Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
What can we do to help each other face the challenges of an economic climate that changes with the weather?
There are no safe havens. Sears has been around forever and is closing stores. Old brands are dying, yet new ones will always come along to replace them.
What do we want from our leaders to help us with the tides of change?
The following article gives food for thought. So does my response. Enjoy.
Bringing the immigrant perspective to business leaders
Tags: Accountability, Behavior, Business, Conflict, Economy, Ethics, Huffington Post, Leaders, Leadership, Politics, Power
Posted in Accountability, Business, Character, Conflict, Economy, Ethics, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, Politics, Power | No Comments »
Thursday, December 22nd, 2011
Lots of deaths of powerful men in the past year. Many have been dictators who had tons of money and little integrity.
Think about these 3 questions:
- Ever wonder why we permit these men to “rule” us?
- Ever wonder why millions will stay quiet and let those who have found the path to brute power to keep it?
- Ever think about how we can make a better difference and make a better world?
Vaclav Havel was an actor, a playwright, an artist. Maybe there is a clue there. The arts are a way to the heart. Even the word eARTh gives us a clue. Expressing oneself through music, movement, painting, poetry, theater touches the deep core of who we are. Maybe, just maybe, we should be finding leaders who have a different kind of power to lead us. Havel had that mysterious and important blend. What about you?
Click above to read the article by Barry Wood, Economics Journalist at HuffPost World.
Tags: Accountability, art, Economy, expression, History, Huffington Post, Leaders, Leadership, Politics, Power, Psychology, Yaclav Havel
Posted in Accountability, Economy, History, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Politics, Power, Psychology, Reflections | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011
This insightful blog brings up a multitude of questions about active leadership.
What do you do when things are tough and the “kids” are fighting?
Betsy's Page
-This is leadership? by Betsy Newmark
http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2011/11/this-is-leadership.html
Tags: Accountability, Economy, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, Management, Politics, Sylvia Lafair
Posted in Accountability, Decision Making, Economy, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, Leadership Strategies, Management, Politics | No Comments »
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
The “new” politics is happening. It is a return, or maybe a new turn to participatory human scale democracy. It is what is blossoming all around this country, all around the world. Modern technology is being used for good, not just fun or stimulation. The world is coming together in a new way, and as Robert Reich states, apathy is taking a hike!
The wave of involvement includes local grassroots initiatives, a redefining of power, and a way of getting to the core of issues that impact all of us. This is not about the 99%, it really is about the human desire for reaching potential and being altruistic; helping each other.
The “new’ politics is expressed by an “organic” worldview; it is inclusive rather than exclusive. The balance is between “CARE and DARE
” which is the meeting place of male and female ways of thinking and being.
It is in everyone’s nature to care and it is in everyone’s nature to dare, to take risks and make a difference. The evolving worldview that is being shaken loose is seen in the camaraderie of young and elder, diverse folks from diverse backgrounds who no longer are willing to be told what to do and how to live.
The statements from Berkeley California to Manhattan New York are one and the same. We all matter. The perspective is eclectic in detail, yet, generally affirms the human need for far more that material well-being alone. There is an exciting emphasis on holistic values that are life affirming and involve both inner trust in one’s deep beliefs of connectedness as well as group wisdom that we are all connected and no one wins unless we all do.
This is the core of what we teach in our Total Leadership Connections four session program. Come join us in the new wave of transformational leadership. Our new program begins in March 2012 and promises to be amazing and important at this time in the way the world is turning.
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Collaboration, Communication, Education, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, leadership programs, Management, Politics, Psychology, Relationships, Sylvia Lafair, Total Leadership Connections, Transformation, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Character, Collaboration, Communication, Community Relationships, Conflict Resolution, Consulting, Economy, Education, Equality, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, Leadership Strategies, Management, Politics, Psychology, Relationships, Total Leaders, Transformation, Workplace Relationships, Young Leaders | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
Sometimes I think we are looking at little tidbits of information hoping that will give us easy answers. Partly we all have been trained to sort and judge, sort and judge, sort and judge. It is initially more complex to look at the whole enchilada, the whole system for answers.
The blog about “Do Successful Executives Make Lousy Spouses” is a case in point. My first inclination was to really drill down into what constitutes success. I know it is more than money, more than the title, more than dividing up the housework. My second thought was if there is executive success there should be outside help for the housework.
I’d love your comments on how you handle the dividing thing at home and how it is working so we can all learn new ways of cooperating.
Finding fairness ain’t easy no matter how “successful” we are!
BNET Article by Steve Tobak:
A guy works his tail off climbing the corporate ladder. He sacrifices everything else to achieve success for himself and his family. In the meantime, his wife stays home with the kids and the housework. Ultimately, she divorces him. Why? Because, she sacrificed too, and got a lousy husband for her trouble.
Think that’s an old story out of the 50s or an exaggeration? It’s not. It’s all too common, especially when it comes to CEOs, executives, and business leaders. There’s quite a bit of data, not to mention anecdotal information, to support the idea that lopsided marriages just don’t work.
And that means workaholic and travelaholic executives who “do it all for the family” may one day come home to an empty house. In Getting to 50/50, former Goldman Sachs managing director Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober, who runs a private equity fund, draw some fascinating conclusions:
- The divorce rate is lower when couples share housework
- The divorce rate drops sharply when the woman works too
- The risk of divorce is lowest when the man earns 60% of the income and does 40% of housework
- Among couples over 40, two thirds of the divorces are initiated by the women
The wealth of research seems to indicate that, regardless of how hard men work, how successful they are, and how much money they bring home, most women seem to have a real problem when their husbands are slackers at home and aren’t around to help raise the kids. And they often feel resentful for having to sacrifice their own careers.
And I can substantiates that data with my own personal experience. For a long time, I was one of the those workaholic executives who travelled and worked most of the time. I felt entitled to forgo the housework, not to mention being selfish about my spare time and insensitive to the sacrifices my wife made. Not that she ever complained, but let’s just say things are very different now.
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of guys screw up their marriages by assuming that anything goes as long as they bring home the bacon. But when it comes to clueless executive husbands, this guy I used to work for, the president of a public company, definitely takes the cake. We’ll call him John Smith. One day Mrs. Smith called John’s office at around 6 pm:
“John Smith’s office, Cathy speaking.”
“Hi Cathy, it’s Mrs. Smith. Listen, John was supposed to be home half an hour ago to play tennis with his son. Has he left yet or is he running late, as usual?”
“Well,” Cathy hesitated, “I’m sorry, but John isn’t here.”
“Well, where is he?”
“Um …,” long pause, “John got on a plane to China hours ago.”
Now, I suppose that every relationship is unique, but the data doesn’t lie and neither does my experience. Bottom line, if I had the chance to do it over again, I’d do these three things differently:
- Sacrifice a little work time and at least make an effort to do some housework every week.
- Encourage and support my wife’s career, even if it means slowing my own climb up the corporate ladder, regardless of the disparity in pay.
- Google “narcissist.”
How about you? Is your work-family life out of balance? And do you think anything changes if you reverse the genders?
Sylvia Lafair’s Comment:
I just wish it all boiled down to splitting the housework, or making sure the temperature in the house is not too cold or too hot, or sharing the remote for the TV.
It’s just not that easy. The forces for workaholism, super achieving, martyrdom, and victimhood live way deep down in invisible behaviors (also called unconscious) that make us need to over prove ourselves, overgive to others, or take blame for everything that goes wrong.
I believe that the best leaders and parents are those who take the time to observe, understand and then transform behavior that limit healthy relationships with oneself and with others.
Then doing the housework is merely a little bleep in the day.
Tags: Communication, Divorce, Executives, Home Life, House Work, Patterns, Spouses, Successful Executives, Systems, Work Life
Posted in Boss, Business, Collaboration, Community Relationships, Conflict Resolution, Decision Making, Economy, Family Conflict, Health, History, Leaders, Leadership, Money, Patterns, Reflections, Relationships, Stress, Transformation, Workplace Relationships | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
I found this very good article on Ecreditdaily.com on Bernanke’s commencement address at the University of South Carolina. Please read and note my comments; I’d love to hear your thoughts.
It was not your typical speech by the Federal Reserve chairman; then again, this was a commencement address at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, about a two-hour drive from Dillon, where Ben Bernanke spent much of his childhood.
The Fed chief’s address focused on happiness, and reaffirmed some age-old parental advice: money isn’t everything.
Bernanke didn’t entirely abandon economics, however, as he referenced studies measuring contentment and income.
“Although today most Americans surveyed will tell you they are happy with their lives, the fraction of those who say that they are happy is not any higher than it was 40 years ago, when average incomes in the United States were considerably lower and few could even imagine developments like mobile phones or the Internet,” Bernanke said, referring to a study years ago by economist Richard Easterlin.
The economist, Bernanke told graduates, found that once you “get above a basic sustenance level–on average, people in rich countries don’t report being all that much happier than people in lower-income countries.”
For example, he said, Americans have reported similar levels of happiness as do Costa Ricans, who have about one-quarter the per capita income.
Other studies have contradicted that notion and contend that richer countries heighten happiness through higher levels of technology, infrastructure and healthcare.
So Bernanke took a stand somewhere in the middle ground.
“So I am going to continue under the assumption that, although wealth and income do contribute to happiness and life satisfaction, other factors must also be very important,” he said. “Or, as your parents always said, money doesn’t buy happiness. Well, an economist might reply, at least not by itself.”
He also said that happiness is often measured by the degree of human interaction, more so than the amount of material wealth. And that both psychologists and economists agree.
“Happy people tend to spend time with friends and family and put emphasis on social and community relationships,” Bernanke said. “We are social creatures. Research has demonstrated that happiness and life satisfaction are perhaps more closely related to participating meaningfully in a network of friends, family, and community than any other factor.”
My response:
Bernanke gave an important speech. As an economist, not a psychologist (which is my field) or a motivational guru, he stated what we know and tend to ignore. Money by itself truly has questionable value. It does seem high time that those in the financial realm begin to speak out. King Midas found out too late the limited benefits of having it all. Remember the children’s story? He was granted the wish to be the richest man in the world and everything he touched turned to gold, including his daughter who just wanted a hug.
Time we stop showing celebrities with hundreds of shoes and start to talk values with those getting ready to enter the work force before they become addicted to the false premise that more is better. At some point more, even oxygen, becomes toxic.
Tags: Bernanke, Communication, Community Relationships, Happiness, Money, Relationships, Social Relationships, Speech, Stress, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Avoider, Character, Collaboration, Communication, Community Relationships, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Decision Making, Economy, Ethics, Family Conflict, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Money, Stress, Workplace Relationships | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
I found this very good blog about the Toyota fiasco. Please read and note my comments; I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Article by Steve Tobak, The Corner Office
Survival of the fittest requires conflict; that’s as true in the boardroom as it is in the wild. In that sense, conflict isn’t just a good thing, it’s a key ingredient in all great organizations. It’s the manner in which businesses test new ideas and up-coming leadership talent.
But there comes a point when otherwise healthy conflict turns toxic, even destructive. I’ve seen it happen too many times, and when it does, it can plunge a successful company into a tailspin from which it might never recover. Case in point: the leadership crisis festering inside Toyota.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal chronicled the long-standing feud between the founding Toyoda family and Toyota’s non-family leadership faction. For generations, the pendulum of Toyota’s corporate leadership has swung from one to the other. And that’s worked pretty well … until now.
Now, the warring factions have taken their long-standing feud to previously unseen heights of public, personal attacks on each other. The family faction is led by Akio Toyoda, current CEO and 53-year old grandson of the company founder. From the WSJ:
Mr. Toyoda and his allies have been saying openly that when he took the top job last year after a 15-year hiatus for the Toyoda clan, he inherited a company weakened by non-family predecessors who sacrificed quality for faster growth and fatter margins.
The problems arose when “some people just got too big-headed and focused too excessively on profit,” Mr. Toyoda said at a Beijing news conference in March. Mr. Toyoda’s opponents – former company presidents Katsuaki Watanabe and Hiroshi Okuda – have an entirely different view (also from the WSJ):
They say Toyota’s current troubles are less a quality crisis and more a management and public-relations crisis of Mr. Toyoda’s making, reflecting their longstanding warnings that he wasn’t ready to run a global corporation.
“Is Akio ducking criticism of being a beneficiary of nepotism by accusing us and trying to justify his ascendancy to the top job?” one of Mr. Watanabe’s top aides said. Hiroshi Okuda … has told at least two associates since the recalls of cars involved in sudden acceleration incidents earlier this year: “Akio needs to go.”
Asked [in 2000] about future prospects for Mr. Toyoda, then a 43-year-old general manager, Mr. Okuda said: “Nepotism just doesn’t belong in our future.” He elaborated: “Akio-class talents are rolling around all over Toyota, like so many potatoes.”
In my opinion, both parties are actually at fault for the company’s current crisis. As I said a couple of months ago in At the Heart of What’s Ailing Toyota:
Like so many big companies before, in its relentless drive to become the world’s largest auto maker, Toyota’s management took its eye off the ball. In other words, growth became its priority, while the unique aspects of its culture and operational competencies responsible for its success to this point, became secondary.
After many years of stellar leadership, last year Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company’s founder, became CEO. And while Toyota’s issues have gestated for some time before Toyoda took the reins, his spectacular mishandling of the crisis demonstrates that he wasn’t ready for the job.
Nevertheless, instead of working together to resolve critical issues facing the company, Toyota’s leadership has devolved to juvenile finger-pointing. And, if this once-great company’s leadership doesn’t get its act together, well, as I said before, “not only will its recovery be long and painful, but it may not recover at all. It happens.”
My response below:
The Toyota mess is so familiar to anyone who has spent time working with family businesses. I grew up in one and remember the tension between my father and his two brothers and then the tugging, pulling, and positioning when outsiders joined the ranks.I became a family therapist and then morphed into an executive coach with a passion for working with family firms.
I know that finger pointing is common in all companies and is compounded when the family name is being tarnished. Here is what I do know: when stress hits the hot button there is a natural tendency to revert to patterns of behavior learned in the original organization, the family, that were there for survival and security.
There is a need to create safety by blaming and judging others as a protection mechanism. I only hope that the Toyoda clan can gain some understanding of the how and the why they did not intervene to keep the brand and their name in a positive light.
Tags: Blaming, Coaching, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Family Business, Family Conflict, family patterns, Leadership, leadership development, Patterns
Posted in Accountability, Business, Character, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Decision Making, Economy, Ethics, Executive Teams, Family Business, Family Conflict, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, Management, Media, Money, Patterns, Stress, Trust, Workplace Relationships | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
Learning how to live in the Safe Stress Zone™ is important for every decision you make. Once you can stay at a place of observing before you act, your chances of getting out of a tough time with a positive outcome is greatly enhanced.
Brain science indicates that our decisions are made based on emotions not logic. It is so fascinating that so many people can ignore evidence that is right in front of them that does not compute with their emotional decisions. Think “Titanic” and you get the picture.
Here is how it works. Experiences that occurred as children are attached to emotions and leave a strong imprint in the brain. Years later when a variation of the experience occurs it brings up the past memories and it is the emotional memory that will have the first chance of affecting a present decision.
An example that recently happened with one of my coaching clients went like this: his father was swindled by a partner when this man was a child of about four. The family lost their home and the father ended up committing suicide a year later.
Vowing never to be in a difficult financial position this man spent his life accumulating a fortune. This past year his business has, like many, been caught in the down economy; however, he still has many millions of dollars. What is fascinating is his fear of being left with nothing and the depression that is a daily occurrence.
It became so bad he would not even buy strawberries because they were not on sale. He insisted the heat be turned down to an uncomfortable 60 degrees and his children were required to make peanut and jelly sandwiched to take for lunch.
That is until he began the long journey to practice safe stress and uncover the deep fear that he would end up like his father. This is not in his “imagination”, it is in his brain!
Finally, he is touching back into the old buried fears and anxieties that have kept him and his family captive. He has used the OUT Technique to OBSEVE, UNDERSTAND and TRANSFORM the past.
We now know that as new ideas and concepts are embraced the brain changes physically, it has a quality of plasticity so we do not have to be trapped by the past, we just have to help get our brain into the safe stress zone for healthy survival.
Tags: Business, Decisions, Emotions, Fear, Healthy Survival, Observe, Safe Stress, Transform, Transformation, Understand
Posted in Business, Coaching, Economy, Fear, Health, Patterns, Stress | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
hubris: overbearing pride or presumption
The word hubris is a fascinating one. It contains a warning: When you are too sure of yourself, beware of a fall!!! It is a great lesson to learn, both on a personal and a professional level.
Remember Enron; weren’t they called “the smartest guys in the room?” Whatever happened to Atari? How about Fannie Mae? Those who work, or used to work, on Wall Street have had to, or should look up the word hubris.
And Toyota. What do we say about that icon of excellence? A key to looking at what goes wrong with great companies is detailed in a book written by Jim Collins “How the Mighty Fall”. It is an important analysis of what he calls “the arc of tragedy” that can happen to the best of companies when hubris comes calling.
Collins outlines five key points to pay attention to. So, if your company is having a high-time, even in this still wobbly economy, pay attention. At the first stage, where hubris is magnified, there is a sense of invincibility; nothing can change the trajectory of success. The pattern of denial enters front and center and everyone is so busy congratulating each other that there are no checks and balances, no little kid saying that maybe the emperor is naked.
Next is the “more is better” mindset. As anthropologist Gregory Bateson pointed out, “At some point more, including even oxygen, becomes toxic”. This seems to be the curse of our modern society, and perhaps the present economy is helping to create a course correction. Core values become greed and over- expansion.
Then denial becomes pathological. Bad news is ignored and distorted rose-colored glasses are worn by everyone in the company (or the country). This is where the proverbial deck chairs are rearranged, i.e.: reorganized without being able to admit what is not working and make basic changes.
Next phase is common in companies, as well as personal relationships. Maybe an acquisition will make it all better, or for a couple it’s time to have a baby to solve the difficulties. There is a sense of desperation and none of the core issues are targeted. More denial and salve, with no medicinal value.
Finally, the great have fallen, and as we have seen all too often in the past several years, there is the death of a company, a last gasp before patterns of denial and avoidance offer the final blow?
Is it time we look hubris in the face, own our own shadow behaviors, and learn a new way to transform companies, transform ourselves, when we get so far off track? The next few months should be great learning times for all of us.
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Book, Business, Communication, Economy, Executive Teams, hubris, Jim Collins, Leadership, Patterns, self-reflection, Toyota, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Accountability, Avoider, Boss, Business, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Economy, Employers, Ethics, Executive Teams, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, leadership development, Management, Media, Money, Patterns, Super Achiever, The media, Trust | No Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Leadership and creativity are linked at a core level. Great leaders are also artists in many areas. The following amazing photographs show us how, if we trust each other and find that core creative place, we can make the ordinary extraordinary!
In Japan, rice is essential to life, both for food and as a way of life. Rice planting season has made this very small island culture into one where there is cooperation and collaboration. You can only plant and harvest rice in certain seasons, and it takes the effort of many to make this happen. Once the basics of planting are no longer an issue, look at the creativity that can come with doing the same thing year after year and making it new and unique.
As I looked at these photographs I wondered who came up with the ideas. Then I thought……………who cares? It is a team effort, and the results speak for themselves. Having been to Japan many times, I was always fascinated by the lack of “me, me, me” ego so often seen in the West. Collaboration is at the heart of the hard work that went into these works of art. Enjoy.
Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan, but this is no alien creation. The designs have been cleverly planted.
Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different color rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.
As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.
A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants. The colors are created by using different varieties. This photo was taken in Inakadate, Japan.
Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the skies. This was created by precision planting and months of planning by villagers and farmers located in Inkadate, Japan.
Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives are featured on the television series Tenchijin, appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture of Japan.
This year, various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan, including designs of deer dancers. Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan, such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers
The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed Kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed Tsugaru, a Roman variety, to create the colored patterns in the time between planting and harvesting in September.
The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square meters of paddy fields.
From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.
Closer to the image, the careful placement of the thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.
Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew from meetings of the village committees. The different varieties of rice plants grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces.
In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention.
In 2005, agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art.
A year later, organizers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images
Tags: Accountability, Behavioral Patterns, Collaboration, Diversity, Economy, Family-Based Patterns, Japanese art, Leadership, leadership programs, Natural art, Resilience, Rice, Workplace Relationships
Posted in Collaboration, Communication, Consulting, Diversity, Economy, Education, Employers, Ethics, Executive Teams, Honor, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, Psychology, Reflections, Super Achiever, Team Building, Transformation, Trust | No Comments »
