Good morning from Victoria, BC where the sun is trying very hard to break through. I hope this note finds each of you trying very hard to bring your light to your part of the world.

Inspired once again by a Harvard blog, this one from Duncan Watts, called “What are Leaders Really For?” at www.hbr.com Watts writes that the “Occupy Wall Street has both perpexed and frustrated observers and analysits by its persistent refusal to nominate an identifiable leadership who can in turn articulate a coherent agenda.” He then notes that as frustrated as some of us are with this lack of “leadership’ from within the Occupy Movement, that frustration has much to say about us and our models of change. Most of us, consciously or unconsciously imagine change as something that occurs because of a “great man” (or less often in our minds, “great woman”) who lead the many in particular directions. Change however does not occur because there is a great person leading it. In the words of Margaret Mead (who Watts also quotes), “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” And in fact, Dr. Mead is correct, changes happen not because a particular leader has an idea and lead his or her people in that direction, rather, change happens when a group of people happen upon a creative force and begin the diligent and often dangerous work of making that change manifest. It becomes the role of leaders to be able to articulate and describe the story of what is happening, to help others derive sense and meaning of it. A key attribute for leaders then is the ability to make sense of events and to tell stories about them.

I’m reminded of the brilliant work of Margaret Wheatley, www.margaretwheatley.com and her description that organizations are much like natural organisms and therefore have life cycles. They are born, they grow, they become middle aged, they age and then they die. And in the midst of their aging and dying there are seeds of possibility and creativity that are beginning to grow within the dying organization. She sees then that a key role of leadership is to be both palliative care giver, helping the old ways die gracefully and as painlessly as possible, and neo-natal care giver, nurturing and protecting the new seeds as they take root and grow.

And so our work then, looking into a future of revolutionary change is to identify those seeds of creativity and possibility within our potentially dying organizations, to help those seeds develop narrative and meaning for themselves and to help to articulate those stories.   

May each of us be neo natal at least once with an idea in our organization this week!

Good afternoon from a chilly but lovely Prince Rupert, BC. I hope this finds each of you engaged in changing your world for the better.
A wonderful blog from Harvard Business Review today titled “Why Inspiration Matters” by Scott Barry Kaufman. The piece begins with a wonderful quote from Rudyard Kipling, “when your demon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.” I am a big fan of Rudyard Kipling who wrote, amoung other pieces, “The Jungle Book” and the amazing poem, “If”. I urge you to read Kaufman’s piece at www.hbr.com .
In the meantime, for our short reflection this afternoon, after reading Kipling’s line, I was reminded of a conversation with a friend the other day who said that she was “making decisions from fear.” Wonderfully for her, she was able to see that she was making fear based decisions, and that was therefore the first step changing her behaviour. When we make decisions from fear, we are ‘possessed’ in some ways by Kipling’s ‘demon’. It is not our best selves making the decision.
And that got me thinking, short of finding Max von Sydow of “Exorcist” fame to help us, how we might really move away from ‘demons’ like fear based decisions. First, Mr. Kipling is correct; ‘drift, wait and obey’ is very good advice. Go for a walk, a run, do some exercise, do something completely unrelated to the issue at hand, and more than likely clarity will regain control. Another possibility; find a confidante, someone with whom you can be completely yourself, and in doing so, your stronger, better, more authentic self will more likely emerge. Or thirdly, write in a journal, or send an email to yourself about what’s going on, byt focusing on the activity of writing, you’ll likely free space in your mind to allow your better self to speak up.
We all find ourselves in situations where our fears and egos can take over, and we make mistakes. Being conscious of when such ‘demons’ have control is an important step in conscious leadership, and thus far more powerful and effective leadership.
May we each find sometime this week to “drift, wait and obey.”

Good morning from a wonderful Fall, Vancouver day. I hope this note finds each of you engaged in changing your world for the better.
I’ve been facilitating a number of conversations in the last year exploring ways to involve “young people” in credit unions and other organizations. I sadly hear sometimes from “Boomers” that young people don’t have the same values, or are only interested in their selves and are therefore not interested in co-operation. My own observations have contradicted these views. I believe for example that credit unions have an extraordinary opportunity to leverage our global reach and to make an economic difference across the planet through cooperation and mutual benefit, rather than charity and hard nosed capitalist economics. And what should I come across from Harvard? A report of a study looking at “Leadership’s New Direction” reported in a blog of the same name at www.hbr.com
The writers, John Coleman, Daniel Gulati and Oliver Segovia write:
“After ananlyzing the stories of young leaders and conducting a survey of over 500 current business school students, we discovered that their worldviews and backgrounds differ strikingly from previous generations.” They note, for example that, besides being more highly educated, they are more focused on sustainability, they are seeking meaning in their jobs, they are globally focused, and they are overwhelmingly interested in “connecting the dots; 84% believe it is essenstial to understand the for-profit and non-profit sectors.”
Young people may have differing perspectives than some of their boomer relatives and friends, but who’s to say that the boomers have the ‘correct’ perspectives! It seems to me that working with young people who are into sustainability, meaningful work and the health of the planet as a whole can only be a good thing! Maybe we should be spending a little more time listening to them, rather than talking about them!
May this week find each of us listening intergenerationally at least once!

 Good morning from a crisp and sunny Toronto. I hope this edition of Leadership Notes finds you well.
Some years ago I was involved in an interesting human resources question with a firm.  The firm had a long standing contest on Hallowe’en where each of the floors (largely divided by department) would try to outdo each other with Hallowe’en decorations. It was really wonderful, stepping off the elevator into cobwebs and dim light, “monster mash” kind of music and the ubiquitous pumpkins. People prepared for weeks in advance and it was known as a great team building opportunity.

I was consulting with the firm on human resources issues and leadership coaching, and had become an unoffical ombudsperson.  An employee approached me early in November one year and wanted a quiet word. Sitting in a private meeting room the employee explained that Hallowe’en was a time of great personal stress as their religious beliefs were offended; ‘pagan’ was a word they used. We evenatually did find a solution that honoured the individual’s religious beliefs and allowed for the rest of the organization to still enjoy their decorating. And I have thought of that conversation often in the intervening years. You see, most, if not all human cultures have some ritualized way of remembering ancestors. And here in the West, dominated as we have been by Judeo-Christianity for so long, we are not unique. The word Hallowe’en is a contraction of ‘All Halllows Eve’, thus called because tomorrow, November 1 is known as All Saints Day in the Christian calendar. It is this time of year that we remember our ancestors. The people in our lives and the lives of the communities in which we serve whom we honour and hope we live up to their legacy.

Elie Wiesel tells a story of a young man who is a “freedom fighter” in British Occupied Palestine in very early 1948. The leader of this young man’s group been arrested, tired and convicted, and is now awaiting execution for terrorism. The group has since kidnapped a British soldier, and will execute him at the same time as their leader is hanged. The young man is ordered to do the killing and so sits in a room with the soldier, waiting for dawn. The room slowly and surely begins to fill with people, and as the young man sees them, he realizes they are all members of his family, people from his village in Poland; the rabbi, the baker, his aunts and uncles. And there, standing in the midst of them is a little boy. It is him, the day before he was transported to a concentration camp. Everyone in the room except the soldier and the young man is dead. The young man asks the little boy, ‘why are you here?’ The little boy says, ‘don’t you know? We’re here to see what you will do?’

And so, as leaders, as we prepare for Hallowe’en with our families and friends, I urge you to take a moment or two this week to think about the people who have gone before you, knowing that they are (figuratively if not literally) watching and waiting to see what you and I will do next.