Chronos' Anomaly

This post was inspired while I was driving along Sunday morning 21Oct12. I started school during the 1960s. We were living in Hawaii. My school room was open air on three sides sitting atop a bluff over looking the North Shore. I would sit in class looking down the beach watching the waves wash up underneath the palm trees. Despite the serene and picturesque views, I recall the Vietnam War, a War in Angola, and the Six Day War against Israel. I saw many images of drugged out people and my grandparents had to put sympathizer flags on their door to prevent civil rights rioters in Camden, New Jersey from destroying their home. At a young age, it seemed to me that war and violence was a way of life. The socialist were marching and rioting as well. Jane Fonda was pleading that if we only understood communism we would be on our knees praying for it before sitting in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery sighting US war birds flying overhead in 1972.

Chronos' Anomaly

I walked out the door early this Sunday morning into a comfortably crisp temperature and brilliant blue sky. Dew on my pickup truck was glowing crimson as morning sun beams pierced the green canvas.  The birds sang out. I jumped in, put the windows down, and headed out for a coffee at the local coffee shop. With that nostalgic crack and a hiss, the AM radio station was playing songs from the 1960's. In a resounding snap, I was flashed back to the era of the music and driving an ole pickup coming up on a 1960's coffee house.

Pulling straight into a Mayberry styled street parking spot, I climbed out and slammed the door shut with a heavy weighted thud and hollow sound of a solid steel. The bell on the door jingled announcing my arrival. The shop's musty smell and aroma of fresh brewed coffee mixed in waves churned up by the ceiling fans. From a high shelf above the counter, a radio reverberated the canny sound of music and news throughout the shop. Swirls of dust spun in the beams of sun light flooding through blinds and store front glass. I sat upon an aluminum stool at a cheesy green Formica counter lined with an aluminum strip, ordered a coffee while pulling the stacked sections of a read newspaper towards me, the date was July 1969.

As I sipped on the coffee, the 1965 song Eve of Destruction drummed in, "The Eastern world, it is exploding; Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’..." The people next to me spun around and walked out. The song continued, "Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’; I’m sitting here just contemplatin’; I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation; Handful of senators don’t pass legislation... When human respect is disintegratin’; This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’... Think of all the hate there is in Red China."

Fresh from church, a man and woman stepped up to the coffee bar. As I glanced over, the woman held her purse up in front of her bright yellow outfit, smiled, slowly nodding her head downward then back up. The radio hissed and cracked again as the 1967 song For What it is Worth hauntily echoed, "Paranoia strikes deep; Into your life it will creep; It starts when you're always afraid; You step out of line, the man come and take you away. It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound?; Everybody look what's going down."

Taking the last sips from my ceramic cup, I spun off the stool and headed out the door. The truck chugged as it turned over then sputtered to a smokey start. As I drove along the path that brought me here, the Sun was bearing down on the road ahead. Heat puddled and the horizon warbled in the rising heat. I reached down twisting the radio knob in a loud click and buzz the radio faded in. The tinny sound of Elvis let out the 1962 song Return to Sender.

The dusty road swirled behind me when in a flash the road became newly paved ahead of me. I arrived home and clicked the TV on. The new anchor was highlighting fighting in the Middle East, failure to pass budget legislation in Congress, and China holding the US debt over us. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was speaking out. The newspaper on my table talked of socialism and takeover of the economy by the government. For what it's worth, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances.” Perhaps the acts are in rerun or it just that history repeats itself.

History has turned the page, 
The miniskirt WAS the current thing, 
Teenybopper WAS our newborn king, 
And the beat goes on, the beat goes on.

Leadership Series

Leadership and Success

In the movie Office Space, the staff labored throughout the movie to produce the TPS report which was illustrative of the modern workplace having waste, mindless work, and uncaring leadership in organizations. The parody song My Cubical is also about the mindless unproductive outcomes of the modern workplace. Even the movie 9 to 5 highlighted an uncaring boss and employees who promote and line the pockets of those above them without reward. In short, Office Space, My Cubical, and 9 to 5 exemplify poor leadership with no sense of direction and the impact on people under them. The trumpet is sounding from many individuals that leadership is faltering, weak, or misguided. These individuals feel lost performing senseless or meaningless tasks in organizations that seemingly go no where. Even the American political situation has fallen victim to poor leadership. Decisions, programs, and reforms cost a lot of money but yield weak or poor results.

As I reviewed the body of works, I noted an apparent gap linking leadership to results and success. Perhaps those authors assumed success or that successful results were just a natural outcome of any leadership endeavor. To claim leadership, without objectives, goals, and an end-state is to maunder aimlessly in never ever land.  In my view, leadership without a focus on results and success is failed and empty leadership. Achieving unfavorable results or non-success is success in itself but only if the leader set out seeking specified results and success. The leader learned from that effort. There is nothing to be gained or learned from lack of focus other than to get focused.

Leadership is not rocket science or something a few people are born with. Leadership has three core competencies involve framing ideas, building social capital, and mobilizing resources that are learned abilities. Anyone can be a leader and with some training a more effective leader.

I am pulling posts together in this series to focus on leadership. I see these postings as applying to all levels of leadership. This is a summary of the Leadership and Success posts as well as some tooling and character postings.

Success:

Success is Not an Entitlement

Success is Getting Up More Than You Fall Down

They Told Me I Was Crazy

Law of Cause and Effect

Leadership:

Leadership and Success

The Leadership Process

Problem Identification

Goal Setting

Change Management

Building Constituencies

Organizational Design

Mobilizing Resources

Assessing Results

Planning for Updates

Bottom Up Leadership

Community Leadership

Character Qualities and Tooling:

Dale Carnegie: All the Principles in One Post 

Proving Yourself on Your New Job

Decision Making Overview Brief

Tattoo on Your Soul

Aliens Cause Global Warming

The Genius of CS Lewis

The Law of Cause and Effect

Comment: Many people move through life reacting to life rather than molding and shaping their life.  They cause the effects they experience without realizing that they have full control over the outcomes.  This essay by Brian Tracy hits home that everyone can control their destiny. 

The Law of Cause and Effect
By
Brian Tracy

Everything happens for a reason; for every effect there is a specific cause.

Aristotle asserted that we live in a world governed by law, not chance. He stated that everything happens for a reason, whether or not we know what it is. He said that every effect has a specific cause or causes. Every cause or action has an effect of some kind, whether we can see it and whether we like it or not.

This is the granddaddy law, the “iron law” of Western thought, of Western philosophy. The relentless search for truth, for the causal relationship among events, has led to the rise of the West in science, technology, medicine, philosophy, and even warfare for more than 2,000 years. Today this focus is driving the technological advances that are changing our world so dramatically.

This law says that achievement, wealth, happiness, prosperity, and business success are all the direct and indirect effects or results of specific causes and actions. This simply means that if you can be clear about the effect or result you want, you can probably achieve it. You can study others who have achieved the same goal, and by doing what they did, you can get the same result.

Success is Not an Accident

Success is not a miracle, nor is it a matter of luck. Everything happens for a reason, good or bad, positive or negative. When you are absolutely clear about what you want, you only need to copy others who have achieved it before you, and you will eventually get the same results that they have.

This is referred to in the Bible as the law of sowing and reaping, which says, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap.”

Sir Isaac Newton called it the third law of motion. He said, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

For you and me, the most important expression of this universal law is: “Thoughts are causes and conditions are effects.”

Put another way, “Thought is creative.” Your thoughts are the primary creative force in your life. You create your entire world by the way you think. All people and situations in your life have only the meaning you give them by the way you think about them. And when you change your thinking, you change your life, sometimes in seconds!

The most important principle of personal or business success is simply this: You become what you think about most of the time.

This is a great discovery upon which all religions, philosophies, metaphysics, schools of thought, and theories of psychology are based. This principle is as applicable to individuals as it is to groups of individual and organizations. Whatever you see or experience is the expression of the thinking of the people behind the phenomenon. Ralph Waldo Emerson recognized this when he wrote, ”Every great organization is merely the lengthened shadow of a single man.”

Your Choice, Your Life

You are always free to choose. In the long run, no one forces you to think, feel, or behave the way you do. Rather, you choose your emotions and behaviors by the way you choose to think of the world around you and about what is happening to you.

Dr. Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania, calls this way of reacting your “explanatory style”. It is the way you interpret or explain things to yourself. It is the critical determinant of everything you are and everything you become.

The good news is that your explanatory style is learned. This means that it can be unlearned as well. Your way of explaining things is under your control. You can interpret your experiences in such a way that you feel happy and optimistic rather than angry or frustrated. You can decide to react in such a way that your responses are constructive and effective. You are always free to choose.

Your thoughts and feelings are continually changing. They are quickly affected by the events around you. For example, when you receive a piece of good news, your attitude immediately brightens and you feel more positive towards everyone and everything. If, on the other hand, you unexpectedly receive some bad news, you can immediately become upset, angry, and short-tempered, even if the news is inaccurate or untrue. It is the way you interpret the event to yourself that determines how you react.

How You Can Apply this Law Immediately

1. Examine the most important parts of your life – your family, your health, your work, your financial situation – and observe the cause-effect relationship between what you think, say, feel, and do and the results you are getting.
2. Analyze how you really think about yourself in relationship to the kind if life you are living. Be absolutely honest. Consider how your thoughts in each area are causing, creating, and maintaining the situation around you. What changes could you make in your thinking to improve the quality of some part of your life?

References:

Misner, I and Morgan, D. (2004). Masters of success: proven techniques for achieving success in business and life. pp 47-49. Canada.

Proving Yourself on Your New Job

Commentary: Nearly everyone today is moving through new positions and companies on a rapid turnover rate since 2008. Most people have been in their jobs a long time before this high degree of turnover began and may have found it difficult to adjust in a new company. These post highlight the works of Michael Watkins. In his book he highlights the activities to improve your success rate at all levels of employment.   

Proving Yourself on Your New Job

The first 90 days: Critical success strategies for new leaders at all levels

Ch 01: Promote Yourself

Ch 02: Accelerate Your Learning

Ch 03: Match Strategy to Situation

Ch 04: Securing Early Wins

Ch 05: Negotiate Success

Ch 06: Achieve Alignment

Ch 07: Build Your Team

Ch 08: Create Coalitions

Ch 09: Keep Your Balance

Ch 10: Expedite Everyone

References: 

Watkins, M. (2003) The first 90 days: Critical success strategies for new leaders at all levels. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, Ma.

The Leadership Process

Comment:  Leadership is a deliberate and methodical process of rallying people to a cause they feel they have a stake in then skillfully achieving the end state. Leadership does not stop with the vision but requires one to become a leaders of leaders as strategy is put to task. The leadership process model is an overaching framework that leaders follow.

The Leadership Process

Many people think of leadership as a passionate charismatic person that others identify with and adoringly  follow sheepishly. They may feel a sense of safety, community, and camaraderie under a leader. However, leadership is much more than a father figure. Leadership results in durable and tangible impacts in the lives of people. Poor leadership damages lives and causes real injury to more than just those who follow them.  Understanding the core leadership processes shown in Figure 1, will aide in understanding how to make the choices and develop positive leadership results. Leadership centers on formulating vision and achieving goals by leading people to the end state.

Problem identification is at the root purpose of leadership. Leaders see something that is not correct, not just, or not right. They have an internal calling, moral compass, or moral imperative to take action in order to fix the problem arriving at some vision or end state. One of the challenges is correctly identifying the problem. Often people latch onto a symptom rather than the root cause. Leaders are good at determining root causes.

Once the problem is correctly identified, the leader sets goals or objectives then puts together some sort of strategy to achieve the desired end state. This initiates a strategy-to-task effort. A leader must ensure the top intent becomes bottom action and is thinking about this challenge at this point. The goal setting process is distinct from goals / changes or change management. 

Leaders must have a following. Therefore, they must build a constituency of stakeholders and followers. These people are the advocates or evangelists for the leaders vision. They have a stake in the outcome and believe in the objective. Often stakeholders bring resources to the effort. 

The vision or goal has some sort requirements that draw upon capacities and capabilities that are not  fully or currently available. Identification of the organizational design exposes requirements and determines the resources necessary to advance the vision towards the goals and end state.

Resources are mobilized to procure the shortfalls and build broader base support for the objectives. The outcome of mobilizing the resources creates the conditions and elements for the objective to be realized. Resources include manpower, money, materiels, and means or methods of advancing the goal. 

An assessment is made whether or not the end state has been achieved. If not, then an assessment is made to determine the shortfalls and adjustments that are necessary to move forward. 

Once the assessment shortfalls are determined, then there is a Plan for Updates that adjusts the goals and objectives for another go around until the endstate is achieved. 

The leadership process model applies well to most any vision or actions that a leader chooses to pursue. Vision that struggles to build a constituency usually falls by the way side. It is also possible for the leadership, vision, and constituency to pursue questionable and even unethical or immoral visions. The model degrades or falls apart under these conditions and those visions usually are imposed rather than develop.

Leadership Builds on Democratization

Current leadership models focus on democratization of design and the process. This is commonly thought of as reform in which the leader attracts a constituency because the constituency's have a stake in the outcome. While the leader brings focus, direction, and puts a framework to achieving the vision or end state the constituency mobilizes the resources and skills necessary to effect the vision. Understanding democratization processes and management of the stakeholders and other followers is essential to success. 

In the course of the leadership process, leaders may use Effects Based Outcomes, EBO, to put strategy-to-task ensuring top intent becomes bottom action. They may employ Measurable Organizational Value, MOV, to ensure that the actions they are taking result in measurable effects and contribute value to the organization.  

Overall, leadership is multi-faceted. Many folks fail to realize that there are leaders of followers, leaders of leaders, and leaders who lead leaders of leaders. Most of all, one individual may have to fill all three roles but most often only focuses on only one role. 

Success is Getting Up More Than You Fall Down

Commentary: This is a continuation of the leadership and success series. One of the characteristic marks of a leadership is getting up more than getting knocked down. I found this interesting essay by Harvey Mackay about success. Military training used to teach many valuable skills. Among them was the will to fight and persistence in the face of austere adversity. The military also taught how to make judgment calls based on the risks and objectives at-hand. Consider these topics as you read through.

Success is Getting Up More Than You Fall Down

By

Harvey Mackay

I am constantly asked what I think is the secret of success. Well, it’s a lot of things, but at the top of my list are two beliefs:

1. You need to be a hungry fighter.
2. A hungry fighter never quits.

I’ve learned over the years that success is largely hanging on after others have let go.

When you study the truly successful people, you’ll see that they have made plenty of mistakes, but when they were knocked down, they kept getting up… and up… and up. Like the Energizer Bunny keeps going… and going… and going.

Abraham Lincoln failed in business, lost numerous elections and his sweetheart, and had a nervous breakdown. But he never quit. He kept on trying and became, according to many, our greatest president. Consider some examples.

• Dr Seuss’s first children’s book was rejected by 23 publishers.
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
• Henry ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt was struck down by polio, but never quit.
• Helen Keller, totally deaf and blind, graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College and went on to become a famous author and lecturer
• Adam Clark labored 40 years writing his commentary on the Holy Scriptures
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire took Edward Gibbons 26 painstaking years to complete
• Earnest Hemmingway is said to have revise the Old Man and the Sea 80 times before submitting the manuscript for publication.
• It took Noah Webster 36 years to compile Webster’s Dictionary.
• The University of Bern rejected Albert Einstein’s PhD dissertation, saying it was irrelevant and fanciful.
• Johnny Unitas was cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he kept his dream alive by working construction and playing amateur football while staying in contact with every NFL team. The Baltimore Colts finally responded, and he became one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game.
• Richard Hooker worked seven years on the humorous novel, MASH, only to have it rejected by 21 publishers.
• Charles Goodyear spent every last dollar over five years filled with experiments to try to develop a rubber life preserver before he succeeded.

I love the story about the high school basketball coach who was attempting to motivate his player to persevere thorough a difficult season. Halfway through the season he stood before the team and said, “Did Michael Jordan ever quit?”

The team responded, “No!”

He yelled, “What about the wright brothers? Did they give up?”

“No!”, hollered back the team.

“Did Muhammad Ali ever quit?”

Again the team yelled, “No!”

“Did Elmer McAllister ever quit?”

There was a long silence. Finally, one player was bold enough to ask, “Who is Elmer McCallister? We’ve never heard of him.”

The Coach snapped back, “Of course you never heard of him – he quit!”

As you can see, it is important never give up. I remember a young jockey who lost his first race, his second, his third, his first 10, his first 20, then it became 200 and 250. Finally, Eddie Arcaro won his first race and went on to be one of the all-time great jockeys.

Even Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians the greatest baseball player of all time, failed on many occasions. He struck out 1330 times.

Sir Winston Churchill, a person who never quit in a lifetime of defeats and setbacks, delivered the shortest and most eloquent commencement address ever given. Although he had taken three years to get through the eighth grade because of his trouble learning grammar, Churchill, much later in life was asked to address the graduates of Oxford University.

As he approached the podium with his cigar, cane, and top hat, he shouted, “Never Give Up!”

Several seconds passed before he rose to his toes and repeated, “Never, never give up.” Then he sat down.

Comment: An important key to the success of the people illustrated in the essay is that they not only made mistakes and/or got knocked down. They made mistakes and took measured risks getting to their goals. They had personal limitations to work around and many learned to manage those limitations such as Helen Keller. Another point to consider is getting knocked down may be out of the control of the individual most of the time. Einstein’s dissertation being rejected as irrelevant and fanciful was certainly not the position Einstein was seeking or even thinking. Getting up more than getting knocked down is a thoughtful process and strategic effort on the part of those we remember.

References:

Misner, I and Morgan, D. (2004). Masters of success: proven techniques for achieving success in business and life. pp 47-49. Canada.