On Living, Leading, (Re)designing, and Coaching

Dìas de los Muertos

Today is the beginning of the three-day Mexican celebration called "Dìas de los Muertos" or "The Day of the Dead."

The Oakland Museum (in Oakland, CA) has an exhibit called Laughing Bones/Weeping Hearts commemorating the celebration. Earlier this month I was on jury duty (for a month!) at the courthouse right across the street from the museum. So during one of our lunch breaks I stopped by the exhibit.

The exhibit was very moving. All of the artists, from young school kids to elders, had created shrines to their late loved ones. The most touching for me was a multi-panel quilt with beautiful embroidered "remembrances" of loves ones, neighbors, and friends who had passed away. The rememberances where simple appreciations and recognitions of who these unnamed and anonymous deceased people were to the artist.

So in the spirit and anonymous style of this quilt, I'll offer my own remembrances of several of my own loved ones who have passed.

"... he always opened the door with a welcoming smile ..."

"... she always had sweets for us ..."

"... he used to put me on top of the refrigerator and then walk away in jest ..."

"... I loved her turkey and mashed potatoes but her peas were awful ..."

"... he was loved by everyone he knew ... there were 21 priests at his funeral ..."

"... she was a God-fearing woman but somehow found solace in her faith ..."

"... he always listened with care and openness ... always ..."

May you stop, if only briefly, over the next few days and remember the loved ones in your life who have passed. And may their death gift you with a sense of what's truly important in your own life.

Love,

-Steve

[The inserted picture is a piece by Jana Weston called Flora (2000). It is on display at the Oakland Museum through Dec 3.]

Embracing Uncertainty - Part 2

In yesterday's posting, I started to explore how we face uncertainty through adaptation and how we sometimes have habits that get in the way of our natural and innate ability to adapt, harmonize, and heal. I pointed to how, in our attempts to be both effective and efficient, we often build rigid mechanistic control structures and systems. And that such systems have all adaptability designed out of them through being numb to what's emerging.

To focus this point even more, what really gets in our way from adapting to our uncertain and changing world is our insistence on living in a world of certainty. For the most part, we live in a Trance of Certainty. Taking our world as being certain and predictable - because, in part, it is - enables us to do so many things - from building airplane, automobiles, homes, roads, bridges, cities, etc.

But in very important ways, our world is not certain. What will happen geopolitically, environmentally, economically, technologically, and in all forms of human endeavor is far from certain. Perhaps all we can say for certain is that something will happen in each of these that we won't see coming.

In the same way that rigid mechanistic control systems are numb/blind, we too are numbed and blinded by only observing in narrowly structured ways to what's emerging. This narrow way that we observe creates a sense that we live in a certain world.

In the terms of cognitive science, we are cognitively blind. And this blindness is both unavoidable and necessary. Imagine if we couldn't be certain that the chair would still be there to land on when we started to sit down in it. We'd either never try to sit down or sitting down would be heralded as a heroic event worthy of news headlines.

To summarize, we have a natural way of being blind and unconsciously dissociated from our world. This makes the world show up as certain to us - mostly a "good" thing - but also creates the biggest barrier to adaptation (and innovation, harmonization, and healing) - mostly a "bad" thing particularly in a world where change of all kinds is accelerating.

So what are we to do? Embrace uncertainty! More on this in future postings. For now I'll leave you with a quote from the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and a question for you to ponder.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki

In the situations where you must act - at home, at work, in relationships - what are you uncertain about? Be specific. And how does awareness of your uncertainty change how you show up in those situations. (OK ... that was really two questions.) Remember to have fun with this!

Take care,

-Steve

Embracing Uncertainty - Part 1

In recent postings I've been exploring three big breakdowns that, from my perspective, all leaders must face in order to rise to the call for leadership in today's world. In today's posting, I'll speak about the third big breakdown - uncertainty created by the (accelerating) pace of change and our dissociation from our surroundings.

Doesn't it seem like we are on a one way road into the Land of Uncertainty? Everything is changing - our economy, the political landscape, the climate and environment, new technologies, new competition, new products, new services, etc. All this change generates obsoleteness, irrelevance, valulessness, randomness, and meaninglessness from the very things, serives, people, and places that were previously meaningful, relevant, and valuable. Is there any doubt that we live in a Land of Uncertainty?

We face uncertainty with adaptability. That is to say that we respond to a changing world through changing ourselves and our relationship to the world. And overall, we are very adaptable, life is very adaptable.

But we have ways of living and working that also get in the way of adaptability. For example, in the business world a lot of emphasis is placed on being both effective and efficient. This is seen as essential to satisfying your customers (effectiveness) at a cost that allows you to be profitable (efficiency). But what happens when what you build and/or offer is no longer what your customers want or even need because the circumstances of their lives and concerns have change dramatically?

To be effective requires developing structures and rules. To be effective we can't over-commit. We have to be attuned to how much work we have the capacity do. Having structures for how we make commitments enables us to be effective. To be efficient requires timing. Efficiency is gained through optimization - the removal of wasted efforts and unnecessary delays between tasks. Being both effective and efficient requires structures coordinated through timing. And these systems, when built, tend to be rigid mechanistic control structures.

On the other hand, adaptability requires flexibility - the exact opposite of rigidity. Adaptability requires  surrendering to what's emerging right now rather than controlling it. Adaptability is a quality of life more than a quality of mechanism. So at first glance it seems that effectiveness and efficiency run counter to adaptability.

Are there any examples where adaptability, efficiency, and effectiveness do occur simultaneously? Yes. There are tons of examples. They occur in natural designs (e.g., adaptation of plants, animals, and ecosystems; your own body). We also see examples in improvisational acting and music and other forms of self-organizing human interaction.

What these examples have in common is that they are self-healing systems. They are "systems" in which interactions are grounded in responsiveness to what's emerging. In a rigid mechanistic control systems there is little to no awareness of what's emerging. They are, in a way, numb to their surroundings and where there is no awareness, no consciousness, there can be no healing.

In part 2 of this posting we'll take a closer look at all this.

-Steve

Restoration of Community Through Civic Engagement

Two postings ago I pointed to three big breakdowns that I believe all leaders must face in today's political and business climate. Today I'll explore the second breakdown - the fragmentation of community.

Our conversations today are often generated within narratives and beliefs about each other that fragment us:

• If you're not with us, you're against us.
• If you aren't one of us, then you are one of them.
• I need to take care of my own.
• I need make you wrong in order to make me right.
• I need to dominate you in order not to be dominated.
• I need to make you invalid in order to validate myself.
• I need to make you guilty in order to secure my innocence.
• I need to burden you in order to relieve myself.

These narratives and beliefs drive much of how we relate to each other and how we build community. They all seem to be strategies for survival. But how well do they ensure our survival in the long run?

Underlying all of these narratives is the belief that war - which these are all forms of - ensures our survival. And in a way it did when our problems of survival were localized. But today we have global sized threats to our survival - both economic and environmental.

Today, perhaps as never before in our history we are being presented with global threats that demand global responses. The narratives and divide us, that fragment us as a community, only make our survival less possible. What is called for is a reconstruction of community.

Right now I'm in the middle of attending my first virtual conference GOS2006 - Global Open Space Conference.

The first speaker is Peter Block, author of several bestsellers on leadership, management, and business consulting. He has given us all a paper called "Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community" to read and discuss with him during the conference.

In it he characterizes our current ways of living together as retributive.  Retributive is a good way, I think, of characterizing the narratives/beliefs above. And retributive conversations are devoid of accountability and soft on commitment.

He proposes a conversational reconstruction of community as follows:

1. Conversation for Invitation - conversations which extend invitations; being in a community must be a choice not a mandate
2. Conversation for Possibility - conversations which declare new possibilities for the future that are available through civic action within a community
3. Conversation for Ownership - conversations in which we establish ourselves as the cause of the community; where accountability is declared
4. Conversation for Dissent - conversations in which people can say "no" are essential if there "yes" is to be meaningful
5. Conversation for Commitment - conversations in which promises are made to generate satisfaction within the whole community
6. Conversation for Gifts - conversations focused on the gifts we bring and offer to the community

These conversations of civic engagement are an approach to reinventing our communities in a way that generates accountability, commitment, and not fragmentation.

I'll ask him if I can distribute the paper on this blog. Stay tuned for more.

What approaches to community building should also be in this conversation?

-Steve

Working With Disorientation Through Self-Remembering

In yesterday's posting I outlined three big breakdowns that every leader - business, non-profit, or political - must address.  Disorientation was the first one. What is so disorienting about our world today?  Two things:

1. We have more of everything - more access to more information about more people, places, and things; more choices
2. We are less in touch with ourselves and our essential needs. We are suffering more and more from self-forgetting and self-alienation (dissociation in the "I domain" to reference yesterday's posting).

And because we are less in touch with ourselves and what we really need, and we can't tell if the choices we have will really meet our needs, so we invent more choices. This is a recipe for increasing disorientation, paralysis, and regret for any actions we do manage to take.

We live in a narrative that says "The more choice we have the more freedom we have and the more freedom we have the more likely we'll be satisfied in life." And yet, this isn't what we experience.

Barry Schwartz, author of "Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" gave a TED Talk on this very subject. Enjoy!

At the end of his talk, Barry makes that point that everybody needs a fishbowl. If anything is possible (no fishbowl), "we don't have freedom we have paralysis and we decrease satisfaction."

So what is our fishbowl? Ourselves! Earlier I pointed to our self-forgetting and self-alienation as something that contributes toward our disorientation. Our fishbowl is ourselves. Each of us is a unique individual with some possibilities and not others. I'll never play basketball like Michael Jordan. That's just not a possibility for me. And that's the good news.

The way of working with the breakdown of disorientation is through self-remembering.  The question I want to leave you with is ... who is this self that we're forgetting that needs to be remembered in order to find true orientation in life?

More on self-remembering as a practice in a later posting.

-Steve

Three Big Breakdowns Every Leader Must Address in Today's World

In the world of Integral Coaching we have a simple model called I-We-It and it reminds us that our human lives have these three domains. We have a personal domain that we call the "I domain." We also have an interpersonal domain that we call the "We domain." And there is the objective (should that be in quotes?) world that we call the "It domain."

Lately, I've been re-examining the fundamental practices of leadership. This is part of a project to construct an integral approach to leadership. Using this model - I-We-It - I see that there is at least one big breakdown in each that leaders must face. Here they are without any justification.

The big breakdown that I see in the "I" domain is disorientation. In the face of disorientation, we often become paralyzed or we take action anyway but they regret our choice.

The big breakdown that I see in the "We" domain is the fragmentation of community which can also be understood as the loss of solidarity or the loss of engagement.

And the big breakdown that I see in the "It" domain is the ever increasing pace of change which can also be understood as the increasing pace of becoming obsolete or the increasing of uncertainty.

My claim is that any successful leader - business, non-profit, or political - must address all three big breakdowns simultaneously. Why? Because they are one and the same problem - dissociation. We are becoming dissociated from ourselves, dissociated from each other, and dissociated from the world we live in. Dissociation is the deconstructive product of our increasingly post-modern world. Let's not allow dissociation to get out of hand. Instead, let's see these breakdowns as an invitation to reconstruct our professions, institutions, and practices - especially leadership.

Leaders have a special role within our world. They are the ones that orient us to the important conversations, debates, and challenges. They are the ones that unite and engage us in a common cause. And they are the ones that offer confidence and courage as a way of facing uncertainty.

How can we develop leaders who will rise to the need for leadership in this day and age (and the next)? How does a person become such an integral leader?

Take care,

-Steve

"Bhagavad Gita" is the new "The Art of War"

BusinessWeek posted a special report on how big businesses and business schools are appropriating Indian philosophy creating something they call "Karma Capitalism." The Bhagavad Gita is the new The Art of War.

• Executives should be motivated by a broader purpose than money
• Companies should take a more holistic approach to business that takes into account the needs of shareholders, employees, customers, society, and the environment
• Companies should replace the shareholder-driven agenda with a stakeholder-focused approach
• More emotional intelligence, more servant leadership, more co-creation, more corporate philanthropy (Hey! This isn't Indian Philosophy, is it?)

If you know the lingo of Spiral Dynamics, a model of the development of value systems, this articles discloses the shift from Orange to Green - from King Capitalism for "me" to Karma Capitalism for "us". Karl Marx would be so proud.

In order to support this move major B-schools (and lots of us) are introducing courses on self-mastery and even bringing in so-called Indian business gurus (Deepak Chopra, Ram Charan, etc.).

I'm all for this. This is the direction that I see business going in as well, particularly in the post-tech bubble, post-Enron, post-Inconvenient Truth world.

For me the question isn't so much the general trajectory of where we are going (which is discernible from developmental models like Spiral Dynamics) the question is what is the path to get there.
As any strategic planner knows, knowing where you want to be is very different from knowing how to get there.

The Gita is a profound and rich teaching (and the pinnacle of integral theory in its day). But it wasn't written (as far as we can tell) with an understanding of today's specific technical, political, educational, environmental, social, and business challenges. To have meaning, relevance, and value to today's business and government leaders, it requires translation and re-interpretation. But it was written with a profoundly deep understanding of the human condition. And that is what remains - more or less - a constant.

This reminds me of Ken Wilber's answer to a question "What can you do that Buddha couldn't?" His answer ... "drive a Jeep."

-Steve

The Zen of Presentations

Just a quick note to point to a great resource for leaders, designers, and coaches.

If you ever make presentations or help others improve their presentations, you'll find a ton of value in spending time with the blog (and associated websites) Presentation Zen by Gary Reynolds.

BTW, you can find the presentation the slide on the right came from here.

Enjoy!

-Steve

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

This quote in the title of this blog posting comes from Alan Kay (pictured to the right), a luminary in the field of technology and human-computer interaction.

I started the last post with a quote by Sir Ken Robinson, "Education is meant to take us into a future that we can't grasp."

Taken together one might conclude that Education had better prepare us to invent (and continue re-inventing) our future technology, societies, cultures, and even ourselves.

The act of re-invention starts with a declaration of possibility not a declaration of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust, or valid and invalid.

Re-invention is a creative act in which the impossible becomes possible and the possible becomes a reality.

Don't misunderstand me. Knowing grammar, history, science, mathematics is necessary, wonderful, and enriches life.

Knowing that 4 follows after 1, 2, and 3 is great, but John Tarrant Roshi, a Zen Teacher of mine, would say that in reality, life operates more like 1, 2, 3, rhinoceros! Real creativity isn't the product of socialization (which is the aim of much of our educational system).

So I'm curious about how we can strike a balance between learning what I might loosely call "objective" subjects, where there is a sense of right and wrong that needs to be learned, and what I might call "creative" subjects. How cool would it be to have classes in the practice of innovation?

Self-observation time ...

1. What practices do you have in your life that tap your creativity?
2. What supports your expression of creativity?
3. What gets in the way of your expression of creativity?
4. What future are you inventing for yourself?
5. What action will you take based on what you are learning about creativity in your life?

Take care,

-Steve

"Education is meant to take us into a future that we can't grasp."

I'd like to continue the thread on education started in my last blog entry with a look at one of the down sides of the just-in-case approach to education. Our educational system today drums creativity out of our children by making mistakes a bad thing. You can't be creative if you aren't willing to make mistakes.

This, in turn, threatens our children's ability to be creative, adaptive, and innovate in the face of an uncertain future that demands the very creativity, adaptability, and innovation that we drummed out of them in school.

The TED Conference is held every year in Monterey, CA. TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. In February 2006, Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation, creativity, and education gave a talk (see video) on creativity in our educational system. Take a look ... his talk is humorous and impassioned (originally from the TED Blog.

My girlfriend is a fifth grade school teacher in California. At least at her school, there are no art classes. Mind you, the state standards still require some art to be taught. But since there is no test at the end of the year on art (you get E for Effort), not much attention is paid to teaching it. I personally find this very sad and concerning.

And yet I have a vivid memory of art class when I was in third or fourth grade. I finished my drawing, I was proud of the fact that I didn't do it the way the other kids did. My drawing had flare and was messy in just the right way - for me. When I turned it in, the art teacher summarily rejected it saying that I had to go back to my desk and finish drawing everything to the edge of the page.  Even art class can be co-opted into drumming out creativity.

Is our current educational system preparing us for the future - a future that we can't grasp today? From what I have seen, I conclude that the answer is no.

My speculation is that the following are the core competencies needed as we move into future:

• Self-leadership - authoring one's own life (over and over again)
• Adaptability - acceptance of the need to change coupled with the willingness to try something new - even if we risk making mistakes - in order to discover what works
• Innovation - offering new ways to take care of our concerns as human beings in a world that is growing ever more complex and foreign

Each of these requires - in large measure - creativity. As Robinson says, "Education is meant to take us into a future that we can't grasp." But if education drums the creativity right out of us, where will this creativity come from?

Personally, I trust that we'll find a creative way to self-leadership, adaptability, and innovation even with an education system that drums creativity out of us. Creativity loves a great challenge, don't you think?

-Steve