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| December 27, 2005 |
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| The December issue of "Fast Company" (my favorite biz mag) talks about the MacDowell Colony, one of the nation's most popular artist retreats in the wilds of New Hampshire. Each year 1,500 artists apply for one of 250 fellowships that involve weeks or months combining solitude with interaction with other artists. Since 1907, its alumni have won 65 Pulitzers, 12 MacArthur Foundation "Genius Awards", and many Academy Awards, Grammys, Guggenheims, and National Book Awards. The idea is this: let artists interact with other artists from other disciplines, and they'll pick up new ideas. Give them space and time to work, and their creativity will soar. Apparently, there are 250 colonies such as this in the U.S. Well, leaders are nothing if not artists. In today's world, innovation carries the day. Where is that MacDowell app? |
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| December 8, 2005 |
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| In her extraordinary 2002 book, The Power of Apology, renowned therapist and author Beverly Engel explains how an apology can transform a relationship and, collectively, how apologies can transform the world. Just think where we would be if our leaders really took this to heart. Indeed, our world would be transformed. If our political leaders said, "I am profoundly sorry for leading us into this war. It was a mistake, many lives were lost, and I take full responsibility." If they said, "I acted unethically, imprudently, and irresponsibly. I am truly sorry for everyone I have hurt and will accept full responsibility for the consequences of my actions." If our business leaders said, "I was entrusted with the privilege of managing your invested money and I broke that trust. I was greedy and I wasted your hard-earned money, and I truly feel the pain of your loss and the hardship you will endure. I will pay for my wrongs and work to restore my integrity and credibility." If our religious leaders said, "I helped to create and protect a culture that allowed my colleagues to molest young people for generations. I am sincerely sorry for the devastating pain it has caused to so many people. I accept my legal and moral responsibility, and will work tirelessly for the rest of my days to bring joy and light into people's lives." Why do we rarely see this? As a people, we are quite forgiving. We love redemption. Why can't our leaders see this? Why do they perpetuate the harm caused by their actions by justifying them to the point of absurdity? |
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| December 1, 2005 |
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| Dr. Masaru Emoto is a highly creative and visionary Japanese researcher, and publisher of The True Power of Water. That book documents, in powerful fashion, proof that our thoughts affect everything in and around us. Specifically, it describes a series of studies where pictures of tap water were taken before and after people held positive or negative intentions. Water that received thoughts of love or gratitude morphed into beautiful crystalline structures. Water that received negative thoughts morphed into very ugly structures and appearances. From Dr. Emoto's work we are provided with factual evidence that human vibrational energy, thoughts, words, ideas and music affect the molecular structure of water, the very same water that comprises over 70% of a human body and covers the same amount of our planet. Water is the very source of all life on this planet, the quality and integrity are vitally important to all forms of life. The body is very much like a sponge and is composed of trillions of chambers called cells that hold liquid. The quality of our life is directly connected to the quality of our water. |
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If you asked most "in-the-know" people about how to launch a social networking Internet site, they would tell you to build content that was already demand-proven by other sites and employ a structure that worked well in other sites or, at a minimum, had been validated by market research. Indeed, that is the way some big Silicon Valley hitters are going about it. And if the founders of MySpace.com, today's hottest site for the 16-to-34 crowd, had done that, they would have produced a nice little site, with a nice little flow of traffic, and a nice little stream of advertising revenue. But instead, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe asked themselves how communities of any type grow and flourish, and came up with the obvious answer that they grow they way they want to grow. And the more control participants have in their community, the more attracted they are to it and the more they time they spend in it. So they launched MySpace.com in late 2003, leaving it to community members to build whatever content they wanted. The company merely provided tools needed by members to establish a presence and participate fully in the community, and infrastructure needed to make the content best serve community members. In less than two years, the company had 14 million unique visitors each month and was attracting larger advertising revenues than all but a handful of sites on the Internet. Its parent company was recently purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million.
Anderson and DeWolfe began this venture absolutely open to the universe of possibilities. Talk about faith! Talk about absence of fear! Who needs those "in-the-know"?
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| Joe Montana, the Hall of Fame quarterback and his San Francisco Forty-Niners were down 16-13 against the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII in 1989. The 'Niners were in possession at their own 8-yard line, with 3:10 left to play. As the offensive unit waited for the play to come in from the sideline, they were on edge. The 'Niners had won in their three previous Super Bowl appearances, and no one wanted to be on the first 'Niner team to lose a Super Bowl. But they not played well all day and circumstances seemed stacked against them. Montana sensed the tension in the air and knew his teammates could not deliver the performance needed to win unless they relaxed and settled down. An ice-breaker was needed. Montana noticed the late actor, John Candy, in the stands and said, "Hey, look! Isn't that John Candy?" Everyone in the huddle looked to the stands and then cracked up. Indeed, the actor was there, but they were blown away that their future Hall of Fame leader seemed unfazed by the task in front of them and was completely enjoying the moment. The unit relaxed and Montana drove them 82 yards for a touchdown with less than a minute left. They won 20 - 16. This is the kind of presence that makes great leaders. Montana first had the presence to not be worrying about what might go wrong. He had the presence to notice one man in a crowd of over 50,000. He had the presence to sense that his team was stressed and needed something to bring them back to the task at hand. He had the sense to know exactly what that something was. |
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| Straight from the pen of Tom Kelley, General Manager of Ideo and author of the just-released The Ten Faces Of Innovation. And isn't he absolutely right? Isn't the devil's advocate the biggest innovation killer in America? Innovation is the lifeblood of all organizations, and the devil's advocate is a toxic agent. All of us leaders still playing primarily with the left part of our brain still want to say, "Yes, but, but, but...", but as our global race intensifies, it's probably time to put a muzzle on the devil's advocate and take it off only way down the road. When resources are being allocated between competing ideas and Darwinian selection takes over. |
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