supporting people in the vital work of changing their minds
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I donÕt know."
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Good morning from a sunny Vancouver! And a wonderful day it is! I had a great Saturday evening with a friend, going to see the film, Les Miserables. I knew the story from reading Victor Hugo’s novel, (or it may have been the Classic’s Illustrated comic book version if the truth be known!). And like so many others, I had seen the opera upon which the film was based. And, it was so powerful to go into the faces and characters of the people in the story as opposed to sitting in the 2nd balcony just listening to the music!
I came away quite reflective. And over the past day or so, I’ve been thinking a lot about the leadership implications inherent in the story. First and foremost, the big question for Jean Valjean is “who am I?” And of course, that is the question for all of us. Secondly, Valjean makes his choices from then on, not only to “do good”, but to work towards forgiveness and away from revenge. Our work as leaders is in large part about creating space for other people to shine, and to grow. Getting caught up in the past, where revenge lives, is often a fatal flaw for leaders. And third, the amazing scenes with Eponine, choosing to protect Cossette (who she knows is her rival for Marius’ heart) and her father from her own father’s plans for robbery, and then sacrificing her own life to save Marius. We are reminded here that there are issues and meanings that are much, much larger than our own egos. And so it is with leadership. Leadership is about a journey to a higher good, not how good you or I look getting there.
May this week find some answers for us all to the question, ‘who am I?’ and space for the journey.
Good morning from a Spring filled Vancouver! I was reading recently about the concept of “cathedral thinking”. www.cathedralthinking.com . (I also urge you to check out the site of Jim Meredith at www.archizoo.com )The concept is simple in it’s initial appearance, and rather sophisticated as you think about it. Built over decades and in some cases centuries, cathedrals are often massive buildings built to the glory of something much, much larger than human endeavour. It was common in Medieval Europe for the builders and craftspeople who began the structure would die long before completion and their children, and even children’s children would see the fruits of their labours. How did such difficult and challenging work proceed?
Simply put, as important as it may be to make budget this quarter, a compelling, long term “we’re making a difference in the community or in the world” is what keeps people engaged over the long term. Yes, the quarterly results are important sign posts along the way, marking out our progress, but in ‘cathedral thinking’ the long term, the big picture is what brings people to work in challenging times. Building a “cathedral” gives meaning to the importance of details; without the corner stone being just so, the building will collapse. Building a “cathedral” gives grandeur to the adventure, and thus is compelling. And to use Meredith’s language, building a ‘cathedral’ “is [a] call to mindfulness of the future in all that we do, evoking a certain humility and humanness in what we do.” (http://cathedralthinking.com/thinkers-cathedral-thinking/)
While meeting a dear friend at the airport the other evening, she was talking about one of the on-board movies, "The Exotic Marigold Hotel", and the wonderful line 'it all works out in the end, and if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end.' That line has figured prominently in my reflections ever since.
There was a related line I heard about a year or so ago about endings. If you imagine a relationship as being a 'knot', lots of strands tied in together. Now all relationships change over time, and sometimes the knot becomes too constricting, or is tied in such a way that one of the people involved is restricted. Well, one can literally cut the knot, so that all the strands fall away. And sometimes that is the best route. And sometimes the better route is to untangle to knot strand by strand, letting some go, and finding new ways to tie the others. This latter way will give space to all concerned and perhaps mean new and healthier ways of being together.
I want to stress that there are times when the cut is vital for the health of all concerned. And at the same time, the patience, peace and gentleness required for the second option is in and of itself an extraordinary learning journey. In our world, at work and in our personal lives we are all too often expected to make quick endings, quick cuts, quick solutions, when a more patient untangling is actually what is needed. Such untangling requires a tremendous amount of courage, respect for self and for others, and the knowledge that it will not work out the way that one or other of the people involved may want. But in the words of the poets Jagger and Richards, 'you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.'
As leaders we need to learn to be decisive. And we need to learn the patience to live into the knots in our lives, to sometimes take the time to untangle, to re-imagine, and to give each other the space to learn. And, “it all works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.”
May this week we each find a knot to untangle.
Good morning from a foggy Vancouver. The Blues are playing in the background, my day is filled with writing and meetings, and what promises to be a great lunch at a club talking about the plans for Young Leader’s Conference later this spring. I hope your day is as rewarding.
Last week, I wrote of some suggestions for broadening our scope. A dear friend sent me a link to a blog that talked of “deepening” our work.
I enjoyed the post. Cal Newport raises some interesting points, especially for those of us, and that includes most of us in this conversation, who are “knowledge workers.” I was also reminded as I read of the late Stephen Covey’s great graph about time management with important and urgent as the labels on the two axis:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/200805/how-are-you-managing-your-time
I want to add a framing point to Mr. Newport’s four steps. I suggest that those of us who are so-called knowledge workers recognize ourselves as craftspeople, as artisans, and based on such a frame, our work processes might shift. As a starting place, a quick story. 35 years ago I was accepted to what was then the finest acting school in Canada. I was 18 and not the brightest bulb in the chandelier; although you couldn’t have told me that at the time! I struggled for most of my time there, and because I failed the dance class, I failed that first year and was cut from the team, as it were. I was devastated. A dozen or so years later, having done some growing myself, and having begun to find my work stride as a facilitator and teacher, I was back in Toronto for a gig. I had some time during the day and wandered up Yonge Street to the campus of the acting school. Memories took me inside and I asked if a teacher who had taught me a lot might be around? He was now the Dean of the school, and he graciously received me and we had a cup of tea together, sitting in sunbeam in his office. He asked what I was doing, and I explained about the facilitation work and the teaching work. He said simply, “I’m so glad you’re still in the craft.”
And that is my point; I am still in the craft; I write, design, produce and perform interventions that challenge, provoke and even entertain people in the same way that writers, producers and directors of theatre and film do that same. And all knowledge workers are craftspeople; we are artisans. We create. And Cal Newport is right, we need to build “systematic improvement” into our culture and daily work lives, and therefore into our crafts. That takes time and practice. And we need to honour ourselves as craftspeople; we are not automated systems on an assembly line. And how we create, how we work at our best may be as varied as we are. So, Cal Newport suggestions preparation, clarification, stretching and obsessing are good additions to increase depth. He and I are of the same mind. And I add that the marks of crafts people, artisans, are the same.
So, rather than suggesting that we are bad at working, (and I do appreciate his provocation here), it’s more that we honour our work as artisans. And as leaders, who may have such artisans working for and with us, the usual metrics of “work” do not necessarily fit. The challenge is quite frankly that our economy is still stuck in an industrialized model of measuring output like 72 widgets an hour. If our role is to create, challenge, design, build, or imagine a new widget or new ways of using widgets, we can find ourselves having to apologize or defend our work as somehow less than valuable than the work of the person producing 72 widgets an hour. As the economy has evolved over the past 35 years, so has the kind of work that many of us do. We have to some extent, returned to the pre-industrial age of artisan craftspeople; the butchers, the millers, the silver smiths, the musicians, the weavers and the coopers. And each of these was respected for not only their output, but for the contribution they made to the welfare of the community as a whole. And they were, at their best, proud of their work and their contribution to the community.
May this week be a week of deepening our work as artisans.
Greetings from a misty west coast of Canada. There are signs of spring, the small flowers poking up and cherry trees starting to bloom. Change is ever present in our lives. And so it is in our working lives.
The Christian season of Lent, literally 'lengthening days', begins this week, and so in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring is coming. What ever your spiritual tradition, or even if you don't have one, this season is filled with both emerging and possibilities and a sense of ending, of putting away. In fact, the two are inextricably linked. in the words of New Zealand physician and poet Glenn Colquhuon:
The art of walking upright here,
Is the art of using both feet.
One is for holding on.
One is for letting go.
From a leadership perspective, the question needs to be asked, what is it that I'm holding on to that I need to let go of, and just as importantly, what is the next step that I may be hesitant about?
May this week be one of taking the next step.
Good morning from a rainy and cold Vancouver. As my friend and colleague Peter Elliott would say, “ahh, but it’s a dry rain!” I realize that only the Canadians reading this will be laughing, but that very fact leads me to an interesting observation for us as leaders in this time; working with so many generations, cultures and traditions in the workplace requires that we be very careful about language and references. And yes, I do mean avoiding sexist and racist language, and I’m also broadening the point here. In the same way that some 30% of you reading this will likely not get the joke about a dry rain simply because you don’t live in Canada, for those of us in our early 50’s it serves to remember that the people born the year John Lennon was assassinated are turning 33 this year. For some further references check out the list compiled by Beloit College; http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2013/)
The people with whom we work are diverse, they are unique, they are amazing individuals with minds capable of the most incredible imagination and possibilities. And many of them come from cultures and environments that are not the same as yours. And your kids are included in this; they are growing up in a world that has changed in some deep and profound ways. A teacher of a teacher of mine, Marshall McLughan coined the phrase “the global village” in the early 1960’s. He argued that the electronic interdependence he saw on his horizon would replace the individually focused print media, and that a new world would emerge, that was a global village. He appears to have been correct; as I have just finished a Skype meeting with a colleague in Jo’Burg South Africa, to talk about a potential project.
So, as leaders, from whatever demographic we might have come, we have a responsibility to be clearer, to dig deeper, to find out what’s really going on, and to be as clear as we can with each and every one of the people on our teams. Ask yourself, do my metaphors and stories make sense to other people? How can I make this clearer to people of a different generation, a different culture? Ask yourself, do they get the ‘joke’?
So some simple suggestions for broadening your scope, that I’ve found useful include:
1. Make friends with people who are younger, or from a different culture than yours. I for one am enjoying the texting jokes about Boomers like TN2WMP = “trying not to wet my pants”!
2. Instead of watching TV, one night a week, surf YouTube. Seriously, there’s some very funny stuff out there, substantially funnier than most things on TV
3. A second night a week, watch TED, you’ll learn more in a 20 minute TED talk than in most newspapers in a week!
4. Download the Al Jazeera app to your iPad. There’s 2 of them, one in a magazine, more print format and the other a live stream of what’s going on live. Watching Al Jazeera will certainly give you a different perspective on some global issues, but perhaps more importantly, you’ll see and hear from people reporting from different parts of the globe than Ottawa, Washington and London. It is really fascinating.
5. Take a “working vacation” to somewhere very different, and do some work there. For those of you in the co-operative sector, check out the Canadian Co-operative Association volunteer opportunities at www.coopscanada.coop, or if you’re from another sector, Habitat for Humanity is one of a number of organizations that offer opportunities to go to a different part of the world and do some good. www.habitatglobalvillage.ca
May this week be a week of broadening our scopes for all of us.