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| May 30, 2007 |
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I grew up in the Martin Luther King, Jr. era, tremendously inspired by his example, message, and delivery. In the generations since his death, I have yearned for a leader who can inspire millions to move institutionalized mountains for the betterment of humankind. It was hard to believe the causes calling for a movement were missing. Indeed, the opposite seemed true. It was hard to believe that inspirational leaders did not exist anymore.
The answer to the puzzle has become more evident every day: In today's high velocity, highly complex existence, our problems are more plentiful, complex, and fragmented than ever before. It is simply not possible for one person to mobilize tens of millions behind one objective, at least in the visible way Dr. King did it. What is happening, instead, is multitudes of leaders are emerging in many different areas, working for positive change. In place of a Dr. King who could get millions of us on our feet and shedding blood sweat and tears in an effort to correct one major societal ill, we have thousands of leaders - across many sectors and lands - leading less visible but equally powerful missions to address all our other problems. We have Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank (www.grameen-info.org), providing thousands of tiny business loans to the poorest people in India who have dreams but need only a small amount of money to kick-start their realization. We have Lori Steele, CEO of Everyone Counts (www.everyonecounts.com), which has developed powerful technology to eliminate voting scandals. We have Jeff Skoll (www.skollfoundation.org), a co-founder of eBay and leading social entrepreneur, investing in a number of social causes and raising social consciousness by producing movies such as An Inconvenient Truth (global warming), Syriana (oil and terrorism), Fast Food Nation, and North Country (sex discrimination). We have Li Moxuan, a Greenpeace China researcher (http://activism.greenpeace.org/yellowriver), leading a global campaign to save China's Yellow River. True, none of these and leaders of thousands of other stories are likely to get us out marching in the streets and chanting together with fiery determination, but they are leading change the only way it is likely to occur today. That is, fragment by fragment, day by day. |
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| May 29, 2007 |
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I just read Gregg Braden's The Divine Matrix (2007). Fantastic read! The best layperson's overview of New Science and its convergence with spirituality I have read. This man has as good of a grasp on today's reality as anyone I have heard. Compelling, compelling, compelling!
Focused on the proof behind oneness (the interconnectedness of everything and everyone) and the power of human consciousness within this web, he describes a 1997 University of Geneva experiment in which a photon was split into two, identical, separate particles. The photons were then fired away from each other, seven miles in opposite directions, creating a distance of 14 miles between them. At the end of the seven miles each was forced to choose from two courses. Without exception, each time the photons chose the same route. Over and over again. Scientists call it "quantum entanglement," but regardless of the term, they are convinced that there is a web of energy that connects everything in the universe in ways we are only beginning to understand.
He also describes a 1993 experiment conducted by the U.S. Army in which DNA taken from the mouth of a donor responded to the emotions of the donor even when the donor was hundreds of miles away from his or her cells. More proof of the web.
Beyond the science, though, I was particularly enamored with his inspirational descriptions of the power of human consciousness. Gotta read this book! |
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| May 22, 2007 |
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I spoke this week with the head of public company whom I have known for awhile. He and his company struggle with lack of innovation. I happened to mention something about a book I had recently read, and he responded that he had no time to read. He'll scan the local paper, the WSJ, and a couple trade rags, but that was all he had time for. I said, "There is your and your company’s issue. You cannot afford to not feed your brain more...way, way more."
Creativity - the ability to discover connections - is a key element of innovation, the commercialization of creativity. If any single feature defines organizations today, it is the need for innovation. Without innovation, organizations will lose out to competitors that are more innovative.
To be creative, however, you have to feed your brain. Reading is still the best, most efficient method. Read everything you can get your hands on. If you're in business, read Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, Business 2.0, Fast Company, the WSJ, the NY Times, Barron's, as well as the trade rags that apply to your business. That's just a start. Then read books and magazines outside your familiar areas...pop culture, science, fashion, classics, anything you can find. Beyond reading, start writing. Write anything, just let it flow. Take up a creative art. Do things you aren’t doing now. Do things differently from the way you are doing them now. Go to more movies. Listen to more talk radio. Listen to music you think you don’t like. Travel far and wide and randomly. Find some creative friends, call them regularly, and brainstorm about ideas.
You'll start seeing connections that will blow you away. A friend of mine, George Hsu, inventor of the electro-magnetic compass and co-founder of Sensor Platforms (which designed the first standard integrated circuit to interact with a wide range of sensors), constantly feeds his brain to remain creative. He believes a brain must be "cross-trained" constantly to be able to spot connections that escape the attention of others. He plays musical instruments, listens to a variety of musical styles, reads on a wide variety of topics, practices four languages, plays a variety of sports, all so that his mind is finely-tuned to pick up on connections. |
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| May 18, 2007 |
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| Forbes (May 21, 2007) just named Ebay's Meg Whitman as the Best Boss for the Buck. I'd say for any amount of bucks she is among the best. Since joining Ebay in 1998, she has taken it public, increased its market cap from $700 million to $46 billion, and done it as cleanly as any executive in our generation. No accounting tricks, no backdating of stock options, no exorbitant pay (frankly, she deserves more than the average $1.7 million in cash compensation she earns each year), and no bullying. I have a number of friends who work at Ebay or have worked at Ebay and, without exception, they are huge fans of her. She is self-defined and eminently credible, has a clear vision for the future, and is inspiring, people-oriented, focused, courageous, and supportive to her team. An extraordinary person and executive. |
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| May 17, 2007 |
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That sucking sound is getting louder. It's the leadership vacuum and it just doesn't seem to be getting better. We got through Tyco, Adelphia, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, and all the others. And now we have already wealthy executives in many companies under fire for trying to get wealthier by back-dating stock options. Lord John Browne leaves BP in disgrace after his allegedly gay affair was exposed. The real disgrace, though, was in how poorly he managed the company and how differently he managed it from the way he sold it to the public. He bought hundreds of millions of dollars of ads selling BP as the values-based, employee-friendly, "green" oil company, but cut back so much on safety expenditures that BP has become a very unsafe place to work. And it appears he his feel-good ads were a higher priority than alternative energy projects.
Who else? It's all around us. Bob Nardelli at Home Depot, who finally got canned after contributing virtually nothing to shareholder value for five years and driving customer satisfaction rates to miserable levels. Carly Fiorina at HP. Phil Purcell at Morgan Stanley. Harry Stonecipher at Boeing. And Paul Wolfowitz is likely to be booted from the World Bank, despite the White House's opinion that bypassing corporate policies and procedures to enhance his employee-girlfriend's career and compensation are not grounds for termination. And look at the Justice Department. Locally, look as close as our families. We don't even lead them very well, as evidenced by the levels of gang activity, addiction, teen crime, and general apathy.
Leaders got us here, by their poor performance, and leaders are going to have to get us out of here, by good performance. It's just the way it works. But we just don’t have enough effective leaders. We are in a leadership crisis. The velocity and complexity of our world has exceeded the ability of our leaders to be effective in an increasing number of cases. Traditional approaches to leadership - learn by watching, read lists of character traits and functions of leaders and then go out and embody/perform them - are not enough. It's time to go deep inside, individually and collectively, to find the energies and drivers that will allow us to lead effectively in these challenging times.
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| May 11, 2007 |
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| For every Chris Albrecht, former Chairman and CEO of HBO fired this week after being charged for assaulting a girlfriend in a Las Vegas parking lot (I guess not everything stays in Vegas!), there are scores of leaders whose lack of clarity in thought, emotion, and behavior are undermining their ability to effectively lead. While not assaulting people under the legal definition of assault, they emotionally and verbally abuse, rage, deceive, manipulate, succumb to addictions, and do all kinds of other things that interfere with their ability to clearly define themselves, be a people-oriented person, create a values-based core in their organizations, and really engage a team in the pursuit of the organizational objective. At the end of the day, one cannot effectively lead others if he or she cannot effectively lead himself or herself. |
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| May 4, 2007 |
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| In sports, at least at the major college and professional levels, poor and even mediocre coaching is not tolerated for very long. In other arenas, however, the leash given leaders by their constituents is much longer. Politicians are protected by the length of their elected terms, but even then mediocre incumbents have a great advantage over challengers. In the corporate world, mediocre leaders last what must seem like eons to shareholders. (Witness Bob Nardelli at Home Depot, only recently canned after five years of ineffectiveness.) In academics, it seems almost impossible to be fired. True, in sports, you have the binary function of wins and losses. Good leaders win and poor leaders lose. The quality of leadership is not so evident where wins and losses are not involved. But is this only because we, as followers, don't trust our intuitions and instead need mountains of data over a long period of time to assess a leader's performance? And don't our intuitions tell us how a leader is doing very early in the game? Doesn't this high velocity, highly complex existence of ours beg for good leaders and require that we assess them more quickly than in the old days where no real harm was done by waiting out poor leadership? Just asking... |
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| May 2, 2007 |
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At the end of the day, a leader's job is to bring a team together and produce results. When there is a huge divide between supporters of that leader and dissenters, and each group is not insignificant in size, a leader simply cannot produce results. He or she is at war with a large portion of the team he or she is supposed to be leading. He or she has failed.
This is precisely what is happening in Washington as we speak. Whether you are a supporter of Bush or dissenter, you’d have to agree that the country is polarized and paralyzed with him at the helm. The majority of Americans are unsatisfied with his leadership, and particularly his handling of the Iraq situation, and a substantial minority supports him. And our disagreement over his leadership is intense. We are on the same team, but seemingly at war with each other, and this is a hallmark of failed leadership. Isn’t there anyway to bring 2008 along more quickly? We need a leader who can unify this country and produce some positive results.
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