Ideals in Motion

The Problem Isn't Declining Traffic...

When we think we have a problem with declining traffic - whether it's with customers coming to our stores/websites or people being in our life - most will look in the wrong places for a solution. The question that needs to be asked here is "do I/we matter"?

"Traffic" is the universe's way of giving us the answer to that question.

When people start staying away from us the real problem that needs to be addressed is that they have an "empty" (read less than fulfilling) experience when they are in our presence. How to change this? Begin with these questions:

• Who are you (to your customer or the people in your life)?
• What do you provide?
• Why does that matter"
• Why do you matter?

What these questions lead to is the prospect of designing an experience that matters to others. At the risk of being overly simplistic, what people are fundamentally seeking in life is a GREAT EXPERIENCE OF BEING ALIVE! They buy your products or hang around you as a person hoping to have that experience. When they begin to sense that having a great experience of being alive isn't possible they stop buying, they stop coming.

If you can provide that great experience of being alive traffic will be the least of your worries.

Attachment - The Great Brake

What are the biggest obstacles when it comes to sustaining success in life?

A simple answer to that question is attachment and limited awareness. Attachment is the great brake because, by definition, it always involves a a static picture of what's desired. Therefore, an experience of failure or success relative to that picture is going to be time bound. And, because that experience is time bound it is by definition the result of limited awareness.

What happens with people and organizations is that we will tend to look at our successes and failures almost always within the limited awareness of a very discreet time frame. I either succeeded or I failed within this narrow time frame. This is where the context of time becomes a very useful tool for sustaining success in life.

An awareness of the effect of time frames on my experience of success in life is why I want to continuously consider the question “for the sake of what?” Any event in my life can be looked at as a success or a failure. But if it’s looked at within a larger context of time that holds this long-term “for the sake of what,” both the seeming successes and failures in my life become learning opportunities. They are simply milestones on the path toward the realization of a greater for the sake of what. It takes a lot of inner strength for people to say, “I didn’t fail here, I am actually on the road to success. Others may view this as a failure, but in the way that I’m looking at my life, and in the way in which we’re looking at what we’re doing, this actually was a learning experience that is invaluable to my next steps and I’m going to be leveraging it."

Therefore, an increase in awareness is a way — the most workable way — to overcome the inevitable obstacles that life tosses at us. Very simply stated, because a perception of failure (or success) is the result of limited awareness, an increase in awareness is going to increase my choice-making capacity. When I increase the number of choices I have available to me I will increase the power that I have. By “power” I’m talking about my ability to effect change. Increasing my ability to effect or cause change will ultimately result in expanding results. When it comes to the biggest obstacles to sustaining success in life,  the truly big ones are attachment and limited awareness.

The Language of Complaint vs. Commitment

I am currently in the middle of a fascinating new book (How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work) that has raised an intriguing question about competing commitments. Without going into a lot of detail that is beyond the scope of this posting one of my biggest takeaways is that complaints rooted in frustration, disappointment and anger at a situation area wonderful gateways into discovering something that is at the root of putting my ideals in motion - specifically, a commitment to something that is often entirely out of my awareness. I will only complain about something because I am committed to the value or importance of something else. 

What's interesting about this is that the language of complaint is, from an energetic and possibility standpoint, so fundamentally different than the language of commitment. The power here is in realizing that language creates reality; that culture lives in language; and that culture will "eat strategy for breakfast" (in the words of Peter Drucker).

We can rail and complain all we want about the unfortunate and unfair vicissitudes of life. Many will stay stuck here.  An alternative is to learn to recognize and leverage the power inherent in our disappointments when we see them as window into what we truly are committed to having, doing or being in life.

Appreciation – The Secret Ingredient to Sustainable Success

I was working with a CEO of a billion dollar plus company the other day and he asked me what could be done in today’s extremely difficult macro environment to keep his executive team from burning out. I’ve thought a lot about that question and, while there is no silver bullet, I do think that the answer lies in how the culture of the company is designed to support and reward extraordinary effort.

While culture is complex and is made up of many components the simple definition of what it is can be summed up by saying that it’s how we do what we do to get things done. In the doing – particularly in a highly stressed environment – there is definitely a feeling of being used. Used in the sense that energy is being expended, time is being devoted, sacrifices are being made and other demands are taking priority over personal desires. If my being used in the pursuit of the organization’s goals, objectives and possibly its very survival is felt to be taken for granted there will be a problem.

Burn out is not a consequence of working hard, working long hours, or of lack of being “out of balance”. Burn out is the result of extended time spent doing without connection to meaning. If what I’m doing – what I’m being used for – is not recognized as being meaningful I will have a problem sustaining it.

Appreciation keeps me connected to meaning. Appreciation that is genuine. Appreciation that is personal. Appreciation answers the question “What is the difference you bring that makes a difference?”  The focus of this question is an explicit recognition of the way(s) that your actions have had impact and have made our lives better. It includes as well a recognition of what it took for you to so. It’s different than a simple acknowledgment that recognizes that you’re a contributor and are having impact. Appreciation includes speaking not only the what that you provided…it also includes an explicit citation of what it must have taken in order for you to do so (i.e., “organizing this offsite for the team has made it possible for us to jell around this issue in ways we couldn’t otherwise have done. And, I recognize that making this happen was a significant political risk that took a fair amount of courage in this fiscally constrained environment”. This difference is crucial.

Many organizational cultures practice acknowledgment in the form of a simple “thank you” when someone does something that goes beyond an expected minimum. Appreciation takes this to deeper and very personal level. It’s because it’s personal that it makes a difference. Taking it to a personal level is what makes it meaningful. And, it’s because it’s personal that it’s not part of most organizational cultures.

Learning to authentically and consistently practice appreciation keeps people engaged. And engaged employees do not burn out.

Sustaining Success

Relative to sustaining success over a lifetime I've defined sustainability in previous posts as being about developing the competencies necessary in order to continuously start over. In a chapter I've recently written for a new anthology with Steven Covey, Ken Blanchard and Brian Tracy entitled Discover Your Inner Strength I go into some detail about these core competencies. In this and subsequent posts I want to offer these competencies up for your consideration. Let me know what you think.

One thing that I've experienced to be true is that before I can begin considering what competencies to develop I have to consider my and/or my organization's capacity to develop. Capacity has to do with the breadth and depth of resources I have available such as energy, skills, education, emotional intelligence, and time view to name just a few. It's important to understand that these (and other) resources are the enablers of the core competencies. While I obviously do not need an infinitely deep and broad capacity "pool" I do need some capacity in order to develop. The (not inconsequential) good news is that from wherever I begin, capacity is expanded as I work on developing the sustainability competencies.

The five core competencies necessary for a sustainably successful life are:

1. Self-awareness
2. Courage
3. Discernment
4. Practice
5. Inclusion

In upcoming posts I'll write about each of these competencies one at a time and expand upon it with practical examples of development strategies that are relevant to both individuals and organizations. I look forward to your comments as I open up this dialog.

Why is Leadership Transformational?

In order to answer the question we need to revisit a definition of both leader and leadership that I've mentioned in previous postings. Simply, a leader is someone who causes movement in a system. By definition, this suggests that everyone is a leader because it is literally impossible not to cause some movement when I enter any system. This is important to understand because this definition moves one away from any questioning of "am I a leader?" to the question of "am I effective as a leader?" The activity of leadership is the answer to this question. Leadership effectiveness is about creating coordinated movement that produces the action required to get the result I want. The focus on creating coordinated movement is what makes leadership transformational.

Creating or causing coordinated movement in and with others is a transformational process. It is transformational because it requires of me and of the others a continual reassessment of what is working and what is not working. Transformation is about change - sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic. It occurs when there is continual reassessment of progress within the context of is it working/not working. That is the magic of the process. Movement stops when the assessment context is one of right/wrong. These are polar opposite positions that invite conflict, rigidity and stagnation. When one party insists on being right there is little room for coordinated movement. By simply assessing within the context of is this working/not working I put myself in the position to lead a change - to transform - myself, the environment, the culture, and just possibly the planet.

The Challenge of Sustainable Success

I just finished working with a group of 63 Chinese business people in Kunming, China. One of the major points of focus during our time together concerned the question of how do we sustain business success in an economic climate such as the one we are experiencing today.

I've addressed this notion of sustainability in earlier postings and think it's worth revisiting. I've come to define sustainable success as the process of developing the capacity to continuously start over. This has significant implications for management and leadership in an organization. The capacity to start over that I reference applies fundamentally to ensuring that the organization's culture is adaptable. Particularly in terms of being able to deliberately and intentionally deal with the disrupting questions of "What do we hold on to"? "What do we let go of"? or "What do we take on"?

Each of these questions will produce jarring change and require great courage. Of course, the meta contextual question that holds all three is "For the sake of what"? are we doing any of this in the first place. This has to be absolutely clear and the answer is never about just making money or surviving.