Archive for December, 2008
Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Jeffery Pfeffer had a thoughtful entry on BNET titled “When Will We Ever Learn” (December 18). He talks about the repetitive patterns that have been key in forming our present economic problems– the role of financial incentives.
When bonuses are based on the quantity of bottom line numbers it is inevitable that employees will rush to the finish line with the most signed contracts, billable hours, or over the top sales, whether they make sense or not. We are stuck in the pattern of “more is better” that began with the industrial revolution and still colors our economic landscape.
So the question arises, “How did we come to the conclusion that more is better?” This has been an overarching theme of our production/consumption society. We have become, first consumers and secondly citizens. Even after September 11, President Bush asked us to cooperate by getting out there and buying more. This line of thinking may have made sense as we learned to develop machines of mass production and invest in new and helpful technologies. However, if we are rewarded for our work efforts mainly by how many mortgages are signed, how many consulting hours are contracted, or how many students aced the standardized tests in school, we will continue down this path of no return.
If we look to nature we can clearly see the dead end of “more is better ”thinking. At some point “more” becomes toxic. Even too much oxygen, which is vital to our very existence, will lead to brain damage.
The amazing success of industrialization and technology has brought us to a crossroads in meaning and values that, if left unanswered, will keep us locked in old, outmoded ways of thinking. Hopefully we have come to a time where enough of us are ready to become pattern aware by asking the question of “How did this happen again?” and start dialogues in schools, communities, and in our workplaces to define the real meaning of work for the 21st century.
Tags: Economy, Incentive, Jeff Pfeffer, Leadership, Management, Media
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Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Jim Carrey is funny! He also can be a great serious actor. He gave insight into the source of his acting skills. Interviewed on Larry King’s program last night he gave us a snapshot of just how he became a clown. As a youngster, Jim’s mother was in pain a great deal of the time and he did whatever he could to make her laugh. His grandparents were alcoholics and when they visited there was shame and dissention in the air. He remembered that at eight years old he had the conscious thought he wanted to make his mother proud, that she had “created a miracle.” He took his childhood angst and turned it into laughter.
As I watched Jim I thought about our cult of celebrity worship, our addiction to discussing the lives of the rich and famous. Yet, we forget to factor in the very humanness that connects us all. It was clear that this talented man had to go through many caverns and dark places to turn into the eloquent adult he has become. Jim, a product of his difficult childhood, could have gone in a myriad of directions. He chose to take the clown of his childhood and become a humorist.
Each of us has the opportunity to take the patterns from childhood and transform them into their healthy opposites if we are willing to take the time to explore. My book “Don’t Bring It To Work: Breaking the Family Patterns that Limit Success” has a map, called the Sankofa Map, that helps individuals go hunting for the treasure buried under the pain of childhood. We can all become pattern aware and like Jim, make our own contribution to a world yearning for our creative energy. We are all, what Jim knew as a child, miracles waiting to happen.
Tags: Business, Jim Carrey, Larry King, Media, Neuroscience, Patterns, Psychology, Transformation
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
It was bound to happen. Obama’s color is once again causing debate. And, if we can go past the “Yes he is” or “No he isn’t” we could make headway beyond the traditional either/or climate that wastes so much time and creative energy of our population.
Obama represents for us a new form of human energy…he is a hybrid. He appears to have taken the best that is available from both sides of his family and from the cultures in which he grew up. In the book, “The Audacity of Hope” he mentions how engaged he was with the kids and the various animals that ran in the streets with him in Indonesia. That part of his life imprinted him as much as surfing in Hawaii, walking the streets of New York or finding his way to class in the esteemed halls of ivy at Harvard. We are all complex, multi-layered beings who, if we take the time to look inside ourselves are brilliant colors far beyond black and white.
It is an exciting time. We are at the very edges of new dialogues as we break through to see ourselves and others with clearer eyes. In the classic film, “Being There” Peter Sellers plays a gardener named (perfectly) Chance. When he meets a politically powerful Washington couple he tells them his name and they hear “Chauncey Gardinier.” Chance, the gardener, was not sophisticated enough for them. Chance represents the inevitable blank canvas on which the other characters paint their own level of reality. One sees Chance as a potential lover, another as a political maven, others see him as a great philosopher.
We do this to each other all the time! We see each other through our own personal lens. When we meet another they become, on many levels, who we want them to be based on our own past history and present circumstances. Obama, like the rest of us, is a rich combination of colors and textures. If we can begin to observe our own projections and learn from their intensity – where we need to see another as same or not the same and why this has so much of a charge – we can make headway.
Obama’s rich heritage can help us all become pattern aware and his coat of many colors can help us all move to personal growth and a multiversity of possibilities.
Tags: Business, Collaboration, Diversity, Ethics, Leadership, Management, Media, Politics, Power, Team Building
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Friday, December 12th, 2008
The news these past few weeks reminds me of a quote from a man who was both a visionary and a pragmatist. The quote is not a simplistic. “Don’t Worry Be Happy” statement, it is one that seems to cycle throughout recorded time showing that “bad guys” can and do win and then ultimately lose.
“When I despair,” Gandhi once said, “I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fail.”
My question is: What questions do we need to ask ourselves to get beyond self-serving behaviors that sports figure O.J. Simpson, financial expert Bernard Madoff, and politician Rod Blagojevich exhibit?
They all exhibit the pattern of “super achiever” where there is a strong desire to fulfill “the American Dream” of being rich, famous, and powerful. Super Achievers have been lauded in our celebrity addicted culture and in our work environments. We have turned the other cheek and permitted abuses to occur and held up the rich and the famous as role models for our kids. I do not mean to imply that achievement is negative. Achievement and creativity are at the core of being human. I am talking about the obsession for “being number one” and for bending the rules to the breaking point to get there.
Super Achievers are often frightened folks who need to make up for shames or disappointments that have occurred in their families. They will show the world, using the metrics by which the world measures success, that they can call the shots. Until one day shame and disappointment circle back and suffocate them.
Here is the good news: when we can challenge ourselves to observe and understand the prevailing patterns that no longer serve us as individuals and as a society we can transform them. Super Achievers transformed become creative collaborators and the energy they used to step over and on others is now available to tackle our more pressing collective problems. Perhaps these three men will find it in themselves to become pattern aware as they have to face themselves in the days to come.
Tags: Boss, Business, Ethics, Leadership, Management, Media, Patterns, Power, Super Achiever, Transformation
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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Last week the British Medical Journal reported that connecting with happy people improves one’s happiness. We know from neuroscience that we all possess mirror neurons that pick up signals from those around us. So the mantra “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” certainly makes sense. Except every time I check the news and learn that more and more people are losing their homes and jobs I find it hard to do a happiness tap dance. I wonder if that means folks who know me should stay far away.
So I spent some time thinking about what it means to be happy and I realized that it is often directly related to conditions “out there.” If the market is up, more people seem happy, if the new car is a good deal, it brings a smile, if a few pounds are shed, you will want to join me for a salad. Yet, what happens if the economy is tanking and business is dismal? Most folks I connect with lately are both physically and emotionally distressed. What can we do? Pretend and “fake it till you make it” or just admit we are downright scared and depressed and look for some solace in the medicine cabinet.
Maybe there is another alternative and just maybe this is the best and right time to think deeper than “happiness.” Maybe our focus on happiness has led us to be just a bit too self-centered. Perhaps the focus can be altruism, a word we don’t use all that much. It’s action-oriented. You have to DO something. Like, if you have a sandwich, give half to a homeless person. Stop someone on the street and tell them you like their coat, or scarf, or glasses. We need to take a few minutes and just say “hi!” Send a card or email and ask someone how you can help.
In the 1940’s a Harvard sociologist, Pitrim Sorokin hypothesized that we are hard wired for altruism and this may just be one of the most important parts of brain research for us to understand at this very difficult time in our evolving culture.
Tags: Business, Health, Leadership, Management, Neuroscience, Psychology
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Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
I was talking to some high school students who said they were angry and mistrustful of the way those in charge have been making decisions that will impact their future. They wanted to know what I have been doing to make a difference. I became quiet and was sad that my answers were so limited. Yes, I said to them, I did have thoughts that we were headed down a slippery slope for some time. No, I told them, I did not think Iraq was a responsible action. And no, I was too busy with my day to day life to go to Washington to protest.
We changed the conversation to one of possibilities. What now could they do and what could I do to make a difference? They seemed so alert and willing and I remembered how alert and willing I was in the early ’70’s when I took part in so many meetings about the role of women in society and served as the president of the local Zero Population Growth chapter.
These young people are looking for direction. They want more from their elders. Yes, they believe Barack Obama is giving them a sense of hope. Yet, they want more. I talked with them about how patterns repeat themselves unless we become very vigilant about our behavior. I thought they would get bored because I could not talk to them in sound bites. Instead they started to ask more questions. They began to see how the patterns they had developed in their families were the ones they acted on in school.
What inspired me the most was that once they saw themselves as a pleaser, procrastinator, martyr or rebel they were asking very grown-up questions about how to transform, to become the healthy opposite. Once they understood that a pleaser can become a powerful truth teller, a procrastinator someone who can realize how to make things happen, a martyr turns into someone who can integrate a group to work together and a rebel can become a community builder. They wanted more tools so they would not fall back to old bad habits.
I realized that these young people want a much fuller curriculum in school, not just the math, science, and English, they want to know how to be the best they can be and rather repeat our mistakes, they want to be able to stand on our shoulders.
Tags: Business, Collaboration, Education, Leadership, Management
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Monday, December 8th, 2008
The good I see coming out of all these economic woes is the capacity for all of us to once again look in the mirror and decide if we are living authentic, transparent lives. Going to a meeting in a private jet one day and coming to a continuation of the meeting in a hybrid car the next can be seen as media pressure. So what! Wherever the pressure comes from it is good. Any time we have to reassess and say “no” to old patterns that have gotten us stuck we no longer have to be a “NOT SEE.”
Perhaps these complex and frightening days are really what we need for sustainable change to happen. Perhaps we can all become conscious of the vital fact that our behavior is not isolated, that the way we conduct ourselves does matter, and that if we are not behaving in a responsible way people can see right through us and will no longer turn a “blind eye” and maybe we will finally rid our society of “NOT SEES.”
Tags: Boss, Business, Diversity, Economy, History, Leadership, Management, Media, Politics
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Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Our world was split and splintered on this day almost 70 years ago when word came that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. And in a few weeks Barack Obama, the President Elect and his family will vacation on that same island. So I began to think about destruction and rejuvenation and more importantly, what do we learn when we take time to scour the past to change the present.
While war is no longer a focus in the Hawaiian Islands, it is certainly raging in many other parts of the world where there are beautiful beaches lying in disrepair. Perhaps it is time to consider more deeply how the past imprints the present. Perhaps it is time to really look for the patterns that connect rather than get caught in doing the same things over and over.
Back in 1978 noted anthropologist Gregory Bateson challenged us to rethink the basic assumptions upon which we have built many of society’s institutions when he said: “Those theories of man which start from his most animalistic, maladaptive, and lunatic psychology turn out to be improbable first premises from which to approach the psalmist’s question “Lord, What is Man?” Faulty epistemology. And this narrowness led up to a failure to discern the pattern which connects.”
Becoming PatternAware™, both personally and as a nation may lead us into new, fertile territory if we begin to ask more questions with depth and have the patience to search for answers that help us connect the dots. Lessons from the past show us that we are all connected and truly no one wins unless we all do.
December 7 can be honored by wreaths and remembrances, and also by examining priorities for healthy survival not just of ourselves but also of ensuing generations.
Tags: Business, History, Media, Politics, Psychology
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