Our next holiday

Many of our communities do a respectful job of honoring our fallen warriors. In France it’s every day. Monuments, museums, flags, fresh flowers… Oh, if only average Americans could grasp the contribution and sacrifice.

A Smaller World

By September I will have TRIED to speak a little French, Spanish, Portuguese, English (and Latin). Oh, if only I had a chance for Italian…

Our shrinking world invites us to consider new neighbors. It’s always so easy to ignore poverty and tragedies when they are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Of course, Bangladesh has raised our awareness as well, such that I wonder if my shoes or shirt were made by someone trapped in the rubble.

What does it mean for us to have new neighbors, people very different from ourselves? How shall we interact with “The Other?”

Your Credo

On Saturday night I attended the Grand Rapids Symphony and Chorus performing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, a solemn mass. One of the five parts is the the Credo. I beleive…

What a great experiment to ask everyone to write their company’s credo. Suggest the beginning as “I believe” so you can compare the beliefs of individual members. I would hope there would be beautiful, diverse belief systems and food for discussion. Profit? Purpose? Common Good? Places for human expression?

How about writing another. I believe that humans are… What is each person’s veiw of human nature, human potential? What are divine rights?

How are those two credos at odds? Seems to me, that they shouldn’t be at odds at all. But the reality is that we think little of human potential and expect too much of business though it is often driven by very narrow, self-serving interests.

If we want to inspire people, we should create and live by inspiring credos, ones that call both organization and people to unusual heights.

Mom

My mother is 93 and very close to losing her ability to speak. There are days when she doesn’t speak at all during my visits. If she were to say something, she would say that she was good. She was fine. Today, it was two words – thank you.

This is the crystal clear legacy that my mother leaves me. Be grateful. Don’t complain. Having helped her write her life story, I’m quite sure her gratitude comes from having a tough childhood. Marriage rescued her from circumstance.

The gift of gratitude is a two-way street. If one can begin to live a life of gratitude, one is content, happy. This of course radiates out to other people. There’s no responsibility for someone else to fix anything. People love my mom at the place where she lives. She’s pleasant and she makes no demands.

The downside is that you can be taken for granted. Sometimes I have to wipe her mouth of egg from breakfast in the middle of the afternoon, so I know that the details are being missed. Then I usually make sure that someone else has a little egg on their face. It’s a matter of respect.

Mom has been able to answer the question, What is enough? Americans would do well to ask themselves that question as we stroll through the lanes of stores bulging with food or goods. At least for me, faith, family, friends and neighbors (and one or more ways to serve) are enough. The older I get, the more certain I am that my cup runneth over.

One the radio

today, it was reported that workers built a fire under a carport in order to get warm. The carport caught fire. The fire spread to a huge tree. The workers cut down the tree to contain the fire. The tree fell on the house they were rennovating.

Some followers must be lead…

A New World

If we stop judging each other,
crocuses will bloom.

The Tablecloth Problem

When we hire someone, we are looking for solid written documentation about education and experience. How about raw creativity?

At an arts council fundraising dinner, groups bought each chair around the table for $100 each AND decorated the table the day in advance of the dinner. There were some amazing-looking tables. Talent seemed to ooze out of the woodwork.

Our entire group showed up to decorate our table. The tablecloth had been made to match an oil painting of a well-set table. The tablecloth dimensions and those of the table were not a good match. Artists, being the creative people they are, began to make suggestions about how to solve the mismatch. The suggestions just kept coming and coming. It was so much fun to realize how much creative brainpower was gathered around that table. These people were problem solvers of the highest order.

Are we checking for creativity and problem solving when we hire? I hope so. In addition, many times artists have to do with less. Their solutions have to be simple, cost-effective. Want something elegant, simple? Encourage the creative side of your workers or hire a starving artist…

Shadow and Leadership, Part 4 of 4

The fourth aspect of shadow is fear of chaos and death. A leader is hired to get rid of the chaos. The hiring of someone new is always done in the hopes that things will smooth out and it will be “clear sailing ahead.” Of course, the person hiring and the new hire are suffering under an illusion. Chaos is the natural order of things. Chaos is probing for a direction, considering options. Chaos is the final state before transformation. If there isn’t chaos, check for a heartbeat.

Death can certainly refer to dying, but it can also refer to endings. A leader can be so fearful of failing, a project going bust or the whole business collapsing that that fear can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Things die. New life comes from death. Transformation is always a possibility. Deaths of a project or business come from not taking the risks that are necessary to survive. Death comes from stagnation and the fear behind it.

The cure for shadow work is inner work – reflecting, learning about who one really is. It is spiritual work and it must be found even in the most secular of places or leaders and employees work in an earthly form of hell.

Shadow and Leadership, Part 3 of 4

There is no God. There is no community. Resources are scarce. Others will fail to carry out my orders. Nothing is going to happen unless I do it or drive my people into doing it.

That’s a pretty bleak philosophy when seen in print; however, many of us operate with that belief system. Wouldn’t this description fit a control freak, a “detail-oriented” boss, a “hands-on” kind of manager?

Having the belief (even if you’re unaware of it) that “nothing will happen unless I make it happen,” leads to burn-out, disrespectful relationships and employees sitting on their hands. The leader’s shadow is often projected because of this belief system.

A leader can’t do it all.
Resources appear from critical mass.
Being micromanaged sucks the life out of the job, killing meaning, incentive, motivation, etc…

Shadow and Leadership, Part 2

The first expression of shadow I wrote about was the lack of self-knowledge and how that insecurity plays out as projection and the stifling of gifts in others.

Another aspect of shadow relates to competition. We see the world as dangerous and that life must be a battlefield. This view of life contends that win-lose is the only way to operate. Resources are limited and we must fight to get our share. The losses stemming from this view are astronomical. Cooperation produces value. Cooperation gathers resources around it. Competition ensures a winner and a loser. We search for crumbs because a combat mentality suggests to us that we are fighting for something that is scarce. We are less likely to make a connection between abundance and community.

Even in a business climate, cooperation should be our goal. Industry standards produce consumer confidence and industry integrity. One book title captures both the reality of healthy competiton and the value in cooperation. – Coopetition.