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The November 5, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek has an article, entitled Saving Energy by Fighting Friction, that talks about a new trend throughout the broader energy sector. It's called "friction fighting". It's based on the concept that overcoming resistance accounts for as much as one-third of the energy we consume on the planet. Thus, the energy industries have a new focus on fat pipes, lubricants, coatings, and aerodynamic design.
Resistance is good when we want resistance. In a hydro-electric turbine, for instance, we want the force of water to impact a turbine, knowing that the movement will be transformed into electric energy. But it is amazing how often resistance develops, often unconsciously, when we have no use for it and, in fact, it harms us. The result, it seems, is that our lives revolve around managing resistances. I don't believe it has to be that way. The energy sector may have a lesson for all of us here. |
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Safeway CEO Steve Burd was steeped in mainstream corporate culture for three decades. The kind of culture that says, "Government, leave us alone. Let the free market work."
But when he learned in 2004 that Safeway's health care expenditures exceeded its net income, his eyes opened wide. He tried every solution he could think of, things like wellness and preventive care programs, and finally concluded that the government has to rescue the national health care program. He is now a forceful leader in that movement. And he has a big fight on his hands. The Bush Administration, as well as about every conservative group around, vow to stop any movement toward a national plan. Meanwhile, expect that within 10 years, one in every five dollars spent in this country will go to health care. |
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I still hear a lot of corporate executives grousing about message boards, blogs, and online communities. They are uncomfortable about their company and, indeed, their performance as leaders being discussed so openly. They tell me, "There are always unreasonable consumers and disgruntled employees out there. They tend to be a lot louder than those singing praise. Their bad-mouthing could drive potential employees and consumers away from us."
Phooey! The world has changed. Radically and permanently. Transparency is the hallmark of the new millennium. The only rational response is to open up, let it flow (the good, bad, and ugly), and trust. Trust that those who are wrong in their negative spewing will be discounted by the rest of the audience and, ultimately, ignored. Trust that the negativity that doesn’t go away has a real source and you need to address it quickly. Trust that you are learning more about your customers than you ever dreamed possible and that knowledge will allow you to address their needs better than your competitors who are not so open-minded and trusting.
Rich Karlgaard addresses this issue in the April 16, 2007 issue of Forbes. He writes about the vibrant online community – independent of the company - of Cirrus Design pilots and owners. A lot of hiss and venom is thrown around, but if Cirrus is smart (and trusting and patient), they will mine gold out of this site. |
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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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| Here's a simple test: For just one day, carry around a little journal and note down every time you either resist in your mind something suggested, directed, or requested by someone else. If you are like most people, you will be shocked at your tally at day's end. And most of you will then say, "Yes, but I had good reasons. For instance..." But try not to react and instead just be aware of your resistances. Now here's a little suggestion: For one day, never resist a thing. Not one thing. Not in your mind. Not expressly. Just try it and be open to it and your life will never be the same. |
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| The overwhelming majority of us learned, as a by-product of our "maturation", how to resist "what is". We felt pain in response to something, so we became closed to situations that might involve the same pain. This is fine for many things, but our maturation knew few limits. For example, if our peers teased us in our youth for speaking up in class, thirty years later we still avoid situations calling for public speaking. As adults, we have a crippling excess of fears and fixed beliefs. These fears and fixed beliefs, however, are incongruent with a dynamic, rapidly changing world. Resistance to "what is" actually causes more pain and drains our energy. Opening to "what is" becomes liberating and energizing. Not only are we no longer afraid of the unknown, we solicit energy inputs from any and all directions and dimensions. We constantly seek to widen the net for possibilities, and resist nothing. |
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