I spend most of my time working with people who are developing their capacity to lead others. Our work always (it must) begins as an inside-out exploration. You must know who you are and why you are spending all this life energy in the pursuit of impact.
Most of the inside work ends up being about re-writing the internal narrative that a person has been using to choose action and achieve outcomes. Most of the time, that internal narrative is way, way out of date.
It's a narrative that has been written by many disjointed authors. These great writers include Mom and Dad, grandparents, brothers and sisters, teachers, coaches, friends, the communities we live in, college, organizations and the micro and macro cultures we swim in daily. It's a soup that has been slow cooking for years with these various influences/ingredients being added almost without our noticing.
One day but more likely lots of days, weeks, months and years, it dawns on us that this narrative is not working so well. It's not accurate, it's not true, it's not me. And now the real adventure starts.
When I understand my narrative is not really "my" narrative but a clustered hairball of others, I get that exciting and uncomfortable feeling that the next step is really one only I can take. There is no one there to do the work for me.
What liberation. What freedom.
It's my show. I'm the author, I decide what is going to happen next and what it will look like, sound like, how it will be experienced and even...., what the achievements will be about.
Who's ready for this ride? This is the real adventure. The "in public" invention of the new narrative of who I am being. This is big change.
6.14.2010
12.02.2009
All in One Day
Here are some headlines from the Financial Times, December 1, 2009:
All this in just about two years. But not really. This shift has been building up for awhile and yet we have responded to this change as if we did not see it, we continue to be surprised by daily events like Dubai World's debt problem, and we seem to have this latent belief that once all these "one off" events work their way through the system, the world as we know it will return.
It is the world as we "knew" it. It is not coming back. The question to consider is: Are the mental models I hold dear still working in this changed world?
Probably not. Ask yourself "How do I see my mental models, my microcosm of thinking from a different perspective and wake up to the change that is my life, the change that is my business, the change that is the world?"
Asking these questions is a powerful start. This changed world puts an emphasis on more inquiry. Asking questions, suspending judgment, holding steady at times and admitting ignorance when it is so. This is difficult work if you have chosen to lead others. It is also essential work.
Start by reflecting on your daily actions. Do this a couple of times a day. Make some notes in a journal. Notice patterns of behavior that seem to be both consistent and unproductive. Just notice for now. Keep reflecting. Get on the metaphorical balcony and observe yourself, your team, your organization. Watch for patterns, see systems.
Being aware is more important than being smart. A great many very smart people have been caught out by the events of the last two years. And there is a small group of aware people who did not get caught but the events. What did they know? More important, how did they prepare themselves to know?
- No state guarantee for Dubai World
- France and Germany under pressure to raise troop numbers in Afghanistan
- US weighs risk of troop surge
- China and Russia face Iran pressure
- Cast adrift as credibility crumbles (Dubai debt woes)
- Anger levelled at leadership (Dubai debt woes)
- Danes face dilemma of developed world
All this in just about two years. But not really. This shift has been building up for awhile and yet we have responded to this change as if we did not see it, we continue to be surprised by daily events like Dubai World's debt problem, and we seem to have this latent belief that once all these "one off" events work their way through the system, the world as we know it will return.
It is the world as we "knew" it. It is not coming back. The question to consider is: Are the mental models I hold dear still working in this changed world?
Probably not. Ask yourself "How do I see my mental models, my microcosm of thinking from a different perspective and wake up to the change that is my life, the change that is my business, the change that is the world?"
Asking these questions is a powerful start. This changed world puts an emphasis on more inquiry. Asking questions, suspending judgment, holding steady at times and admitting ignorance when it is so. This is difficult work if you have chosen to lead others. It is also essential work.
Start by reflecting on your daily actions. Do this a couple of times a day. Make some notes in a journal. Notice patterns of behavior that seem to be both consistent and unproductive. Just notice for now. Keep reflecting. Get on the metaphorical balcony and observe yourself, your team, your organization. Watch for patterns, see systems.
Being aware is more important than being smart. A great many very smart people have been caught out by the events of the last two years. And there is a small group of aware people who did not get caught but the events. What did they know? More important, how did they prepare themselves to know?
12.01.2009
London Libraries View the Future
Scenario Planning is often viewed as both a viable process for thinking about strategy and an extreme use of organizational resources. I think these viewpoints are direct decedents of Royal Dutch Shell and its much publicized use of scenarios beginning back in the mid 1970’s. Shell used scenarios to address major systemic issues that the multinational company might face within the next 25 years. Shell also had access to resources that enabled the organization to spend a great deal of time and money on its scenario design. That is a model that does not transfer well to smaller organizations; the same organizations that could also profit from scenario planning.
In late September RedQuadrant turned that time and money concern on its head when it hosted a 1 day scenario planning workshop for 34 members of the London Library community. The group produced four plausible scenarios about the future of London Libraries and they did this work in about eight hours time. Many scenario planning experts would term this an “implausible scenario.”
This team of 34 people pulled this work off because they entered the room that morning having already answered the four critical questions that an individual or a team must address if progress is going to be made on a challenging problem. Those questions are:
1. How do you define the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future and what is producing the gap?
2. Are you willing to share your view and your reasoning behind your viewpoint?
3. Are you willing to listen to others’ viewpoints and receive feedback from other people?
4. Are you willing to take action?
Answering these questions is the beginning of scenario work because they get to the heart of scenario planning. Designing plausible futures are an output of scenario planning but the fact is that few if any of these plausible futures come to pass as designed. The real value of scenario planning is revealed in the social interaction that takes place between people. It is here that people discover their mental models and how those models shape what they see, produce limits and constrict action. Peter Drucker refers to this condition as “banging against the glass ceiling.”
The process of designing scenarios is embedded with multiple opportunities for a person’s thinking to be challenged. For the person who is willing and open to exploring her world view, scenario planning is often a liberating change experience. This is a change of professional or personal identity. An identity that is now more open, more curious and more likely to see the world as it is.
The London Library Scenario Planning session did not solve all the challenges the library system faces but participants did leave with a better understanding that the world is an invention made up by people whose only limit is how they see that world. Or how they see the future of libraries.
In late September RedQuadrant turned that time and money concern on its head when it hosted a 1 day scenario planning workshop for 34 members of the London Library community. The group produced four plausible scenarios about the future of London Libraries and they did this work in about eight hours time. Many scenario planning experts would term this an “implausible scenario.”
This team of 34 people pulled this work off because they entered the room that morning having already answered the four critical questions that an individual or a team must address if progress is going to be made on a challenging problem. Those questions are:
1. How do you define the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future and what is producing the gap?
2. Are you willing to share your view and your reasoning behind your viewpoint?
3. Are you willing to listen to others’ viewpoints and receive feedback from other people?
4. Are you willing to take action?
Answering these questions is the beginning of scenario work because they get to the heart of scenario planning. Designing plausible futures are an output of scenario planning but the fact is that few if any of these plausible futures come to pass as designed. The real value of scenario planning is revealed in the social interaction that takes place between people. It is here that people discover their mental models and how those models shape what they see, produce limits and constrict action. Peter Drucker refers to this condition as “banging against the glass ceiling.”
The process of designing scenarios is embedded with multiple opportunities for a person’s thinking to be challenged. For the person who is willing and open to exploring her world view, scenario planning is often a liberating change experience. This is a change of professional or personal identity. An identity that is now more open, more curious and more likely to see the world as it is.
The London Library Scenario Planning session did not solve all the challenges the library system faces but participants did leave with a better understanding that the world is an invention made up by people whose only limit is how they see that world. Or how they see the future of libraries.
10.12.2009
John Birks Gillespie
"You only have so many notes and what makes a style is how you get from one to another."
Diz
Diz
9.01.2009
What If The Beatles Were The Only Band?
We (I) forget that the world is so large that there is more than enough room for us all and all our ideas. We can get caught up in the game of comparing. I compare myself to you and determine you are better, brighter, stronger or better looking. So I don't move. I freeze. No action taken.
Imagine all those bands that came along after the Beatles broke through the Rock-n-Roll door. Imagine if they thought: "Well, they are the best, all the room on the stage has been taken. There is no room for us."
If that had happened we have no Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Beach Boys, Elton John, and my favorite, Jethro Tull. But that didn't happen.
It didn't happen because in every case, those other bands said something like: "The Beatles got through the door. It can be done. Let's go." And go they all did.
They also got on stage because there are no limits to the number of stages we can play on and more importantly there are no limits on stage building.
Well there are two limits:
1) Choosing to forget that one person can change the world.
2) Choosing to lack faith in myself.
Yep. Those two will do it. Those two will kill anything. Those two will snuff out all stage building and all the music.
The Beatles are not the only band because all those other bands were committed to changing the world with their music and they believed.
Have a little faith
Imagine all those bands that came along after the Beatles broke through the Rock-n-Roll door. Imagine if they thought: "Well, they are the best, all the room on the stage has been taken. There is no room for us."
If that had happened we have no Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Beach Boys, Elton John, and my favorite, Jethro Tull. But that didn't happen.
It didn't happen because in every case, those other bands said something like: "The Beatles got through the door. It can be done. Let's go." And go they all did.
They also got on stage because there are no limits to the number of stages we can play on and more importantly there are no limits on stage building.
Well there are two limits:
1) Choosing to forget that one person can change the world.
2) Choosing to lack faith in myself.
Yep. Those two will do it. Those two will kill anything. Those two will snuff out all stage building and all the music.
The Beatles are not the only band because all those other bands were committed to changing the world with their music and they believed.
Have a little faith
We Are All In This Together
The health care debate in the United States is a debate of excess. The excess is the money spent on health care vs. the outcome. We are grossly out of shape in our country. We are too fat. Nearly one-third of Americans are clinically obese.
We are arguing about the wrong issue. We need to be debating health and fitness. Stop by your local school one day. It doesn't matter which school; any school between elementry and high school will do. Look at the students. Count how many of them are "over weight." Do you own data collection. How many over weights do you get for each 100 students.
Now check it out at your work. Do the same count. Now just stand on a street corner and do the same research. We are too fat.
Now find where fitness is located in the health care debate. Look hard. You will have to look hard to find any consistent fitness recommendations. What there is to this aspect of the debate comes and goes. That's because this "logical" element of health care lacks organized advocacy.
On the health care side we have insurance companies, doctors, health care providers and the ever present lawyers. They all have more at stake in keeping the system working the same and that does not include fitness.
But why should health fitness be a legislated policy? Being fit and healthy is a personal choice. The truth is we are an over-weight society because we have chosen to be fat. And the culture supports fat over fitness. Just watch the TV advertisements.
I read a comment the other day that went like this: Buy a computer game called "Go Outside and Play." Great advice kids. Take us parents with you.
We are arguing about the wrong issue. We need to be debating health and fitness. Stop by your local school one day. It doesn't matter which school; any school between elementry and high school will do. Look at the students. Count how many of them are "over weight." Do you own data collection. How many over weights do you get for each 100 students.
Now check it out at your work. Do the same count. Now just stand on a street corner and do the same research. We are too fat.
Now find where fitness is located in the health care debate. Look hard. You will have to look hard to find any consistent fitness recommendations. What there is to this aspect of the debate comes and goes. That's because this "logical" element of health care lacks organized advocacy.
On the health care side we have insurance companies, doctors, health care providers and the ever present lawyers. They all have more at stake in keeping the system working the same and that does not include fitness.
But why should health fitness be a legislated policy? Being fit and healthy is a personal choice. The truth is we are an over-weight society because we have chosen to be fat. And the culture supports fat over fitness. Just watch the TV advertisements.
I read a comment the other day that went like this: Buy a computer game called "Go Outside and Play." Great advice kids. Take us parents with you.
8.27.2009
Ted Kennedy as Role Model
I admit it: I have little regard for elected officials. So much time and energy is wasted by these people as they underachieve in pursuit of pleasing their local constituents and work to be re-elected. Or so it seems to me. So many wicked problems need tending: health care, 20,000 people dying each day in developing countries, wars, near wars and here at home, a lamentable education system. Where are these people when we need them?
I come by this viewpoint because I'm really lame at politics. Admitting I'm lame means I can either get better at it or dismiss it and those who practice it. Most of the time I chose the latter and proclaim that I'm taking the high road of noble work vs. the dirty work of politicking.
I have not had a client in the last 10 years that has not struggled with the office or organizational politics that is part of the currency of getting work done. Most of us are not very good at politics. This incompetence is different than those who are good at getting what they want at the expense of others. This is often called politics but it is not even close. This is self-serving narcissism and eventually it will get one professional killed.
The politics that I need to be better at and the politics that my clients need to be better at is now being reviewed in just about every devotion to Ted Kennedy and his accomplishments as a Senator after his passing this week. In today's New York Times, Adam Clymer lays it bare for all to see. As does David Brooks and Gail Collins in yesterday's NYT. Both pieces tell of a man who understood from his earliest days that the way to get work done, to make progress on difficult issues and to achieve effective legislation required a sense of the politics of those involved and the importance of building relationships that sustained under pressure. The kind of pressure that always comes up when different agendas need to find common ground.
It is beautiful to read of this man's ability to build close relationships with Republican Senators like Orin Hatch and even former President George Bush. We have been living through a time of such division in our political system and that division has worked its way down to our local communities. While all this was going on, back in Washington DC there was Ted Kennedy, working every day and some nights to find common ground among diverse opinions for the sake of crafting legislation that worked for the majority.
That work was not glamorous. It required studying the issues in great detail, being informed, listening to opposing views and working both sides of the Senate until something good happened while (and this is important) never being concerned if he would be given credit for the outcome.
Ted Kennedy's lasting legacy will be that he legislated better then any Senator of his time. If we want to be more competent at the politics of work and of life, Ted Kennedy is about as fine a role model as we could find.
Thanks Senator Kennedy.
I come by this viewpoint because I'm really lame at politics. Admitting I'm lame means I can either get better at it or dismiss it and those who practice it. Most of the time I chose the latter and proclaim that I'm taking the high road of noble work vs. the dirty work of politicking.
I have not had a client in the last 10 years that has not struggled with the office or organizational politics that is part of the currency of getting work done. Most of us are not very good at politics. This incompetence is different than those who are good at getting what they want at the expense of others. This is often called politics but it is not even close. This is self-serving narcissism and eventually it will get one professional killed.
The politics that I need to be better at and the politics that my clients need to be better at is now being reviewed in just about every devotion to Ted Kennedy and his accomplishments as a Senator after his passing this week. In today's New York Times, Adam Clymer lays it bare for all to see. As does David Brooks and Gail Collins in yesterday's NYT. Both pieces tell of a man who understood from his earliest days that the way to get work done, to make progress on difficult issues and to achieve effective legislation required a sense of the politics of those involved and the importance of building relationships that sustained under pressure. The kind of pressure that always comes up when different agendas need to find common ground.
It is beautiful to read of this man's ability to build close relationships with Republican Senators like Orin Hatch and even former President George Bush. We have been living through a time of such division in our political system and that division has worked its way down to our local communities. While all this was going on, back in Washington DC there was Ted Kennedy, working every day and some nights to find common ground among diverse opinions for the sake of crafting legislation that worked for the majority.
That work was not glamorous. It required studying the issues in great detail, being informed, listening to opposing views and working both sides of the Senate until something good happened while (and this is important) never being concerned if he would be given credit for the outcome.
Ted Kennedy's lasting legacy will be that he legislated better then any Senator of his time. If we want to be more competent at the politics of work and of life, Ted Kennedy is about as fine a role model as we could find.
Thanks Senator Kennedy.
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