streets and halls and churches and synagogues across America who are dialoguing about the progress we have made on the battlefield of racism.  Or, as some argue, the lack of progress still.  Indeed, the battle is far from over, as one cannot help but notice as he traverses this country.  Bigotry has always and will always exist.  It is a symptom of the hardships of life.  But indeed, Inauguration Day will mark a turning point and will serve as a beacon for many.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you must keep moving forward."  It was said yesterday that Lincoln crawled so King could walk so Obama could run so our children could fly.  My goodness.  If that doesn't bring tears to your eyes then you're not alive.

Fourth, it is against this canvas of history that we see HOPE in all its radiant glory.  The American people have a history of electing the right leader for the time, and as has been said before, "Hope beats Fear in most elections."  I'm sure that Tuesday's Inauguration Speech will be a blend of Lincoln, Kennedy, Roosevelt, and yet be uniquely Obama.  He will predictably describe the difficult years ahead, the trade-offs and sacrifices that must be made, the Grand Bargains and dampening of expectations we must accept, and then plant seeds of soaring hope and rhetoric that can only be fulfilled if we all join together.  The past few years have been difficult for all Americans, and many lives have been lost protecting our borders and citizens.  A complicated inheritance lies at the feet of Obama and his circle.  A Pandora's Box if there ever was one.  We cannot expect that Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Economy, Healthcare, Education and a myriad of other pressing challenges will be resolved to anyone's satisfaction within one Administration.  Indeed, I'm certain these issues are a complicated morass that is worsened by bureaucracy and the gunk that retards any democracy committed to choirs vs. soloists.  As we learned in grade school, "Any number times zero equals zero."  So tape-up and suit-up; we've got to take the field together if we stand any chance of winning the war on mediocrity, failure, and stagnation that has strangled our K-12 public education system, our worldwide reputation, our ability to create and implement progressive reform across industries, technologies, sciences, and social infrastructure.    

And finally, an observation on the importance of listening, curiosity, and remaining a lifelong student.  In the months leading up to the November 2008 Presidential Election, as we all engaged in bipartisan debates about the candidates, anyone who stood far enough back from the fray to observe the behaviors of Obama couldn't help but be impressed by one singular distinction: his approach to problem-solving.  For decades, I have been disillusioned by politics, having seen elected official after elected official who failed to keep his campaign promises, who lived a life of hypocrisy and absent-integrity (by preaching 'family values' while involved in a debaucherous lifestyle), but most importantly -- by seeing the absence of an 'abundance mentality.'  Like the racoon in Where the Red Fern Grows, our elected officials seem to latch onto their party's shiny silver object, whatever that object is, and never let go.  They conduct closed-door meetings, they exclude others with potentially brilliant insights, they do what their gut tells them, they remain committed to their personal convictions and ways of thinking, however shallow or poor they may be.  Sure, all great leaders demonstrate a courage and fortitude, but only ignorant leaders presume they know all or perhaps even enough.  If we are to know anything, we must often exit our inner-circle and seek wisdom wherever it may be.  

I've commented to my wife (often after seeing luminaries like George Will and others who have such a broad grasp of the body of knowledge of politics), "I wish our President would just go to dinner with a bunch of folks like George and treat them as a Think Tank.  It could only help to get a more well-rounded perspective."  And so, with great delight, I watched the footage of Obama at an intimate dinner party at George Will's house no less, along with nine other conservative intellectuals.  What I would have given to have been a fly on THAT wall.

But this is promising, regardless of your political viewpoints, because it demonstrates what unquestionably worked so well for Lincoln: the surrounding of oneself with counter-views and disparate thinking.  Through divergent thinking, we then converge on a solution that is robust, well-rounded, and ultimately the most informed.  Indeed, it will be Obama's Presidency and Administration, and I have no doubt that he will make his own decisions and perhaps periodically, 'from the gut.'  But his process of arriving at those decisions will be a rigorous one, inviting skeptics and naysayers and conservatives and the like to the table for a healthy debate and dialogue.

You gotta love that.  It's what this country is predicated on and, like any great democracy, it's what's required to move forward.

Like it or not, we're off to the races now.  We've got many hurdles ahead, lots of water-jumps and perilous conditions, fierce competitors, a rowdy crowd, and more saboteurs than we can count.  As for my prediction regarding our placement in the upcoming photo finish, I like what they say... "Whether we think we can win or think we can't, we're right."

This afternoon, a client asked, "Do you have any clever recommendations for how I might go about finding coaches for all my managers?"

Ah so, indeed I do.

Try here: www.29000feet.com

I know the company well, and they're great.  Though they chide me for it, I refer to them as "e-Harmony for Coaches."  Specifically, they'll hook you up.  Customers (whether 'coaches' or 'coachees') simply complete a few fields about themselves and the computer algorithm matches "those in need" with "those who can help."  And vice versa.

Pretty slick.

Enjoy! 

Friday -- yesterday -- was our daughter's last day of school "for FIFTEEN days!"

As she bounded in the door at the conclusion of her day, she shot her fisted-hands into the air and shouted, "It's over!"

...you should have seen the look on her face when we reminded her that she had piano this morning at 9AM.  It was as if she was in high school, circa 1984, and someone shouted, "Psyche!"

After a slow, cold start, she enjoyed piano this morning, and as we walked to the car to return home from the lesson, she shot her fisted-hands into the air and shouted, "I'm done!"

...and now, officially, she is.

We can commence with her Christmas holiday, returning her to school some two weeks from now.

Her exuberance reminded me of something.  (Yes, it certainly reminded me of my own childhood and that feeling when school was indeed over, if only temporarily, and both lazy and fun days were ahead.)

But it also reminded me of something I see with many leaders:  the failure to CELEBRATE SUCCESSES.

A close second to 'communication,' the failure to celebrate workplace successes is an all-too-common ailment.

It's as if the employees arrive at the top of Mt. Everest, red-faced, breathing heavily, stooped over, and the boss (looking forward to the horizon and future peaks & projects to summit) shouts, "NEXT!"

Wide-eyed, the employees nearly pass out.  "Are you kidding me?" they think.

As year-end approaches, promise me that one of the New Year Resolutions that you do keep will be this one: acknowledge successes, relish them, enjoy them... and allow people to savor them before proceeding to the next fire.  Even if it's only a couple days, a simple pizza party, or hearfelt words or cards.  Do something by allowing them to fill dead-air with laughter, celebration, and congratulatory praise.  THEN, and only then, tackle the next summit.

People can summit only so many mountains and extinguish so many fires before they themselves collapse or burn out.  We each can learn a great deal from professionals who practice deep and prolonged recovery techniques to recharge the 'ol batteries.  And yes, there are ways to do this in today's harried environment.

But for today, just remember that "It's over" and "I'm done" followed by a "PSCYHE!" wasn't funny in high school, and it sure ain't funny now.

While some of you might appreciate this less than others, there are a number of you who will -- and you know who you are! -- absolutely love this series with Marcus Buckingham on Oprah, taking participants through his materials for these difficult times.

http://www.oprah.com/article/money/career/pkgmarcus/20080401_orig_marcusbuckingham_course

Enjoy or ignore; I've done my part by pointing! 

Earlier this week, I had dinner with a Dane and learned a great deal more about Copenhagen and Christmas.

Bottom-line: Christmas is SUPER-BIG in Denmark.  Much bigger than it is in the United States, and that's saying something.

http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/content/press/press_information/sights_events/basic_facts_about_christmas

My wife and I spent one of our loveliest Christmases in London many years ago, and I'm assured that London and Paris "pale by comparison" to how Copenhagen celebrates the holiday.  That's also saying something.

Alas, one of the main traditions I learned about that struck my fancy was the importance of elves.  Who doesn't love elves?  What's not to love?  Are you an elf-hater?  Surely not... presumably most if not all of us are elf-o-philes!

Anyway, one of the roles of elves in Denmark is to provide periodic, tiny treats and surprises prior to Christmas Day.  Little 'breadcrumbs,' if you will -- to help children endure the countdown, which begins... get ready for it... in July!

So anyway, I'm listening to stories about the machinations involved in the 'countdown to Christmas,' and it occurs to me, "I gotta get me an elf!"

And so, I return from my trip, walk in the door, and what do you think my wife has purchased?  Entirely without my having said A WORD about this... get ready for it... AN ELF!

I am not kidding you.  Not one iota.

In a gleaming white box, she possesses an "Elf on the Shelf."

http://www.elfontheshelf.com/#/home

She explains to me how we are to move him around at night, place him here and there in the remaining days to Christmas.  Wow; that's perfect.  Adorable.  He's about 8" tall and all garb'd out in red and white.  Pointy hat, the whole deal.

(bear with me; yes -- this has to do with work.)

So, that night, my wife and I tag-team bedtime and explain to our six-year-old daughter how this ELF has arrived at our home to observe and see if Lauren is being naughty or nice.  The elf, whom we name Peter, is to return to the North Pole each night, along with all elves, to report back to Santa.

It's adorable, though my daughter is initially creeped-out by it all.  "Really?  He's going to be WATCHING me?"  (Yeah, sort of like Anthony Hopkins' ventriloquist's doll in Magic http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077889/).

Well, eventually she recovers from the potential-paranoia, and really gets into it.  Now, each morning, she awakes to find him all over the house... by the window, on a shelf, behind the advent calendar, in a drawer.... you name it, Peter's there.

And it occurs to me, as things do when I'm still and quiet and pondering, "What we BELIEVE so profoundly affects how we behave."

I've expressed this for years, that our BELIEFS precede most everything that follows: values, behaviors, organizational design, management philosophy and bias, treatment of others, etc. 

For example, some people treat "those whom they believe can benefit them" well.   Conversely, they treat "everyone else" poorly.  That's why shows like Secret Millionaire http://www.fox.com/secretmillionaire/ are so fun to watch: we're in on the secret, and thrill to see how people embrace or miss opportunities because of their suppositions and predispositions and biases about others.

This notion of WHAT WE BELIEVE AFFECTS WHAT FOLLOWS touches on self-fulfilling prophecy (which I've written about before), on our marketplace, and of course -- on relationships. 

Once Lauren got past the initial skepticism and doubt and fear, and came to see Peter doing silly and encouraging things (like eating M&M's while pointing at dirty clothes on the floor that needed to be picked up), she really got into it, and now she awakes each morning, eager to find where Peter is and what he's up to.  It's an adorable kick.

As leaders, as managers, as employees, as citizens, as parents, as people... what we believe has such a powerful determinacy to it.  Like the Danes, we see months of energy put toward a celebration that generates pride and joy by millions.  Like the elf, we see how something so tiny -- like the trimtab on a sailboat -- can create such dramatic effects on the behavior and attitude of a family.

I encourage you to always remember the importance of beliefs, whatever they are.  "We can solve this."  "This cannot be solved."  "This will get better."  "This will never heal."  "I am worthy."  "I am inadequate."  "I am okay."  "I am a miserable failure."  "I am loved."  "I am unlovable."  "Peter is creepy."  "Peter is cute."

I believe in you, I believe that people can change (and have seen it countless times over the years), I believe that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things (and moreover, that no one is ordinary), I believe that most people can lead, and I believe in Christmas.

I also believe in the potential of humankind to make this a better world; fallible, fallen, and flawed, yes.  But worth fighting for.

May you, too, possess beliefs that enable you to bound from bed each morning and tackle the day with joy.

Rock on; have a stellar weekend.

Continuing then, from my prior post --- HERE'S A TINY EXAMPLE of what it means to live in a possibility mindset.

You MUST watch this; it's only 00:03:37, and you'll enjoy every second:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLF9iEXnBRo

Have a stellar weekend; sing your lungs out. 

I spoke with a dear client this morning who commented, "Blake -- our people have lost their way.  Business is tough, we're pounding for more sales where there are none, and I don't know how much longer we can hold our breath."

Ah, yes, that sounds very familiar.  I've heard something similar for several weeks now from many corners of the world.

The greatest panacea is perspective, so I offer that in large doses:

1. First, remember the Paradox of Change: During difficult times, when we need people the MOST focused, they are generally the LEAST.  Keep things simple; don't chase rabbits.  Pick an attainable lighthouse and focus on it.  "The vital few always trump the compelling many."

2. Attend to Energy: Remember, people's energy tends to drift and dilute during change.  Again... focus.

3. Encourage Others: A kind word goes a long way... intrinsic often trumps extrinsic.

4. Be Thankful: Someone has ALWAYS got it worse.  Count your blessings, and explore making lemonade from lemons.

Times will get drastically worse before they get any better -- and probably not for a few years yet... so rather than holding one's breath, learn to find eddies of comfort within the tsunami.

"He is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature."

                                                                                    - Socrates

Now go hug your family.

This past week I was in Savannah, GA.

While eating at The Gryphon Tea Room, I observed an interesting exchange between a waiter and a hostess.  The hostess asked the waiter, "Would you please serve the table against the window?"  To which the waiter replied exceedingly ironically, "Sure.  I have nothing else to do right now.  Are YOU working today?"

Harumphhhh.

And then, a day later, as I waddled through the security checkpoint at the quaint Savannah "International" Airport, I witnessed a very 'put out' TSA agent harumph behind the x-ray machine (carrying more than his fair share of 'curious items') shouting, "Man Working Here!  Step aside, step aside!"  He was bellowing, not at me mind you, but at his co-workers.

I found it interesting that within a twenty-four hour timespan, I had witnessed two very put-out employees 'harumphing' about their colleagues!

You know, times are tough.  I get that.  We all get that.  We are that.

But I'm ceaselessly flabbergasted when employees vent and harumph in front of customers.  The very, ahem, customers they are meant to be serving.

I remember, several years ago, working with an airline to help it restore its reputation.  (Long story short: the airline remains its own worst enemy.)  As my colleagues and I flew dozens and dozens of trips to ride jumpseat and observe Flight Attendants in the air, we were literally dumbfounded by the negative, disruptive chatter that consumed them and which was all overheard by paying customers within earshot.  When we reported our findings, the airline acted somewhat SURPRISED.  Surprised?  Are you kidding me?  Who's not paying attention here?

As leaders and co-workers, let's remember the Golden Rule of Customer Service: "Keep your miseries to yourself."

Customers are paying for a service, not for the sidebars that distract and diminish what could otherwise be an acceptable or stellar experience.    

p.s. If you are ever in Savannah, be sure to visit The Gryphon Tea Room.  Despite my dismay at the single blip I described above, the food is phenomenal and the experience is worth the wait.

Given the amount of change occurring around us, I have noticed a marked 'uptick' in the number of requests to facilitate 're-organization.'  In short, many companies and organizations are forced 'to do more with less.'

In light of this need, I submit a brief White Paper that may help.  It is merely one of many required 'stakes in the ground,' but it is indeed one.

Happy Reading.

TBLG_WhitePaper_OrganizationalDesignElements_12-01-2008.pdf (256.63 kb)

Last night, my wife and I watched "Jonestown: The Life & Death of Peoples Temple" on PBS. 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/jonestown/

It was a fantastic exposé, very well done.  And of course, the content and story itself -- the tragedy that was The Peoples Temple -- was heartbreaking, infuriating, and devastating.  There are literally hundreds of families still walking this earth that were scorched by the mania of Jim Jones.  One survivor alone lost nineteen relatives at the 'kool-aid-cyanide-suicide' which, as another survivor describes it, "Wasn't a suicide at all.  Those who did not imbibe were shot in the head."

The images of babies, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters... 909 in all, who died that fateful day, November 18th, 1978 -- are absolutely heartwrenching.

From sociological, psychological, anthropological perspectives -- the sleep deprivation, the communal property, the preying upon and taking advantage of the weakest and poorest, the intertwined subjugation and messianic messages, the 'turning' of husband against wife / wife against husband / parents against children / children against parents / neighbor against neighbor -- were... and are predictable recipies for baking the perfect cult.

In time, the idealism that began with peace and love was eclipsed by Mr. Jones' psychoses, and a dysfunctional, fear-based organization was created that began to turn on itself like ouroboros.  And once the implosion began, it raged swiftly, reaching its predictable conclusion within hours.

As we watched the documentary from our Monday Morning Quarterback Chair... our Hindsight is 20/20 Chair... the groupthink, peer pressure, and manipulative tactics were so obvious, so heavy-handed.  It's like watching a magician AFTER he's explained the trick.  "Well of course, I saw that coming."  But too few did.  Even those who expressed an interest in the preceding weeks to 'get out' could not resist the undercurrent.  Of those who survived, approximately 80 of them were 'elsewhere' that day, including Jim Jones adopted son.  Of the 5 or so who literally 'escaped into the jungle,' they only survive today because the gunmen surrounding the compound were unable to shoot or capture them.

This all reminds me of something I read in the fantastic, albeit short book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, which is -- the greater the perceived losses of our current path x increasing commitment to that current path = a very difficult magnetic force to avoid.  Read the book for yourself, and you'll see how this applied to LBJ's "Great Society" and the War in Vietnam, to George W. Bush's "Iraq War" and "Surge" strategy, as well as to a decorated airline pilot who singlehandedly caused the worst airplane collision in aviation history.

It occurs to me that as organizational leaders, we are not immune from the kool-aid.  For many of us, our workplaces become a meta-family of sorts, with their own rituals, chants, slogans, values, and requirements.  We burn the midnight oil, devote ourselves wholly to the enterprise, feel guilt or remorse for giving our all yet perceiving it's never enough, and so on.

All I can say is, "Remain objective."  Welcome disagreement, keep perspective, don't over-consolidate power through excessive centralization, maintain a balance of power through diversity of thought and creativity, and always be open to contrarian perspectives and the freedom to experiment.  Sure, in the end, we must have alignment on a common course of action (or risk wasting resources, time, labor, and energy), but only after thoughtful, participative, engaged dialogue about those most important decisions that affect everyone and those who follow them.

In the end, I am haunted by the words of one Jonestown escapee who said, after describing the loss of his wife and newborn son, "I knew in my head 'this is wrong,' but I couldn't bring myself to speak the words."

I love great quotes, just love 'em.

Knowing that I save so many, people often ask for sources and copies of those I share.  As a 'random bonus,' here are 199 great quotes that are useful in the context of leadership, management, and simply interacting with people.  I'll also throw in a few "just for fun." 

Enjoy...

1. You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone. (Al Capone)

2. A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

3. Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams. (Robert Creenleaf)

4. Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea. (Wei Wu Wei)

5. To change and change for the better are two different things. (German proverb)

6. What the rulebook says will change. In time all ink is disappearing ink. (William Warriner)

7. The most dangerous thing in the combat zone is an officer with a map. (Murphy’s Third Military Law)

8. What is now proved was once only imagined. (William Blake)

9. Ability is nothing without opportunity. (Napoleon Bonaparte)

10. Before we can change things we must call them by their real name. (Confucius)

11. Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock. (Alvin Toffler)

12. Nothing is permanent except change. (Heraclitus)

13. Human inventiveness is overwhelming human adaptiveness. Our ability to judge lags behind our ability to create. (Robert Ornstein)

14. An enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one. (Sir Charles Sherrington)

15. The city is the soul magnified. (Plato)

16. Our education system and our society discriminate against one whole half of the brain. The right hemisphere gets only the barest minimum of training, nothing compared to what we do to train the left. (Roger Perry) 

17. The trouble with our age is that it is all signposts and no destination. (Louis Kronenberger)

18. I’m an excellent driver. Have to stay in the driveway. Oh-oh. Judge Wapner at six o’clock. Three minutes. (Dustin Hoffman in Rainman)

19. Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. (George Bernard Shaw)

20. You must look into people, as well as at them. (Lord Chesterfield)

21. There is a word for the absence of stress: death. (Hans Selye)

22. Hell is other people. (Jean-Paul Sartre)

23. No matter how cynical you get, you can never keep up. (Lily Tomlin)

24. I do not like this word bomb. It is not a bomb; it is a device which is exploding. (Jacques Le Blanc, French ambassador to New Zealand, describing France’s nuclear testing)

25. People only see what they are prepared to see. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

26. Other people are not in this world to live up to your expectations. (Fritz Perls)

27. We have met the enemy and it is us. (Walt Kelly)

28. We’ve got to make this stuff we’re lost in look as much like home as possible. (Overheard at a strategy session)

29. Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment. (Decharme’s Precept)

30. Next week there can’t be any crisis. My schedule is already full. (Henry Kissinger)

31. Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects. (Herodotus)

32. The lily is doubling in size every day. In thirty days it will over the entire pond, killing all creatures living in it. The farmer does not want that to happen but being busy with other chores, he decides to postpone cutting back the plant until it covers half the pond. The question is, on what day will the lily cover half the pond? The answer is, on the twenty-ninth day—leaving the farmer just one day to save his pond. (Old French proverb)

33. People rise to the challenge when it’s their challenge. (Anonymous)

34. Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die. (Daniel Burnham)

35. Don’t be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small steps. (David Lloyd George)

36. Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. (Jonathan Kozol)

37. A great wind is blowing that gives you either imagination or a headache. (Catherine the Great)

38. Always borrow money from pessimists; they don’t expect to be paid back. (Anonymous)

39. To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often. (Winston Churchill)

40. Educators and futurists can prepare individuals for the future by making the different images of the future more real for them. (Carl Townsend)

41. People change through observation not argument. (Will Rogers)

42. If there is another way to skin a cat, I don’t want to know about it. (Steve Kravitz)

43. Never doubt the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. That’s about the only way it has ever happened in the past. (Margaret Mead)

44. What you don’t know will always hurt you. (First Law of Blissful Ignorance)

45. I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent. (Horton, via Dr. Seuss)

46. It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. (Gore Vidal)

47. Attention must be paid. (Linda, in Death of a Salesman)

48. What we got here is a failure to communicate. (Strother Martin’s prison camp commander character in Cool Hand Luke)

49. We trained hard. But it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. (Gaius Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon, first century, AD)

50. There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish, if they don’t care who gets the credit. (Anonymous)

51. A leader is someone who understands where people are going, and stands in front of them. (Gandhi)

52. It was a cross between a screwball and a changeup. It was a screwup. (Bob Patterson, describing a ninth-inning home-run pitch)

53. Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. (Emo Phillips)

54. If you haven’t struck oil in the first three minutes - stop boring! (George Jessel)

55. Just do it. (Nike)

56. Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work. (Thomas A. Edison)

57. When you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. (Lord Kelvin)

58. To the blind, all things are sudden. (Old proverb)

59. We aim above the mark to hit the mark. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

60. When I hear the word art, I reach for my Luger. (Hermann Goering)

61. Reengineering is the new scientific management. (Tom Peters)

62. Beijing - Eighteen factory workers were executed today for poor product quality at Chien Bien Refrigerator Factory on the outskirts of the Chinese capital. (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 17, 1989)

63. If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it over. (Philip Crosby)

64. Nine out of Ten people who go into a store looking for a self-help book need assistance finding it. (Internet graffito)

65. Leadership is nature’s way of removing morons from the productive flow. (Dogbert, in the cartoon strip Dilbert)

66. An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep. (Arab proverb)

67. Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. (Japanese proverb)

68. Fool someone once and they’ll be foolish for a day, but teach them to fool themselves and they’ll be foolish for a lifetime. (Michael Fry)

69. Management isn’t about making friends, it’s about getting things done. (Dave Marquette)

70. A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years. (Wendell L. Wilkie)

71. Feedback is the breakfast of champions. (Ken Blanchard)

72. The most important skill of managers and leaders in the years to come will be conversation. (Alan Weber)

73. It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching. (St. Francis of Assisi)

74. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too? (Internet graffito)

75. Now let’s all repeat the non-conformist oath. (Steve Martin)

76. The grand dogma of our times, that groups would be evenly represented in institutions and activities in the absence of discrimination, would collapse like a house of cards from a study of societies around the world. (Thomas Sowell)

77. Knock. Don’t ring bell. (Sign on Pavlov’s door)

78. Whenever a system becomes completely defined, someone discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. (Brooke’s Law)

79. We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything. (Thomas Edison)

80. Madness exacts its toll of us all. Please have exact change ready. (Found on the Internet)

81. Decay is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on, with diligence. (Buddha’s last words)

82. Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand-in-hand. (Unknown)

83. Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. (Henry Ford)

84. A thought may be compared to a cloud shedding a shower of words. (L.S. Vygotsky)

85. Worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never exists. (The Spanish Prisoner)

86. If we both agree, one of us is unnecessary. (Mark Twain)

87. When you’re green, you’re growin’; and when you’re ripe, you rot. (Ray Kroc)

88. I destroy my enemies by making them friends. (Abe Lincoln)

89. When we’re done, the people will say, “We did it ourselves.” (Lao Tzu)

90. Everything we do, we do with an eye to something else. (Aristotle)

91. I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I simply try to dance better than myself. (Mikhail Baryshnikov)

92. Forget your opponents; always play against par. (Sam Snead)

93. One’s mind, when stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimension. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.)

94. I present myself according to the type of relationship I wish to have with you. (Luigi Pirandello)

95. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

96. There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. (Hindu proverb)

97. What it lies in our power to do, it also lies in our power not to do. (Aristotle)

98. When we all think alike, then no one is thinking. (Walter Lippman)

99. Excellence is an actual state of superior performance rising out from an original state of potentiality. (Tom Morris)

100. The least important things, we think about and talk about the most, and the most important things, we think about and talk about the least. (Socrates)

101. The only constant in our world is change. (Heraclitus)

102. We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm. (Winston Churchill)

103. We do not go to work only to earn an income, but to find meaning in our lives. What we do is a large part of what we are. (Alan Ryan)

104. A useless life is an early death. (Joann Wolfgang Von Goethe)

105. A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle. (Japanese proverb)

106. Why, when I point to the moon, do you stare at my finger? (Zen proverb)

107. Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things — a chance word, a tap on the shoulder, or a penny dropped on a newsstand — I am tempted to think, there are no little things. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

108. How can you taste my tea if you do not empty your own cup first? (Zen proverb)

109. The more laws, the less justice. (German proverb)

110. Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect. (J.A. Froude)

111. A liar is not believed; even when he tells the truth. (Cicero)

112. Our characters are the result of our conduct. (Aristotle)

113. All those who have been wronged, or believe themselves to be wronged, are terrible; for they are always looking out for their opportunity. (Aristotle)

114. In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. (Max DePree)

115. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. (Alfred North Whitehead)

116. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. (Max DePree, Herman Miller)

117. Give me a lever long enough and single-handed I can move the world. (Archimedes)

118. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. (Unknown)

119. Every organization has a surplus of incompetent people. (Dr. Peter of “the peter principle”)

120. A person totally wrapped up in himself makes a small package. (Harry Emerson Fosdick)

121. Desires make good servants ~ but bad masters. (ancient philosophers)

122. The way to a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. (Socrates)

123. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. (John Henry Boetker)

124. Here lies a man who attracted better people into his service than he was himself. (Andrew Carnegie)

125. Blame is for God and little children. (Papillon)

126. Temptation resisted is the truest test of character. (Papillon)

127. Tough times don’t build character, they reveal it. (Michael Jordan)

128. Do what you love. Know your own bone, gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and grow it still. (Henry David Thoreau)

129. God resides in the details. (Einstein)

130. Prepare fish for a man, and you feed him for the day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. (Lao Tse Chiuh)

131. Step back in order to leap further. (Montaigne)

132. Be the change you’re trying to create. (Gandhi)

133. The chains of habit are too light to be felt, until they are too heavy to be broken. (Warren Buffet)

134. Virtually every important action in life involves educated guesswork. Too few chances reliably translate into too few victories. (Thomas Hazlett)

135. The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit, which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) 

136. Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. (Stephen Vincent Benet)

137. The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life. (William James)

138. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. (Henry David Thoreau)

139. Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed. (Peter Drucker)

140. Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest. (Laurence Sterne)

141. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. (Benjamin Disraeli)

142. Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes. (Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)

143. We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it. (William Osler)

144. Dichotomizing pathologizes and pathology dichotomizes. (Abraham Maslow)

145. Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men. (Walter Lippman)

146. Great minds have purposes, others have only wishes. (Washington Irving)

147. Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. (Mark Twain)

148. I went to the wood because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Henry David Thoreau)

149. Organizations are webs of participation. Change the participation, and you change the organization. (John Seely Brown)

150. The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. (US Marine Corps)

151. Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time leading yourself — your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers. If you don’t understand that you work for your mislabeled ‘subordinates,’ then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny. (Dee Hock)

152. Those who know much about others may be smart, but those who understand themselves are even wiser. Those who control many may be powerful, but those who have mastered themselves are more powerful still. (Lao Tsu)

153. The only sustainable advantage comes from out-innovating the competition. (James Morse)

154. To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. (e.e. cummings)

155. The most elusive key to satisfaction is not getting what you want — but wanting what you get. (Anna Muoio)

156. Character is destiny. Don’t develop your personality, cultivate your character. (Tom Morris)

157. He has the most who is most content with the least. (Diogenes)

158. There is no greater sin than enslavement to desire, no greater curse than discontent, no greater misfortune than selfish craving. Therefore, in being content, one will always have enough. (Lao Tsu)

159. Don’t be dissatisfied with acquisition, because you’ll never have “enough.” If anything, be dissatisfied with aspiration... always want to become more. (Tom Morris)

160. Dogs and philsophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards. (Diogenes)

161. While all excesses are hurtful, the most dangerous is unlimited good fortune. (Seneca)

162. As long as we think that we don’t have enough money, we don’t ask the important questions about our lives. We use that rationalization to protect ourselves from the fearsome fact that we do have choices... and they must be made. Sometimes we hate to admit we’ll never be happy with what we have. It’s time to be happy with who we are. (Shoshana Zuboff)

163. For most people, there’s a tension between dissatisfaction and fear. On the one hand, we’re not at peace with what we see in ourselves or our lives. On the other hand, we’re afraid to move... to change... to leave behind what we have been and what is known. (Shoshana Zuboff)

164. Many people today are hungry ghosts. Bottomless stomachs, small mouths. Always wanting... and nothing is enough. (Elizabeth Gibson-Meier, Buddhism)

165. For some people, work is like standing knee-deep in running water, struggling to keep a cork submerged with a sledgehammer. At the end of your day, you’re panting and red faced. And the cork bobs on the surface... taunting you. (Paul Wood)

166. Change is not about reorganizing, reengineering, reinventing, recapitalizing. It’s about reconceiving. When you reconceive something, creativity will flood your mind. (Dee Hock)

167. The best learning takes place through play. Airplanes are never built, cars are never made, oil platforms are never constructed without first building and playing with models. It is through dialogue and the prototype process that people learn how to do things. (Arie De Geus)

168. History is littered with people who “make it” and then crash. It’s a drama that has unfolded in every field of human endeavor since the beginning of time. (Tom Morris)

169. The four marks of public success are Money, Power, Fame, and Status. As long as they are used as resources, not goals, most people are okay. But when asking “how much is enough,” the answer is usually... “I’ll tell you when I get there.” Aristotle taught that desires feed on themselves. We must not seek these as outcomes, but as levers. (Tom Morris)

170. Do not emulate he who leads without managing; or he who manages without leading. Having one without the other is like day without night. Together, the two form one — complete, balanced. Divided, they remain a tale untold. (D.B. Lee)

171. Values are... The beliefs, principles, or standards which, when held in high regard, influence judgment and shape subsequent behavior. (Middle English, from Old French, from the Latin valere, meaning, to be of strong worth)

172. If you want to know what someone’s values are, look at his calendar and his checkbook. Since time and money are two of our most finite resources, they sometimes bottleneck the most noble ambitions. (Richard Leider)

173. Values are expressed not by what we say we wish for, but by what we really do. We love our families but we can’t count many friends with intact ones anymore…We love our children, but how many children come home to empty houses during the day? We believe in families, but how many families sit down to eat together anymore?…What are the real American values? Look at who our heroes are. They aren’t the people who volunteer in the soup kitchens; they aren’t struggling writers and artists… mainly they are the rich and famous and the successful and the beautiful… perhaps the best indicator of what we really are is what we spend our money on or what we watch on television. Look at what we read. Look at what we choose to do with our spare time. That’s what we value. (Stephen Covey)

174. The notion of situational ethics can be applied to values as well. As leaders, one major responsibility is articulating those values which you consider non-negotiable. In our personal lives we call this setting boundaries. Allowing articulated values to be negotiated away compromises your ability to effectively lead. This idea of leadership courage is all but gone in many organizations, communities, and families. (D.B. Lee) 

175. In the end, values, like ethics, should not flutter in the winds of political correctness, relationships, or appearances, but rather, should be bonded to our inner core and our character. (D.B. Lee)

176. When your time has come and gone, it is not what was said that matters most, but what was done. How will you serve? What will your legacy be? (D.B. Lee)

177. A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. (Mark Twain)

178. Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening — it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented. (Arnold Palmer)

179. Joys shared are doubled, sorrows shared are halved. (Katherine Ferrari)

180. Do the thing, and you shall have the power; but they who do not do the thing have not the power. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

181. Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way. (Abraham Lincoln)

182. You only lose energy when life becomes dull in your mind. Your mind gets bored and therefore tired of doing nothing. Get interested in something! Get absolutely enthralled in something! Get out of yourself! Be somebody! Do something. The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have. (Norman Vincent Peale)

183. The purpose of education is to replace an empty or cluttered mind with an open one. (Malcolm Forbes)

184. I have never let schooling interfere with my education. (Mark Twain)

185. Only the educated are free. (Epictetus)

186. Ye can lead a man to the university, but ye can’t make him think. (Finley Peter Dunne)

187. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. (Mark Twain)

188. We must dare to think ‘unthinkable’ thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about ‘unthinkable things’ because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless. (James W. Fulbright)

189. The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. (Napoleon Hill)

190. If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. (Samuel Johnson)

191. The man who writes about himself and his own time writes about all people and about all time. (George Bernard Shaw)

192. Worry is like a rocking chair — it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere. (Dorothy Galyean)

193. I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret. (Anthony Robbins)

194. Because a fellow has failed once or twice, or a dozen times, you don’t want to set him down as a failure till he’s dead or loses his courage — and that’s the same thing. (George Lorimer)

195. Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. (Francis Bacon)

196. Understand that you, yourself, are no more than the composite picture of all your thoughts and actions. In your relationships with others, remember the basic and critically important rule: If you want to be loved, be lovable. If you want respect, set a respectable example! (Denis Waitley)

197. A birthday is not simply the day you were born. Over the course of your lifetime, it is the single day upon which people celebrate your existence. Do not frown upon it as merely “another day,” for it is YOUR DAY and the chance for others to acknowledge what you mean in their lives. (D.B. Lee)

198. Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve... You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. (M.L. King, Jr.)

199. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. (Nelson Mandella’s inauguration)

By way of encouragement, may this lift you up today.

And tomorrow.

And beyond.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPLCaAu_H2U

In the past month, with increasing frequency, a number of people have asked, "What suggestions do you have for our people during these difficult times."

Here are 3 that I hope may prove helpful across the following weeks, months, and years:

1. Control What You Can Control.  One of the greatest mistakes employees and leaders make during difficult times is to be distracted, worried, or altogether consumed by forces and issues outside their control.  I always encourage people to think like archers and 'aim for the bullseye.'  Aim for what you can CONTROL, then INFLUENCE, then ANTICIPATE, and let the rest go.  (Write it on balloons and set them free in a field, or Pray them away, or Tell a friend and then drop it.  Do something, then nothing... rather than just "gripe, worry, fret, vent.")

2. Accept that Difficult Change is about three things -- Perceptions (of loss or gain), Feelings (of worry/regret or hope), and Choices (to disengage or engage).  During tumultuous times, attend to your thoughts and what you 'tell yourself' about change (e.g., "Do I sense loss or gain here?").  Attend to your feelings (e.g., "Do I feel afraid, worried, regretful, angry, hurt, betrayed, confused?").  And own your choices... because during Change, WE are responsible for the choices we make.  Some people choose to be 'reactive,' others 'inactive,' and still others 'proactive.'  The choice is yours....  Generally, when people perceive LOSS they have NEGATIVE FEELINGS and they DISENGAGE.  But when they perceive GAIN they have POSITIVE FEELINGS and they ENGAGE.  As a leader, always attend FIRST to people's perceptions and the dramatic tapes they play in their heads.  Modify the tapes or, as some have said, 'rewrite the code,' and you can change a great deal for the better.  (As, for example, in cases of addictions.)

3. Manage your Energy and Attitude.  During difficult times, energy diffuses and attitudes degrade.  To lead others, help them 'arrest' their energy and focus it on something they can Control or Influence, and where they can experience some 'tiny victories.'  Do this, and their attitude will improve correspondingly as they realize they are not corks bobbing in the ocean.  Employment comes and goes, but our Personhood is for all time.

In closing, remember: During times of tough change, a great leader's focus will shift appropriately to tending to 'people issues' also and creating the healthiest possible environment because, without this, patients die on the gurney from sepsis and infection resulting from the toxicity of their environment while we unwittingly busy ourselves with the wrong things.

Better to do the right things 'satisfactorily' than the wrong things 'exemplarily¹.' 

-------------------------------------------------

¹And yes, it IS a word! http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=exemplarily

Some of you 'may' remember my comments from 10/24/2008 regarding my plea to a dear mentor to provide some 'audio wisdom' for a forthcoming leadership seminar for the USDA Forest Service to be conducted the week of 11/03/2008 in Colorado Springs.

Well, that week has come and gone, and Lou Romero delivered! 

I know some of his wisdom might be a bit nichey -- after all, his comments are addressed to fellow USDA Forest Service leaders.  BUT, do not be lost in the specifics.  Just grab your pan and start searching for gold.  There are many nuggets here for any leader.

LOTS OF WISDOM...

Attached is a zip file with four sub-files:

1. Photos (so you don't have to 'visualize')

2. Text (so you'll have the notes from the man himself)

3. His opening comments, addressed to 130+ leaders from Region 2 of the USDA FS as they embarked on a weeklong journey.

4. His closing comments, as they wound down.

Enjoy.

LouRomero,WisdomFromASage.zip (11.31 mb)

I suppose that tomorrow I must tear down what few Halloween decorations we put up.  The air-filled Tigger in the front yard, a few signs, and a handful of spooks and goblins strewn about.

As another week concludes and another corner is turned, the season seems to represent perfectly some of the loss and fear that many people are feeling with regard to the economy, their savings, and their future.  Times are tough, no one is immune, and the 'end' is uncertain.

I am reminded of a wonderful quote, most recently spoken by Michael Jordan several years ago when he said, "Tough times don't build character -- they reveal it."

Indeed.

As leaders -- of organizations, communities, families -- we must carry on.  We must keep our chin up, our back flexible, and our faith strong.  People are counting on us, just as we count on them.  Remember the ancient Japanese proverb, "One stick is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle."

......................................... 

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

                                                                                                                                                                        Teddy Roosevelt 

Now take to the arena. 

As you may know by now, I'm a big Charlie Rose fiend.  I seldom miss an episode and I rarely delete one without watching it first... only when he gets locked-in on a topic for multiple days (which he is prone to do) do I "pass."  Last night, 10/21/08, he had a stellar show from Harvard Business School's 100th Anniversary Celebration.  Jeff Immelt and others served as panel members whom he interviewed.  The topic: "Leadership in the 21st Century." 

http://www.exed.hbs.edu/assets/videos/329.html?campaign=ee-leadership_video 

Here are some highlights:

1. Borrow, Buy, Burn.  "As a country, the US must stop borrowing from the Chinese to purchase oil from the Arabs to burn into the air." 

2. Four Pillars for Any Global Company: "Education, Healthcare, Energy, and Financial Services."

3. The Scariest Formula During These Economically-Troubled Times = Illiquidity x High Unemployment x High Debt.  "This formula handicaps us."

4. Regarding Innovation & Entrepreneurship in America: We're rocking; and this is our future.  We cannot compete internationally in terms of labor rates, but Americans are ingenious, and assuming that Energy Independence and Renewable Energies will be "the moonshot of our generation," we can export them -- and best practices -- providing jobs, economic security, and improved living conditions around the world.

5. Three Key Areas of Current Entrepreneurship: (1)Digital/Internet Engineers -- Bits & Bytes, (2)Biotech Engineers -- Bugs & Drugs, (3)Greentech Engineers -- Biofuels & Batteries

6. Three Key Market Segments for Today and the Future: Jeff Immelt described "thinking of brick as passe.  And thinking in terms of 'developing countries' as passe."  Instead, he shared how GE thinks of markets.  "We see three segments.  (1)Natural Resources Rich (Brazil, Australia, Russia, Middle East, Africa), (2)People-Driven Regions (China, India, Southeast Asia) where a local presence must be created to compete, and (3)Technology/Education Rich Regions (Western Europe, Japan).

7. Regarding Obama & McCain: "Our head is with McCain, but our heart is with Obama."  An interesting sentiment, spoken by one of India's most powerful businessmen.

8. And finally, let me share the 14 'key leadership traits' that were identified by the distinguished and diverse leadership panel, all of whom are HBS graduates:

1. Take risks, make mistakes (otherwise you're not trying)
2. Exude confidence (not fear, worry, anxiety, hopelessness)
3. Be a fast learner (it's not what you know, but how quickly you can learn/adapt)
4. Decisiveness (without perfect knowledge)
5. Accountability (stand up for what you believe)
6. Transparency (people want your truth, but also your intention)
7. Unity (create opportunities for people to be part of something bigger than themselves or your current organization; think longer term)
8. Live an examined life
9. Give
10. Renew yourself ("I go to bed feeling like a failure, and awake saying, 'Hello, Handsome!'"  - Jeff Immelt) 
11. Ideas are easy, execution is everything (and teams do it)
12. Think on your feet, communicate effectively
13. Character (it's binary -- you either have it or you don't; and people can smell it)
14. Know your environment (we are approaching 300 countries... there is much to know)

More next time...