Harry Tucker - Observations and Musings

Think Week–The Importance of Quiet Time

2012-01-30T11:52:00.001-05:00

When I worked with Microsoft some years ago, I was fascinated and privileged to participate in a process called Think Week.

Think Week was a process that Bill Gates embraced, whereby he would disconnect from most sources of information (or interference) and would pore over technical papers submitted by Microsoft employees. The thought was that quiet thinking time was a valuable means of recharging and receiving insight into what should be embraced next personally and professionally.

While I was initially fascinated by this, I have since discovered the power of following such a process.

Many of us are bombarded daily with information ranging from the valuable to the mundane and even the useless. Many of us do our part to contribute to this information stream, also making contributions that range from the valuable to the useless.

Social media has it all for us.

Sometimes it has too much.

We all know that an automobile serves us best when we maintain it well. Low-quality gasoline, poor food choices, lack of maintenance and excessive wear-and-tear eventually cause the automobile to be less reliable and if we push it hard enough, it may fail completely.

Our brain is very similar. When we overload it with an over-abundance of information, whether it be valuable or not, eventually it begins to not fire on all cylinders.

When that happens, one of the greatest gifts we have, the ability to think clearly, to reason, to plan and to execute our plan, begins to sputter. Eventually we are not living up to our potential but we don’t realize it because we are too busy trying to stay on top of the information stream or we are too busy trying to show others that we are able to contribute as effectively to social media as anyone else.

Too many have become lost, using social media awareness and contribution as an indicator of how much they matter in the world.

For this reason, I have embraced the notion of a semi-annual retreat from social media. That’s right – no Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, foursquare or any other forms of social media for a week (sometimes longer). I even limit email as much as I can.

While I am grateful for the many social interactions that I experience daily, my brain eventually reaches a point where it needs quiet time to understand what it should be doing and how it should be doing it.

Truthfully, there are also times I get tired of hearing myself speak and I appreciate the quiet from within as I’m sure some of my colleagues appreciate as well. :-)

Unlike many, I don’t think the world will come to an end if I cease to exchange information with my many wonderful social media connections for a week or so.

For many of my colleagues who have tried a week (or more) of quiet time, where one gets to reflect on past, present and future, they have found it to be a powerful, rejuvenating experience.

And it reminds them that they are in control of the information around them, not the other way around.

Blaise Pascal once said:

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

It is intriguing how many people cannot exist without social media, cannot go an hour without a peek at how their Facebook friends are doing or to see if someone retweeted their latest tweet on Twitter.

They have reduced their Life meaning to how social media defines it for them.

Perhaps if more people took some time for themselves, we would have a better sense of who we are, why we are here and what we are meant to achieve.

Maybe if we took a little more time for ourselves, we would have a better sense of what our Legacy is and how we are creating it.

Susan Taylor once said:

“We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly. . . spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.”

I believe she is right.

See you in a week …. give or take.

Create a great day!

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Reasons or Excuses?

2012-01-26T11:13:00.001-05:00

Most of us have plenty of reasons why we don’t get to the things we know we should get to. Work pressures, family obligations and a tangled jumble of other responsibilities prevent us from getting to what we need to get to meet our obligations to ourselves and others.

All valid reasons, I’m sure.

Or are they?

I caught this article in the Calgary Herald this morning about Tim Barber, a homeless man with an addiction to alcohol and crack who has decided enough is enough.

With a partner, Chris Morris, who has also experienced significant struggle in his Life, they have decided to launch a food delivery service in downtown Calgary. While still early in inception, they have already managed to land some regular customers and both are about to leave the ranks of the homeless.

As Chris Morris notes in the Herald piece:

“We’re having a lot of fun with this and it’s really helped my self-confidence.”

They have discovered that when a desire to create a better Life for one’s self becomes stronger than the demons that are holding them back, great things can be accomplished.

I think they are also about to discover that when someone can rebuild their lives as these two gentlemen appear to be doing, that they become an inspiration to many others, proving that no matter how difficult things look, there is always hope for a better tomorrow.

They have definitely inspired me this morning.

So if you’re in downtown Calgary and need food delivered, give Tim at Timmy’s Only a call at 403-465-5232.

You’ll both be glad you did.

As for me, my reasons for not getting a few things done just got reclassified as excuses and I will address them.

How about you?

Create a great day!

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Ethics and the Courage To Do What’s Right

2012-01-24T12:42:00.001-05:00

On Friday night, I happened to watch Courageous, a powerful movie from the makers of Fireproof about the idea that “honor begins at home”. I highly recommend the movie although I will warn viewers, even big tough men like myself, that a box of Kleenex will come in handy in a couple of places.

After the movie was finished, I reflected on the importance of honor and ethics in my professional career. Many times over the years, I had to choose between doing the right thing (potentially impacting myself and my family in a significant, negative way) versus turning a blind eye to a situation in order to “play it safe”.

At one client on Wall St, a household-name in the banking industry, a number of “star players” inside the Bank had been running a significant pornography operation on Bank servers (unbeknownst to senior Bank officers). So the same infrastructure that ran online banking for customers also provided pornography services to other clients.

When I stumbled upon this, it seemed to me that the obvious thing to do was to point this out and have it shut down. However, I was immediately cautioned against this by Bank staff, suggesting that since these guys were “the stars” of the organization, the Bank would punish whistleblowers in an effort to cover up the situation while allowing the whistleblowers to go about their business.

So the message was:

It doesn’t matter what you believe is right. Shut up and suck it up like everyone else and everything will be ok for everyone. If you speak up, the only person who will be punished is you.

It was a time when I couldn’t really afford to be without work and so for a moment, I was stymied as to what to do. If I did what I knew was right, I risked losing it all and putting my family in financial trouble.

If I chose to do nothing, income would continue to flow but I knew that I would carry an ever-growing burden that I was doing something against my own beliefs.

In the end, my belief in doing the right thing overpowered my fear that I would fall into catastrophic financial disaster and I blew the whistle on these guys. I stepped out in faith, believing that ultimately good things happen to good people.

The right people heard the message, did the right thing, the pornography sites were shut down, the “stars” were dismissed and I was thanked profusely for having done the right thing.

It also produced many years of abundance, when oftentimes the tie breaker between myself and other candidates competing for the same business was my high level of personal ethics and my courage to do the right thing in difficult times.

As I reflected on this event and other experiences over the years, both my own and those of my colleagues, I realize that the structural tension of “doing the right thing” today is more difficult than ever.

We have many competing pressures in today’s world, not the least of which is taking care of ourselves and our families in challenging times.

Meanwhile, the professional world is filled with people who use various of intimidation, including reminding people of potential financial or reputational impact if they insist on following their ethics to do “the right thing”.

But as I think back to many situations where I was called to make difficult decisions based on my own ethics and suffered through endless sleepless nights agonizing about “should I do this or should I not”, I realize a few important things.

While the transition through such times was difficult, the long-term rewards were far greater than the short-term “carrot” of keeping the pay check coming in or avoiding a bully who threatened to slam my reputation in an effort to force my compliance to his / her agenda.

Equally important, doing the right thing allows me to stand proud, knowing I did the right thing when many people admitted that they would have “sucked it up” just to keep a pay check coming in, even if they felt guilty about doing it. I was true to myself, a principle that brings great personal peace to one’s Life.

Thirdly, there were many people who supported my decisions – I was never alone. Neither are you.

Finally, there are many who look to us for guidance and inspiration. Our actions not only impact our Life but the lives of many who see us as a model to be emulated …. so we should choose wisely.

Maybe doing the right thing here and there doesn’t mean much to some people.

However, over a lifetime, little things here and there add up to a lot.

It forms the basis for how we will be remembered long after we are gone.

And clients who engage with me know what the rules are before we engage. I am flexible in every aspect of negotiation and execution except when it comes to my ethics, morals and values.

I’m not perfect by a long shot and have made my share of mistakes.

However, when my end-of-days has arrived, I will have done my best to say that I lived a life with no regrets and I will face my judgement knowing that I did the best I could with what I had.

Are you willing to stand up for what you believe in or are you one of those people who constantly brings the tension home to your family or to your friends at the coffee shop, constantly expressing frustration over a situation while doing nothing about it …..

…. as the structural tension between knowing the right thing and doing the right thing slowly tears you (and potentially others) apart.

In difficult times, it is important to remember that you are never alone nor are you the first person to experience what you are experiencing. Many people have lived through what you are experiencing and are thriving as a result of the experience.

And knowing this, remember also that the world is waiting for more people to do the right thing, based on a higher level of ethics, morals and values.

The question is …. what are you waiting for?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I wouldn’t be half the person I am had it not been for great mentors in my Life. I was thinking about a great mentor of mine, Richard Giordanella, whom I last saw 5 years ago just before he died of cancer. He was a huge proponent of living by a strong code of ethics. I share a blog entry here that I wrote about him a few years ago.

Be Good To Yourself

2012-01-19T13:14:00.001-05:00

I was listening to Journey’s “Be Good To Yourself” the other day and the power of the lyrics struck me as being incredibly relevant in the 21st century.

If you’ve never heard the song before, here are the lyrics:

Runnin’ out of self-control
Gettin’ close to an overload
Up against a no win situation

Shoulder to shoulder, push and shove
I’m hangin’ up my boxin’ gloves
I’m ready for a long vacation

Chorus:
Be good to yourself when, nobody else will
Oh be good to yourself
You’re walkin’ a high wire, caught in a cross fire
Oh be good to yourself

When you can’t give no more
They want it all but you gotta say no
I’m turnin’ off the noise that makes me crazy

Lookin’ back with no regrets
To forgive is to forget
I want a little piece of mind to turn to

[Chorus]

So many people I run into in the course of my Life could stand to listen to this song carefully and strive to live by the message contained within.

Yes, I realize that we all have many competing obligations, pressures and priorities in our lives, pulling us in a myriad of directions and threatening to topple us at any moment.

But many of the situations we find ourselves in exist because we allow them to exist.

There are many times when we find ourselves being pummelled by people who strive to execute their personal or professional agenda at the expense of our own lives - people who find our ethics, values and beliefs to be a threat to their own intentions and who will do anything to accomplish their intentions.

Our lives get very complicated when we allow such people to steamroll over us.

Maybe it’s because we prefer to avoid confrontation and will sacrifice our very soul to avoid it.

Maybe we’ve been taught from an early age to try to please everyone (often at our own expense) or to follow the belief that “turning the other cheek” is always the best policy.

Sadly for some, their ethics, morals and values are actually fluid (and often for sale) and they go with the flow with the rationalization that “if I allow this to happen, then I can benefit by ……”, not realizing that they have traded short-term gain for long-term pain.

Meanwhile, people lose a little piece of themselves every day, becoming more and more disenchanted with their Life as they realize they are not living the Life they had hoped to be living.

Many of these people know deep inside that they have the ability to change their Life but for some painful reason that they can’t put their finger on (or they are afraid to follow through on), they just don’t get it done.

And this makes their pain feel even more intense and the solution seem even more elusive.

Maybe … just maybe …. if we realized our incredible potential and our responsibility towards living up to that potential, we would say “I stand for something better and deserve better treatment than this”.

Imagine a Life where we learn to say “no” more often when others attempt to bury what we represent under their selfish intentions and where we take a stand that represents the ethics, morals and values that we believe are important to ourselves and to the world.

Maybe at this point, we would realize how important it is to “Be Good To Yourself”.

Do you know how important it is?

What are you doing about it … right now?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

After I posted this, I found this piece of research, from an article by Chuck Colson, to be interesting and somewhat related:

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” researchers Rob Willer, Ko Kuwabara and Michael Macy devised a set of ingenious experiments that showed how distressingly easy it is to make people go against what they believe to be true.

One of the experiments involved wine-tasting, in which participants evaluate both the wine and one another’s wine-tasting skills. The participants were given three samples of wine. In reality, all three samples were from the same bottle. One had even been tainted with vinegar!

Before they delivered their evaluation, they listened to other participants, who were plants, who praised the vinegar-laced wine as the best. Half of the participants went against their own taste buds and joined in praising the vinegary concoction.

Even more interesting is what happened next. Another participant, who was also a plant, told the truth about the wines. But when it came time for the participants to evaluate each other, some of them were permitted to do so confidentially, and the others had to do so publicly.

The ones who gave their evaluations confidentially praised the truth-teller. But those who had to evaluate the truth-teller publicly actually turned on him and gave him low marks.

The researchers call this phenomenon “false enforcement,” which they define as “the public enforcement of a norm that is not privately endorsed.”

What sustains the norm isn’t its popularity, much less its validity, but instead the desire to “avoid a negative social judgment from one’s peers,” according to the report. Important words.

And the desire to “avoid a negative social judgment” feeds what German sociologist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann called the “spiral of silence.”

Simply stated, out of a desire to avoid reprisal or isolation, people go along with what they think is the popular opinion — even if they object to that opinion personally. Instead of voicing their objections, they remain silent.

When In Doubt, Ask - The Answer May Surprise You

2012-01-09T13:48:00.001-05:00

I found myself in a difficult situation over the weekend, wondering how to respectfully, professionally resolve an impasse that was holding a project back from its true success potential.

As I was mulling over this impasse, I received an interesting email. I’ve changed the private information.

Hi Harry,

My name is “C”, I live in “State” - last September 11th, our daughter and my mother went to see the San Francisco Giants play in SF. As a tribute they gave each person at the stadium a 9/11 Remembrance Poster with someones name on it that was killed on 9/11. My daughter received Narender Nath's. I've been doing some digging and it appears that you knew him. I'm hoping you could help me find an address for his sister, who has posted several messages on various websites.

We framed the poster and it has become a permanent picture on our wall in our mountain home. I had taken some pictures of the poster and was hoping to send those pictures to his family (from “State”). Not only is it hanging on the wall, but I've printed off his obituary, etc. and it is a conversation piece for all who visit. I guess it's our memorial from 3000 miles away.

Thanks you for your time.

Sincerely,

“C”

I have written about Narender many times, including in this blog entry.

The timing of this email intrigued me.

Narender was a man of high ideals who believed in the power of doing the right thing, even when it was painful or difficult. He believed that corrective action delivered with respect trumped ignoring the need to do so just because one didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or make waves. He knew how to deliver such action in a way that was respectful to all, with an eye towards long-term win/wins above short-term pain avoidance.

As I contemplated this email, my thoughts turned to Narender, replaying many of our shared times in my mind and as I did so, I could almost hear Narender counselling me about what I should do in my current situation.

I followed the advice I believe he would have given me. Who knows where it will go but I did the best I could, with respect to others and with a mutual long-term win as the center of my proposal.

Some people will think that an email like the one above is creepy or inappropriate. They may wonder why someone would bother to frame the poster of a complete stranger on their wall. They might also think that the idea that this email could trigger a solution to my problem would be absurd.

Others might see it differently, thinking it intriguing or moving that someone who is no longer with us can impact a complete stranger in such a powerful way or help someone solve a problem without actually being here to help solve it.

Personally, I believe in the latter.

Narender always had a positive influence on everyone around him. Even more than 10 years after he was taken from us, he continues to have such an influence, a testament to the legacy of a man known for the hearts he touched.

At a moment when I was asking no one in particular about how to deal with a difficult situation, an answer appeared. In addition to that answer, two strangers have been connected and have an opportunity to positively influence each other.

That’s just like Narender – always looking for a way to help others.

Which begs the question …….. was this email:

coincidence or random chance?

a supernatural connection?

a result influenced by the Divine?

Do any of us really know?

More importantly, does it really matter?

Or is it more important to be cognizant of our Life legacy and the impact that we have on others, including those we have not seen in a long time or may never have met at all?

I know what Narender’s answer would be.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Here is a copy of the poster that “C” is referring to.

Predictions for 2012

2012-01-01T18:30:00.001-05:00

As someone who has a background in the prediction of human behavior, I am often asked for my predictions on various things. With that thought in mind, I share a few of my predictions for 2012.

Politics

In an effort to save time and money, the Oscars and the Federal election will be moved to the same date so that all actors can be rewarded at the same time.

Julian Assange will be appointed as an election consultant to both the GOP and the Democrats. To level the playing field, he will reveal their innermost secrets and ideas to the world and the American people will be so afraid that they will demand that government be dissolved for fear of what could happen next as a result of either party getting elected.

In response to this event, Hollywood will rise to the occasion and create a fictitious character who embodies the perfect ideals of a President. This fictitious, computer-generated character will win the next Federal election in a landslide but will not be able to take office when a hard-drive that wasn’t backed up fails in an unexplained fashion.

Space Exploration

The Chinese government, in an effort to escalate its space program and in particular, its moon-landing program, will discover that advances in the program can be achieved much faster when human safety is reduced in priority. Rumors of a 40-mile long slingshot will continue to be played down as the year develops.

Alien beings from the planet Erewhon will land on the White House lawn and offer us the solutions to world hunger, disease, pestilence, warfare and everything else that dogs mankind. In a gesture of galactic peace and gratitude, we will nuke their starships and congratulate ourselves on having avoided a potentially catastrophic advancement in human culture.

Environment

It will be revealed that Al Gore’s original title for his work on the environment was going to be “A Convenient Way to Make a Billion Dollars”. When told that such a title would raise eyebrows and could possibly become “an inconvenient truth”, an idea was born.

Despite fears of a pending oil shortage, we will finally admit by year’s end that the greatest resource shortage we have in the world are qualified people who care and are in a position to make a difference in regards to the challenges we face in the world. In order to hide the truth, those in power will continue to redirect the public’s attention to other resource issues. Wars with no discernable purpose or measurable outcomes are particularly useful in situations such as this.

Mysticism

A tablet will be found in an ancient Mayan archeological dig that will later be translated to read "Fun Things To Do With Calendars and Other Practical Jokes".

Also contained within the same tablet will be a short piece that describes how to pretend how you have achieved success in all areas of your life when you haven’t and how you can make money selling this “Secret” to others.

But seriously …..

I’m just having some fun, of course.

But there are a lot of things that are equally easy to predict.

Our financial crisis will continue to worsen, despite the assurances of politicians who are trying to project a sense that everything is under control. This is important to politicians so that everything doesn’t come apart – at least on their watch. Our current challenges, many of which have been brought about by uncontrolled spending have been solved by … yup … more uncontrolled spending.

More than 24,000 children under the age of 5 will continue to die daily from tainted water, a problem easily solved but a problem that doesn’t have enough pizazz to be worthy of tackling.

But it’s not all bad …..

Also equally easy to predict …. people from many walks of life will continue to dedicate their lives to improving the lives of others and to improving the state of the planet-at-large.

However, unless we all step up and help these dedicated, heart-filled people to make a positive impact on the planet, then in fact, there won’t be much new and noteworthy for 2012.

Yes, we will have new versions of iPads that can read our minds, some new electric cars that may or may not burst into flames when using them, airport scanners that can identify what we ate for breakfast (and potentially reject us as a hazardous flatulence threat) and the Cleveland Browns will win the Super Bowl.

Every set of predictions has to have an outlandish claim mixed in somewhere, right? Can you tell which one is outlandish?

But much of the world will be same-old, same-old. The wealthy will get wealthier, the poor will be left even further behind, many corporations will continue to flaunt morals, ethics and even the legal system to improve their bottom line, we will continue to not hold politicians accountable for their actions or results and another year of opportunity to make a difference for others will have passed us by.

And yes … that new exercise video that you bought to revamp your life forever will more-than-likely find its way into the recycle bin by April.

I’m not one of those uber optimists who believes we can save everyone.

But I do believe we can do much better in 2012 to help those in need and to demand better results from those who keep promising them.

What do you think?

Wishing you a prosperous, impact-filled 2012.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Saving Souls Now … Not Later

2011-12-27T14:44:00.001-05:00

On Friday past, my client closed early for the Christmas holidays and I suddenly found myself with the gift of a couple of free hours. As I thought about the best way to spend them, I remembered Jordan Hamilton’s invitation to come down to visit him when I had some time.

Jordan is the Manager of External Relations for the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre (known as the DI), the largest center of its kind in North America. In a shelter designed to accommodate 500 people, it is not uncommon for this center to provide shelter for as many as 1300 people at once.

I reached out to Jordan, he indicated that he had some time available and I stopped down to pay a visit. He had promised me that I would be inspired.

He and the DI didn’t disappoint.

I have toured many shelters of this type in my travels but this one blew me away.

The DI doesn’t just provide a shelter for those in need. They plant the seeds of hope and love in every guest who stays with them.

While many shelters do the best they can to provide a warm bed and a meal to those in need, the DI goes above and beyond. The inspiring staff and volunteers at the DI provide those who are down on their luck with the foundation necessary to rediscover their talents and potential and thus the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

Many of these people are where they are because they have given up on themselves and therefore assume the rest of the world has given up on them also. The DI helps reverse this belief system, an important first step to helping these people to help themselves.

Their talent and potential burns bright! They just need help to bring this light out where everyone can see it.

For example, I happened to view a piece of art by one of the guests, a gentleman whom I will identify as “M'”. It had a flamenco theme that was good as anything I have seen in some of the best art galleries in the world. I found out it was for sale and so I asked him what he wanted for it. “I dunno”, he said, “maybe a couple of hundred bucks?”.

I was stunned. His talent can command thousands and I told him as such. His face brightened up and said “Ok, how about $2000?” and he laughed.

Now you’re talking, M!

These people have not lost their pride or potential – it’s just buried under the weight of life experiences that would stagger any of us.

They don’t need us to teach them what their potential is. They just need help lifting the weight off and to allow their potential to shine. They need a break like the many we have received; the many we may not be cognizant of or may not be willing to admit we have been blessed with.

We should also be aware that many of us may be closer to being a guest of a place like the DI than we realize. All it takes is one event too many and we could be there.

There, but for the Grace of God, go I.

Holding on to Hope

In a world of uncertainty, it is easy to lose hope when one sees so many people in need.

However, I see it differently.

When I meet people like Jordan and others, whether it be at the DI or so many other places dedicated to helping those in need, I am reminded of the power of hope that these dedicated, heart-filled people bring to those who feel that hope, light and love have left them behind.

I am often approached by well-intentioned people who appeal to me to help save the souls of others so that those who are downtrodden are prepared when they meet their Creator.

After I see places like the DI, my response to those “soul savers” would be a little different.

Forget about saving people’s souls for when they meet their Creator. Save these people here and now and let their Creator take care of them when their end-of-times has come.

And in doing so, maybe you will have prepared yourself when it is your turn to meet your Creator.

The world is waiting for you to use your talents to make a difference in the lives of others.

What are you waiting for?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

I Couldn’t Have Said It Better

2011-12-14T17:45:00.001-05:00

I am sitting here taking a breather after a complex few days; a breather to think about the beauty and complexity of Life and Life Purpose.

In times when my brain seeks answers, one of my favorite authors to turn to is Henri Nouwen, specifically books such as “The Return of the Prodigal Son” or “Home Tonight – Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son”.

I came upon this quote in “Home Tonight” that particularly resonated with me and I wanted to share it. After I read this, I sought out the creator of this powerful piece. The originator of this piece, Oriah, can be found here. Check her out – I think your heart and Spirit will be moved by her.

Here is what I read in Nouwen today.

The Invitation by Oriah
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

These are deep words that resonate with me on many levels, words that demand answers from me.

I am curious if they touch your heart in the same way.

All I know is, when it comes to describing Life Purpose, I couldn’t have said it any better.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Appreciating Our Blessings in Challenging Times

2011-12-11T21:06:00.001-05:00

Sharing this story has become an annual tradition for me at this time of year and so, by popular demand, I share it once again.

Some years ago when my oldest son was very young, I had pulled into a Toys R Us parking lot in New Jersey on Christmas Eve to buy him more "stuff". For my son to have so much stuff that he rivaled Toys R Us in inventory still didn't seem enough for some reason.

Just before I stepped out of my vehicle, a story came on my favorite National Public Radio station (WNYC in New York to be exact) and something about it caught my ear.

For the next 10 minutes, I sat in silence and listened to the story. When the story was over, I started the truck and drove out of the parking lot in silence.

I had received an important message about Christmas when I needed to hear it.

The teacher always appears when the student is ready and my Christmases have never been the same since.

Of the many traditions I have at Christmas, there are two that I find to be important.

1. I always listen to this story at least once.

2. I always share it with others and encourage them to listen to it.

The story I am referring to can be found here. Click on the "Real Media" or “Windows” links under the title "John Henry Faulk's Christmas Story" to hear the story.

When I think about my family, my friends and Life itself, I consider myself to be extremely blessed.

With that, I thank YOU for what you do - for the light and love you bring to so many.

In an uncertain world, every day we are alive is still an incredible gift.

In a world that experiences difficult moments, there are still miracles being created.

In a world that experiences war and hostility, there are still many examples of love and generosity.

In a world that experiences adversity and challenge, there exists unlimited opportunity and potential.

In a world that may seem to embrace greed, there are examples of incredible generosity.

Despite the many challenges we face, we have many reminders that we still live in a beautiful world. Sometimes the reminders are obvious while at other times we need to dig deep to find them.

Sometimes we need the help of others to help us find the “breathing room” to see them.

And many times, other people need our help.

The reminders are there and that is what matters.

As you celebrate this Holiday Season, please remember those who are not as fortunate. There is more than enough love to go around – we just need to make the effort to share it unconditionally.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Happy EID or Merry Yule.

However you celebrate these days, cherish them.

And help others to find a way to cherish them as well.

In service and servanthood, love and gratitude.

Harry

For those who can’t find the links on the NPR website to hear the story, they can be found here:

Windows Media Player

Real Media Player

A Gift From the Past

2011-11-22T23:02:00.001-05:00

Today was one of those days where few things seemed to come together as hoped or desired. We all have days like this, try as we might to avoid them. The events of the day weighed heavily on me as I traveled home, unaware that a gift was waiting for me at home.

The gift was in the form of a message from a friend and client of mine in New Jersey by the name of Lucky P. whom I have not seen in almost 20 years.

What was funny about him calling is that I had been reminiscing a few days earlier about the great clients I have been blessed with over the years and I had named Lucky as one of my top three favorites. This is no small feat, given that my career spans almost 30 years, covering almost all of the Fortune 50 and includes some of the most powerful and wealthiest people in the world as clients and colleagues.

And yet, several days after I have been praising this man as being extremely influential in my Life, here he is calling me because I am on his mind. That’s the way my Life has always been – a sequence of serendipitous events that people find hard to believe until they witness it first hand.

I called Lucky back and had the extreme delight and pleasure of getting “caught up”. There were the usual niceties – family, career, home location, and such.

But there was an underlying theme in our conversation that took me back 20 years when I worked for Lucky and which made the last 20 years melt away.

When I worked for Lucky back in the early 90s in Neptune, New Jersey, there were a couple of things that struck me about him.

He treated everyone with deep respect. Not just a cursory, obligatory, professional respect but a deep respect that made you feel like you mattered.

He also lived a life filled with gratitude – gratitude for his family, for his co-workers and for the abundance around him. It was his deeply ingrained sense of gratitude for everything that opened my awareness to the importance of feeling and expressing gratitude, even in difficult times.

As I spoke to Lucky this evening, we effortlessly switched from one subject to another like it was only yesterday that we worked together. As we did so, I noticed that the themes of respect and gratitude are still reflected in everything he thinks, says and does.

In fact, they seemed more ingrained now than ever … a true gift to have in the uncertain world that we live in.

When I worked for Lucky, the brunt of my career was still ahead of me - the difficulties, challenges, successes and victories that awaited my discovery.

But much of what guided me through those years to come was heavily influenced by people like Lucky – people who arrived at the right time in my Life and exhibited behaviors worth modeling.

And so as we talked, I was once again filled with gratitude for him and for the influence he had on my Life.

At a moment when I was ruminating over a difficult day, Lucky reappeared and again filled me with gratitude – gratitude that there are people in the world like him who remind the rest of us that respect-filled, gratitude-filled, heart-filled people still exist in the world.

Twenty years later, he is still teaching me but is probably too humble to take credit for it.

His call today reminds me of something else.

Each of us has an opportunity to change someone’s day (and maybe their Life) simply by reaching out and telling them that we are thinking of them.

We may have NO idea about the impact of such a call on the other person.

But they will know.

And that’s what matters.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

For Sale: Respect and Courtesy-No Longer Needed

2011-11-18T10:42:00.001-05:00

I was intrigued (to say the least) on Thursday when someone suggested that the high levels of respect and courtesy that I show others implied that I “must be up to something” and therefore I should tone it down.

I found this fascinating and disappointing but mostly, after I had gotten over the shock (and, admittedly, a little anger) I found it sad.

I think it is sad that someone perceives a world where respect and courtesy aren’t common and therefore believes that people are only nice to others when they want something.

It is sadder when such people ask that high levels of courtesy and respect be toned down when in fact, the world needs elevated levels of both more than ever.

I guess there is a mistaken belief that toning down courtesy and respect will help the person feel more comfortable since it will confirm for them that people like me are not “up to something”.

Maybe in such situations, I should stop being so courteous and respectful. Maybe I can sell both on eBay as someone once tried to sell their soul.

In fact, to stop being so courteous and respectful would in essence be selling my soul. It is how I am wired, it is something I am respected for in turn by others and it is something that I believe needs to be cultivated in the world.

So perhaps the opportunity is not to tone down my courtesy and respect but to pour it on and demonstrate that there are no conditions attached to high levels of both. It is given as it is intended – no strings attached and no ulterior motives intended.

I give it because I believe that every person should strive to as much as they can.

And I give it because I believe that the other person deserves it.

So on second thought, I’m not going to put them up for sale on eBay.

I’m going to do what I try to do everyday … to give it away as much as possible.

And maybe …. just maybe … I will be able to convince someone else that courtesy and respect doesn’t always mean an ulterior motive is at play.

And if I fail, I will have at least lived by my core values instead of compromising them to satisfy the narrower view of someone else.

“To thine own self be true”.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Lest We Forget … or Have We Forgotten Already?

2011-11-11T16:24:00.001-05:00

It’s a damp, cool , overcast day in Fort Saskatchewan, a small town just outside of of Edmonton and I’m listening to the bugler play “The Last Post”.

We have gathered to remember those who have made or will make the ultimate sacrifice so that we may continue to experience the freedoms that we cherish ….. so that we may experience the freedoms we think WE have earned and deserve.

“We have earned and deserve” - there’s an interesting thought.

And so while the men and women who serve do so without asking anything of us, the least we can do is remember and honor their sacrifice.

Lest we forget.

Lest we forget that as we enjoy the comforts of our lifestyle, there are others who have foregone such comforts.

These are the men and women who fought in the trenches with nothing to keep them warm in the middle of a bitterly cold winter other than pieces of wool clothing when we complain that our favorite “uber deluxe coat” is not available in that shade of blue we wanted.

These are the people who drive into harm’s way, every mile having the potential to produce the mine or IED that will take their lives in an instant or leave them maimed for life while we sit consumed in anger that traffic is not moving as fast as we would like. No one is shooting at us as we sit in traffic either.

These are the men and women who suffered through little or no food when supply lines were choked off while we consume in excess quantities or complain that “such and such a meal is not to my liking and I want the restaurant to remake it”, afterwards spending days telling everyone about the lousy experience we had. The restaurant is also not likely to kill us with typhus, cholera or the plethora of other diseases that these people dealt with daily.

These are the people who stared at the beaches of Normandy as they approached on the morning of June 6, 1944 and realized what was before them or stared at the cliffs of Dieppe and girded their mind in preparation for their assault while we complain that the time-share that we want on some beach in Hawaii is not available on the one weekend that would really make us happy.

In a world of comfort, we sometimes visualize things that make us unhappy and yet all of these things pale in comparison to the things that the men and women who serve and sacrifice have faced and will continue to face.

I can’t help but think that surely they didn’t make these sacrifices so that we would have the freedom to complain about how our Life is lacking.

It is true that they made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can live Life as we choose. They make no demands or attach stipulations on how we live our lives. But are our choices the most respectful, honorable ones we could be making as an expression of our gratitude?

Imagine a scenario where your child is standing in the middle of a highway and suddenly you see a large truck bearing down on them. Your child is transfixed in fear, you are unable to get to them in time and you know you are about to watch your child die. Suddenly, out of the blue, someone rushes past you, dives towards the child and they both roll to safety just as the truck roars by. You thank them profusely and the stranger is humble and gracious in receiving your gratitude, insisting that it “was nothing” or it was “the right thing to do”.

You are indebted to that person for the rest of your Life and with great reason. Every day that you experience the love of your child, you are reminded of the sacrifice a complete stranger was willing to make. They put themselves on the line for you, did so without asking “what’s in it for me” and without subsequently demanding a “reward”.

By the same token, the men and women who serve do this every day and have done so for generations. The fact that we don’t necessarily see them in action every day shouldn’t be an excuse to forget the sacrifices they have made.

When I think that someone whom I will never meet is willing to sacrifice their Life so that I may live mine, that is humbling beyond description.

What makes my Life so worthy that they would do this?

I guess it depends on what I do with it, doesn’t it?

Do I make my Life something that says that their sacrifice wasn’t for naught?

It depends on whether I choose to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to make sure that my Life is worthy of that sacrifice.

Because if I don’t remember their sacrifice and don’t do something to honor that sacrifice, then their sacrifice is in vain … and the greatest insult to the men and women who serve.

So when we have something to complain about, maybe we should pause and reflect on what complete strangers were and are willing to do for us.

We haven’t earned a Life of abundance and opportunity.

They earned it for us.

All they ask is that we use the opportunity to live our Life to its maximum potential and to be grateful for opportunity to do so. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

And so today, we are called to remember the tremendous gift that they have given us.

But we shouldn’t limit the expression of gratitude to just today. It is one we should express every day.

Lest we forget.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

The Consistency of Inconsistency

2011-11-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

There is one thing that is consistent about human beings, that being:

“The more we claim to be different than others, the greater the chance that we are just like them”.

The #OWS movement (and all the Occupy movements associated with them) are protesting about a number of things, including the notion that they are tired of being oppressed or having their rights and freedoms infringed upon by others. Many have talked about the need to stand up against the 1% who for too long have been intimidating the 99%.

To suggest these things is to imply that the protestors are different than others, that somehow they have evolved to a more mature, enlightened level than those they are protesting against.

Despite such assertions, we now have reports of sexual assaults occurring against some protesters at the hands of other protestors, the number of thefts from protestors as a result of the actions of other protestors is on the rise and in places like NYC, a sudden increase in unprotected sex (can we say Woodstock) has caused some protestors to scramble for STD testing.

So …. are the protestors really any different than those they are protesting against?

As I walked out of City Hall in Calgary, Alberta on Monday, I was unaware that inside the Council Chambers, votes were taking place on how the City should deal with the #OccupyCalgary movement.

I left the building to have coffee with a friend and was approached by someone at the entrance to City Hall offering me a leaflet. Intent on getting to my destination in a timely fashion, I shook my head and proceeded to walk past him.

What followed was a tirade against me and my companion, calling us some unmentionable names that I won’t write here and citing how I was infringing upon his constitutional rights by not taking his brochure.

A couple of other people entered the discussion and pretty soon, several of us were being lambasted on City Hall property by two individuals who derided and insulted us for oppressing them and denying them their right to push their information upon us.

While I’m always open to an intellectual exchange and my meeting companion also said “I’m in a rare confrontational mood today and ready for anything”, we walked away from them.

As we sat in the coffee shop a few minutes later, I happened to notice that one of them had followed us across the street and was staring at me through the window, wide-eyed and maniacal as he taunted me through the glass. Eventually, he turned his attention to someone else and began to yell at them instead.

If children or elderly people had been present, they may have been frightened or intimidated by such behavior and I made a note to my companion that if either of them were still there when I went back to City Hall, I would notify security. After all, don’t I also have a right to walk on a public street in a city in North America without being threatened or intimidated?

As I thought about this interaction, I thought about how consistent people are with their inconsistency.

In many instances, protestors are claiming that they are being oppressed by others, that they are meeting violence at the hands of the authorities and that their personal freedoms are being negated at the hands of others.

In my situation today, the actions of the people who were attempting to intimidate me or infringe upon my right to personal freedom spoke so loudly, that I couldn’t hear the message that they were hoping to convey.

Which brings me to this point.

Gandhi once said

“Be the change you want to see”.

In other words, don’t tell us what you want or attempt to shove it down our throats (sometimes literally).

Lead and teach us through example. Show us that you know a better way of leading and living and encourage us to live the same way through modeling your behavior.

Until that happens, the only thing you are showing us is that the inconsistency of demanding to be treated with respect while treating others disrespectfully is sadly consistent within the human race.

And as long as that is the case, the strength of the #OWS message is diminished and diluted.

At the end of the day, are the protestors any different than the people that they are protesting against or are they merely feeling oppressed because they are not the oppressor?

The latter would be consistent as far as human thinking is concerned.

Sadly, hopes of real change aren't realistic as long as the consistency of inconsistency persists.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Conspiracies and the Attraction of Redaction

2011-11-06T00:46:00.001-04:00

I happened to make a comment on Facebook this morning along the lines of “let’s start a rumor that #OWS was actually started by the credit unions in order to get people to dump banks and switch to credit unions – it would be the ultimate conspiracy theory, to suggest that the credit unions masterminded #OWS to attract business”.

It seemed amusing until I received this email this evening:

“Harry, I know you are always encouraging people to think for themselves and to be aware of truth disguised as something that is not obvious. Did you know that there is a rumor on the street that the OccupyWallSt group is being funded by credit unions trying to steal business from the banks?”.

Sad, isn’t it? All it takes is something that sounds good and resonates with our need to be on guard against the covert and devious-minded and you quickly have created something that is shared as fact.

The average human mind hates gaps and will fill them in an effort to connect the dots. Sometimes we send someone a message and if we haven’t received a reply in the time we have decided is acceptable, we wonder if the other person has been injured and can’t respond, is angry with us and doesn’t want to respond or has a devious reason for not responding.

The same holds true for information. I love reading stories about people who spend years trying to get classified information out of the government until they finally receive the declassified version that is so heavily redacted that it is worthless and yet, the existence of the redaction reinforces their belief that they are “on to something”.

There’s even software out there that will help you set up your own redaction scheme, just in case someone chases after you about your knowledge of aliens, the JFK assassination or J. Edgar Hoover’s favorite dress color. And yes, I’m being facetious – I know there are legitimate reasons for redaction in the public and private sector.

Accepting legitimate reasons for redaction, I believe that a large portion of human potential is being wasted processing conspiracy theories and is contributing to the mess that the world is in, cluttering our minds with a lot of noise and distraction.

However, I do get intrigued by some gaps in knowledge. For example, there is a government group that approached me in the fall of 2010 to ask for permission to explore some of my work in the use of predictive analytics to predict human behavior. When I asked if I had an option to decline the request, I was told that I did not. The work that has resulted in the last year as a result of a review of my work is classified and not available to me, even though it is based on my work. An intriguing gap, but probably not as exciting as the great stories my brain wants to weave from such gaps.

That being said, when I listen to #OWS people, conspiracy folks or anyone else who loves to convert gaps in time or knowledge into covert plans bent on the suppression of our inalienable rights or the ultimate demise of the human species in general, I am saddened by the misdirection of energy.

I mean, I agree that it wouldn’t surprise me if groups like ████████████ or █████████████████ had an interest in hiding information about ████████████, █████████ or even ██████████. However, I think we need to get over the paranoia that arises every time a ██████████████ says that we must ████████████ █████████ ██████ just because █████████ indicates that ██████████████ ███████████ ████████ ██████████ ██████████ ███████.

There are, however, people and groups that we should pay attention to. Just as the magician achieves magic through sleight-of-hand and misdirection, sometimes the people or groups that are doing the redaction aren’t the problem. They are the “misdirection” required by someone else. The “someone else” are the ones that the conspiracy crowd should really go after.

Such people are probably pretty powerful. I wonder if the average conspiracy person would really want to tackle what would come out of Pandora’s box once the cover has been removed on some conspiracy theories.

I doubt it.

Until then, it is best that we not assume that every government group has a conspiracy behind it, every mountain has a UFO base underneath it and the two guys in sunglasses driving the late-model Cadillac behind you for the last two days are looking to zap your mind with a neuralizer.

Well … the last part is probably true. But if that were the case, then ███████████ was right when he said ████████ ██████████ ██████████████ ████ ███████ ███████ ███████.

And if that were true, then we know that ███████ ████ ████████ is also true.

And that’s when I would really be concerned.

Until then, let’s put our energy into impactful things that can make a real difference where it is needed. We can find a lot of things that require immediate fixing in the world without letting our imaginations get the best of us by creating a ton of stuff that doesn’t exist but which drains our energy all the same.

And besides, sometimes we have to watch what we wish for – we might just find it.

Now … if only that Cadillac would stop following me around.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

The People in Your Neighborhood

2011-10-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

How many of you are old enough to member the song “Who Are the People In Your Neighborhood” that was on Sesame Street years go?

And how many of you remember a movie from 2001 named K-PAX, in which Kevin Spacey plays the role of Prot, a patient at a mental hospital who claims to be from a distant planet by the name of K-PAX? When the movie ends, the viewer is not sure if Prot is crazy or an actual extraterrestrial.

Both of these ideas coalesced in an unusual way as I rode a bus into downtown Calgary at 6:45 this morning when a man not dissimilar to Kevin Spacey sat down beside me.

After a few minutes and as a commuter deposited her fare into the fare box, this man looked at her, looked at me and said, quite matter-of-factly, “I am surprised that you still use money”.

In the wee hours of a commute into the city, I wasn’t sure how to respond so I took the most logical choice possible and one typical of a commuter.

I didn’t say anything.

My choice of playing it safe was met with a question: “Why do you think that is?”

Realizing that being the quiet commuter minding my own business wasn’t going to work, I replied, “Why do I think what is?”. Ooops .. did that sound too snappy?

“Why are you still using money?”

Not knowing if the guy was pulling my leg, looking to start a fight with a businessman representing “the system” or was experiencing a personal malfunction in some way, I responded with a comment along the lines of “What else would we use?”

What ensued in the next 30 minutes or so was an unusual conversation, freely and easily shifting subjects between money and poverty, faith and faithlessness, abundance and scarcity and love and war.

He was disarmingly easy to engage, informed, logical and insightful and I found the conversation to be intriguing and stimulating. He had a gaze that was a little unusual – there was a fire burning inside his mind that was compelling to engage with and his eyes were the type that bore right through you.

Of all the subjects we covered, there were two things that stood out in our conversation.

At one point in the conversation, I noticed he used the “royal we” and the “royal you”, seeming to differentiate between two societies, his and mine. There was a suggestion that “we” had figured it out while “you” would figure it out soon enough but not until “you” were forced to. But, as he pointed out at one point, “we’re always around to help if you need it”.

Before I could ask what he meant by that, he signaled the bus driver that he wanted to get off at the next stop. As he stood up, he looked at me and thanked me for the conversation. He then said “You’ll find Calgary very interesting compared to New York”, wished me a good day and exited the bus.

As he left, I thought, “What made him make the connection between me and my many years in New York?”. I don’t have a New York accent. I didn’t mention it once in our interaction nor do I use my cellphone on the bus where someone could glean my background by overhearing a conversation or reading something over my shoulder.

“Weird”, I thought and shrugged it off.

I didn’t give it much thought until returning home on the bus this evening and he came to mind.

As I replayed our conversation in my mind, it seemed that he was suggesting that he was from a superior race to mine but at some point we would have an opportunity to catch up or learn something from them.

Uh huh.

The chances are much better that I had entertained a delusional or lonely person, perhaps with a prescription that needed to be refilled or a hunger for companionship.

I mean, if we were to be contacted by “someone” from “somewhere else”, wouldn’t it be with fireworks, brass bands and gift exchanges on the White House lawn (assuming they came in peace)?

Isn’t that the way galactic diplomacy is done?

Then I thought about something else.

Whether or not he was who he was implying to be is not important.

What is important is that in that brief 30 minutes, he challenged my way of thinking and my perception of things that we don’t put enough attention into in the course of our busy day-to-day existence.

Which reminds me that the simple and the mundane all around us can provide triggers to higher levels of thinking, thinking that can produce solutions to many of our societal challenges if we allow our minds to go where they need to go.

Or if we allow our minds to be guided as mine was today.

So was I sharing a seat with Prot who beamed back to K-PAX after leaving the bus or was I sharing time with a sad, lonely person trying to fit into our world?

Does it really matter or is it more important to consider the gift of the exchange itself, an exchange that I found enjoyable, thought-provoking and stimulating?

I think it is better to accept the gift that is offered instead of wondering about the motive of the bearer of that gift.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Whose Eyes Do You See the World Through?

2011-10-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

I remember a comic strip years ago where a fraudulent evangelist was hosting one of his high-energy church services. His altar was at the top of 10 or 15 steps and he invited people to climb the steps to be healed by him.

A man who had spent his entire life walking with the aid of crutches came forward and with great struggle, ascended up the stairs to the altar and begged for his legs to be healed.

The phony evangelist spread his hands, yelled “Be healed” at the top of his lungs and kicked the crutches out of the hands of the man. As the man stumbled, tumbled and fell down the stairs, arms and legs going everywhere, the preacher yelled out “He’s not only walking, he’s dancing” to which the congregation responded with cries of “Praise the Lord”.

The congregation saw what the evangelist wanted them to see - they were seeing the world through his eyes.

The man with the crutches saw a different reality.

The danger of seeing the world through the vision of others

Sadly, many of us spend most of our lives looking through the eyes of others. We seek to live values as defined by others. We choose to accept the “knowledge” of others instead of learning it for ourselves. We allow people to make sure that their needs are met before considering our own. And then there is the most insidious form of opinion-forming of all; when we allow others to form our opinions of ourselves.

People in the business of manipulating others count on these things, whether they be people like the fraudulent minister described above, a corrupt business person, a politician serving his or her needs instead of the needs of their constituents or any self-serving individual.

They make it look obvious to everyone that what they proclaim is the truth and if we disagree with the truth, then there is something wrong with us. Even worse, they convince many around us to think the same way such that eventually, many are afraid to think for themselves with the fear that their idea will be alone, defenseless and considered incorrect at best or idiotic (potentially treason-like) at worst.

What triggered this thought was President Obama’s announcement the other day that all the troops in Iraq were coming home by the end of 2011.

He reiterated that he had kept a campaign promise made during the last election to bring the troops home and now Democrat supporters are rallying around the fulfilled promise of the Commander-in-Chief.

The only problem is that this isn’t quite what happened.

The truth is that the US was negotiating with Iraq for American troops to remain in Iraq (counter to the President’s election promise), some of whom to serve as advisors to the Iraqi military and some to serve as a deterrent in case Iran wanted to cast a covetous eye in the direction of Iraq. With the failure of the negotiations and the demand by Iraq that the soldiers leave practically immediately, the President is spinning the diplomatic defeat into “bringing the troops home as promised”.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan announced this weekend that should the US take a strong stand against Pakistan for perceived “lack of support in the war against terror”, then Afghanistan under President Karzai would immediately side against the US to defend Pakistan.

With friends like these …….

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the US taxpayer an estimated $1.3 trillion with more than 4,00 killed-in-action and 32,000 wounded.

And at the end of the human and financial sacrifice, we are being asked to embrace the positive results that the politicians see.

The only challenge is …. are there really any positive outcomes to see as a result of these actions?

Yes, Osama Bin Laden is dead, something President Obama noted as a victory the other day.

And yet, if this is the primary victory that we cite after all of the sacrifice, surely there has been no more expensive manhunt in world history than this.

Looking through different eyes

If you are a politician, you tell us that Al Qaeda’s ability to wage war has been practically destroyed while asking to be reelected as a protector of the people.

If you are military leader, you tell us that we shouldn’t be so confident, that the enemy is more complex than ever which is why you are asking for permission to build better weapons.

If you are the Department of Homeland Security, you tell us that never before have we been in greater danger at home, thus justifying the need for sweeping changes in personal and physical privacy to assure the safety of the public.

If you are someone on Wall Street making millions each year in salary and bonus, you tell us that bailouts and such are necessary to preserve the American (and in fact the global) system while tightening the screws on the average citizen who can barely survive from one day to the next.

With these and other concepts, many Americans fight each other in coffee shops, the media and lately, with #OWS, in the streets over the truth of these and other statements and their ramifications.

But whose opinions are being used as the basis for the debates?

I find when I discuss these and other issues with people, they often can’t give me their own opinions. You can usually pick these people out – when they state an opinion and you ask “how do you know?”, they usually get very angry or frustrated and rely on intimidation instead of logic and knowledge to make their point.

In the end, many of them don’t give me their own opinion but rather, they give me someone else’s …. the world as seen through the eyes of the people striving to direct them toward someone else’s preferred outcome.

We can do better – an informed opinion is a powerful one

As long as the best opinion we have is someone else’s, we will never have a chance to create a better world.

If instead, we look through the eyes of the downtrodden, the impoverished, the homeless, the hungry, the abused, the war widow, the fatherless / motherless child whose parent was lost in war, the hardworking person who lost everything through no significant action on their part, etc. , we have an opportunity to see a different world.

Once we truly see it, only then we can change it.

It is true that everyone’s perception is influenced and tainted by their own life experiences. However, if we are going to allow our opinions to be formed through the eyes of others, then let’s choose the eyes of people whose vision reflects a greater sense of reality for the average person.

And maybe then, even if we insist on not forming our own opinion, we can at least form an opinion of greater value than many of the opinions we are forming or that are being formed for us.

A Great Correction is sweeping through the world, carrying with it a momentum that cannot be stopped.

While it has a life of its own, I believe the result, whether negative or positive, is still within our ability to direct.

Whether we choose to make it a positive or negative result depends on whose eyes we are looking through.

Which in turn determines whether we will truly be dancing at the foot of the stairs or lying at the bottom of the stairs in a crumpled heap when the Great Correction reaches its climactic conclusion.

If nothing else, look through the eyes of our children and then ask ourselves if we are making the right choices.

And then go make them.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

The Secret To Playing Chicken

2011-10-15T23:05:00.001-04:00

With the passing of the 15th of October comes the completion of the largest coordinated protests to-date as the Occupy Wall St. (#OWS) movement continues to spread.

There have been some unfortunate incidents, including the riots in Rome and the call by an Occupy LA spokesman for bloodshed and violence and the need to introduce socialism instead of capitalism.

There have been interesting comments from within the government ranks, with political leaders from municipal governments right up to the President, indicating support for the protestors. What is interesting about this level of support is that many politicians originally were against the protest and now support it, even if they are on record for previously having supported the things that the protestors are fighting against.

There have been loud claims of police abuse and equally loud cries of denial.

But for the most part, the protests have been peaceful.

That being said, we have reached an important juncture with the OWS movement.

In their current implementation, with vague intentions that vary broadly from protests against corporate greed to calls for the US to admit that 9/11 was a home-grown conspiracy, continued protesting will probably not produce much in the way of hoped-for results.

After all, in their current state, they are not disrupting cities, economies or anything else in a significant way. As they are right now, they may just become another event not considered worthy of reporting by the news media. Perhaps they will fade from the media’s attention like the sad story of the people of Haiti who have still not recovered from the earthquake of 2010, a story that rarely gets a mention now.

Once “the big splash” of a news event has passed, the impact of the event has to be increased, either steadily or sharply, in order to keep the media’s attention. If not, the media gets bored and moves on.

In addition, the protestors are not offering solutions for anything. It is easy to complain but much more difficult to offer solutions.

As things stand right now, the entities that the protestors are protesting against can simply outwait them, waiting until the weather gets cold and miserable and the protestors just give up and go home.

Upping the Ante

So it’s clear that the protestors need to up the ante if they wish to continue driving their agenda and if they wish to keep the media engaged. They in fact need the media to be engaged in order to be successful. Without the media, their effort dies.

The media expects this and will only give them attention if they raise the stakes, thus encouraging them perhaps even beyond what they would do ordinarily.

Meanwhile, governments, with the backing of police (and potentially military support) will meet the protestors as they up the ante.

Corporations will probably stay quiet unless the government forces their hand.

So in this game of chicken, like all games, there will be winners and losers.

The secret to being victorious when playing chicken is knowing when to blink … or not.

It all comes down to how close to disaster each side is willing to go to win.

The interesting thing is this.

There are no innocent bystanders in this game of chicken. We will all be affected by the game that is currently in play.

Hopefully the right people will blink early enough and the result will be something that will produce a positive future for everyone.

Because when people don’t blink early enough or choose not to blink at all, a lot of people get hurt.

And then no one wins at all.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Occupy Wall St.–Good Intention, Wrong Address

2011-10-11T13:44:00.001-04:00

As a Wall St. guy for many years, I look at the current Occupy Wall St. movement with a mix of sadness and concern.

I am saddened by the fact that in the most enlightened country in the world where there is more than enough to go around, there is the need for such demonstrations.

As I have often mused, we don’t have a shortage of things in the western world. We have a shortage of appropriate distribution of the things we have.

There’s a big difference, one not easily changed by yelling at the people who have those things.

But there is something I am concerned about beyond the need for demonstrations. I am concerned about whom we are directing the demonstrations towards.

Most People Are Not Breaking Any Laws

Despite the existence of the Bernie Madoff’s in the world, most of the people working on Wall St. are not breaking any legal laws.

Yes, it is true that some of them may be guilty of breaches of appropriate moral or ethical behavior (depending on who defines the bar for such behavior).

However, most of them are doing what almost any human being would do.

Many human beings, including many who are protesting on Wall St., would leap at the chance to make obscene amounts of money if given the chance AND the opportunity were within the confines of legality.

So it’s not a question of people and corporations making too much money.

It’s more a case of “they are making the money and I am not”.

When we really examine the root causes of the perceived evil on Wall St., there is something else that is important to consider.

We Could Have Fixed This A Long Time Ago

Many of the things that Wall St. is doing now were being done by the same individuals before the massive bailouts that saved them. We knew about it then and bailed them out anyway without demanding significant change in how the organizations executed. It seemed that at best, the changes we asked for in corporate execution were more around managing public perception than controlling human greed.

The bailouts therefore didn’t correct a behavior but in fact rewarded one. It sent a message that “what you are doing and how you are doing it is fine. You just got a little unlucky and so we’ll help you. Carry one with business as usual”. So when I see a President who helped architect the bailouts now siding with people who are against the bailouts and big company in general, the word hypocrite sadly comes to mind, with all respect due the Office of the President.

Business, like nature, is self-correcting. In the grand scheme of things, when a company executes poorly or immorally, it goes out of business and others learn from the mistakes.

However, when we bail out companies, we are condoning and reinforcing a behavior. The notion of “we needed to do this to avoid a larger catastrophe” doesn’t fly with me. The average American is struggling anyway and the threat of a larger catastrophe hangs over us despite the money invested in the bailouts. The bailouts didn’t prevent the inevitable – it postponed them so that they could eventually manifest on an even larger scale later.

Meanwhile the corporate behavior of the bailed out companies continues larger and more aggressively than ever.

So Who Should We Be Protesting Against?

Think of this.

Some of the protestors are protesting corporate greed, some are protesting our involvement in wars, some are fighting for better living allowances, etc. The ones fighting the very existence of corporations don’t get my sympathy when I see them using their iPhones and iPads to get the word out. How would they get the word out if Apple, one of the most influential corporations in the world, ceased to exist or had never existed?

However, when it comes to corporate greed, the corporate greed was rewarded, condoned and reinforced by government bailouts.

Wars, whether rightly or wrongly, are a government concern.

Living wages, whether realistic or not, are a government issue.

And with that, I would conjecture that the right place to be having a demonstration is not on Wall St. but in front of the Capitol Building, the White House and equivalent buildings across America.

It’s like having a protest on the front lawn of a lottery winner because you think lotteries are immoral. You’re barking up the wrong tree – you need to go to the people who authorize and control the lotteries in the first place. After all, anyone offered millions of dollars would happily accept it.

Demonstrators – A Gift From Heaven

But moving the demonstrations won’t happen as long as the President and other leaders now side with the demonstrators, fueling and encouraging their misdirected anger.

After all, if I wanted to distract people from my contribution to a problem (with the bailouts and such) or my inability to solve the current problems in the country, demonstrations against a scapegoat such as Corporate America are a gift from heaven.

In fact, if I was the President right now, I’d be issuing a sigh of relief.

I believe the President does care about solving the country’s challenges.

But if the attention of the protestors can be redirected elsewhere, at least for the time being, that’s one less thing the President needs to worry about …. especially with an election on the horizon.

If you want real change in America, you need to get to the root causes of how we got here.

And that includes holding the right people accountable, even if that means moving your protest from Wall St. to Pennsylvania Avenue.

When the true parties responsible are not held accountable, our dream of solving the difficult problems we face today are just that … dreams.

Dreams that can turn into real nightmares if we don’t solve them quickly and appropriately.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I was reading the Declaration of the Occupation of New York and saw some things in there that reinforce my concern.

Looking at a few items in the declaration (quotes in italics) with my comment following each.

“They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.”.

Why would you be angry with the company that accepted the bailouts and not be angry with the group that issued them?

“They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.”

This is more of a matter for governments and educational institutions to solve, not big corporations.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

I admit that the press can be biased one way or the other but I am not aware that the military is preventing freedom of the press.

“They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.”

Uh … what corporations are murdering prisoners? I missed that headline.

Now to be fair, there are some valid points in there as well. But one needs to keep everything factual and focused, otherwise people will focus on the stuff that is not, thus discrediting the movement in its entirety and negating the opportunity to fix the stuff that needs to be fixed.

Expressions of Gratitude From Unexpected Sources

2011-10-07T12:12:00.001-04:00

As I write this post, both of my feet are relaxing in an Epsom salt bath and I am feeling grateful that my journey of healing from a variety of injuries is nearing an end.

This has been a summer of “one thing after another”, resulting in a series of injuries that has severely impacted my mobility and reduced my personal travel to essential destinations only.

One of the places that I like to visit that has not been on my essential destination list (try as I might to prove otherwise) is the local Starbucks where I am a regular customer.

When it was noticed that I hadn’t been there for a while, I was surprised and grateful to receive emails, tweets, Facebook messages and the like from the staff of Starbucks, expressing concern over my absence and upon learning of my injuries, sending me get-well greetings and promises of “home delivery”.

How many Starbucks do you know that can provide home delivery?

I was also humbled when friends who see me at the same Starbucks noticed that I hadn’t been around for awhile and sent notes of inquiry, concern and subsequent get-well wishes.

However, what surprised me were the number of strangers who sent me similar queries, wondering where I was and expressing wishes that I would be back soon.

Many of these emails opened with lines similar to “You may not know me but … “ or “This may seem weird to you but ….”.

Now they weren’t complete strangers although I didn’t know their names until they wrote me.

They were from people I saw at Starbucks on a regular basis.

They were curious where the guy went who always had a nice word to say to their kids when standing in line, who answered occasional business advice questions they dared to ask, who always had an inspiring quotation or a word of advice when people struggled, who always sat there with his laptop and stack of books on the table and who always concluded an exchange with “create a great day”.

When the guy disappeared, they asked others in the coffee shop what the guy’s name was, looked him up on the web, found his email address and emailed him.

They wanted to reach out to say hi, to see how he was doing (or even if he was still in the area) and to express thanks in case the opportunity to meet again had passed.

And I was grateful, humbled and honored to receive their gratitude and to finally put some names with the faces.

Many of you have similar relationships with people that you don’t really know. Maybe it’s the person you sit next to on the bus or subway for years on your way to work, the person who hands you breakfast in a drive thru window every day or the parent you see dropping off a child at a bus stop every morning.

They are the people you see, speak to and share a common experience with every day without REALLY getting to know them.

We don’t bother building deep relationships with all of them because we assume that if we were to do so, our lives would be overwhelmed with so many relationships. Our lives are busy enough, we reason.

And besides, why bother building these relationships? We aren’t really influencing each other anyway so why bother spending time to really get to know each other.

Not influencing each other at all … can we be so sure of that?

As I read emails from strangers expressing gratitude, I am reminded of how the little things we say or do have a larger impact on others than we realize.

Gratitude is an interesting thing.

Many of us claim to feel grateful for all the things we own, all the events we have experienced, our families,or friends, etc.

But too many of us keep our gratitude within, expressing it silently to ourselves in our thoughts, prayers or journals. Sometimes we express it to others and then feel a little silly and make a joke about “a mushy moment”. We may wait until an event like a birthday or other event where we can express our gratitude under the guise of the “I had to give them a gift because it was ____day”.

Gratitude kept within is all well and good.

But it has its greatest potential to make a difference in the world when it is freely shared, whether it be a kind word, a small act or some other token of appreciation.

It could be something as simple as an email from a stranger that says “thank you for your influence”.

It is not the size of the gift that is important.

It is the expression itself that matters.

William Arthur Ward once wrote:

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

Take a moment and reach out to someone, even a complete stranger you see on a regular basis, and thank them for their influence on your Life.

At that moment, you will both be changed for the better.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS For my many friends and family in Canada, may you create a Blessed Thanksgiving this weekend, surrounded by the people who matter to you. For my many friends and family in the US whose Thanksgiving is more than a month away, you still have much to be thankful for in a world filled with uncertainty. Embrace it – gratitude expressed can form the foundation upon which better things can be built.

Addressing the ‘moral crisis’ of poverty

2011-10-06T12:29:00.001-04:00

I was intrigued by a newspaper article I read this week in The Telegram regarding the need to address the “moral crisis’ of poverty.

A coalition of religious leaders in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Eastern Canada, made up of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus, made an intriguing claim.

They indicated at a recent news conference that “Ending poverty is not that complicated if the political will is there”.

I agree with them that the poverty felt by people all around the world is truly a crisis. I believe that one of the key indicators of how “empowered” a society is is based on how well the people at the bottom of the economic scale are doing.

However, there is an interesting conflict in what groups like this one are suggesting.

They say that that poverty is a “moral crisis” (which is true) but look to governments to legislate a solution (oftentimes using higher taxes, increased minimum wages, subsidized housing, food allowances, etc).

However, there is a strategic flaw when one assumes that legislation can cure moral woes.

In many governments, when taxes go up, the increased revenue is directed towards many programs. Anti-poverty programs are just one of many areas fighting for the same tax revenue in governments that struggle with competing priories as well as wasted spending.

If increased taxes, increased subsidies for the poor and increased minimum wage legislation could fix poverty, we would see advances in our fight against poverty.

Unfortunately, those who are living in a state of poverty continue to grow in ranks, far beyond our ability to address with a legislative magic wand.

So ending poverty is a LOT more complicated than merely having the political will to do so.

There is also the reality that a moral compass cannot be altered by legislation.

And besides, if someone said to me that everything else is figured out and that we just needed to change the will of people, I’d say “Great – you saved the most difficult task of all until the end”.

Most of us know that war is not the solution to the world’s problems but we have war anyway.

We know that love trumps anger but anger exists in the world.

We know that giving is better than getting but greed exists in the world.

We know that collaborating is better than one-man-band syndrome but there are a lot of people who would rather fail than share the glory.

Many people struggle with alcohol abuse, drug addition or other similar challenges and know they should do something about it but then struggle to actually find a way to escape the clutches of that which grips them.

Many religions espouse the need to love their fellow man and then use their religion as a hammer to oppress others.

Many people in poverty don’t want to live that way – but they do so because of many reasons, including lack of education, lack of self esteem because of a lifetime of not believing in themselves, mental illness, multi-generational welfare situations, excessive healthcare costs and a bazillion other reasons. The studies that have been done are too numerous to count.

Yes, all things are easy if we only had the will.

But therein lies the rub – the will is not so easily tamed or directed.

When I hear people call on the need to have yet another study to find the cure for poverty, they don’t realize (or don’t want to admit) that this has been studied to death.

It’s like receiving a diagnosis of having a bad heart and being told you need to exercise more. You don’t like the diagnosis and so you see another doctor, and another and another, hoping to find one that can give you a pill that will fix it for you as you ignore the elephant in the room.

The elephant being the notion that external fixes oftentimes don’t exist – many times we are the person who must fix a problem.

As these well-intentioned people indicate, poverty is a moral crisis.

And solving a moral crisis doesn’t start with expecting lawmakers to legislate it away.

It starts within each one of us.

And therein lies the greatest challenge of all.

Forget about whether lawmakers have the will.

The question I have is ….

…. do we?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Leaders in Difficult Times–The Great Correction

2011-10-05T13:35:00.001-04:00

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. - Harry S. Truman

For the last few years, I have been publicly predicting what I refer to as the Great Correction, a time when many errors and omissions (intentional or accidental) in regulation, intention and execution within society, government and business will all come together in the perfect storm.

This perfect storm will, I believe, stagger societies around the world and will change forever how society is structured.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to have seen these things developing.

People who study economic long wave theories have been predicting that the current cycle of abundance will end between 2012 and 2015 and will end in chaos before the next cycle engages. Unfortunately, people who don’t like bad news refer to these economists as pessimists, uber-bears or dreamers.

News of disruption around the world, in the form of things like Arab Spring and economic spirals in Europe and the US pound our psyche every day. Again, people decide it is better to tune out “bad news” rather than try to understand what all of these events are telling us.

Then there are people who believe that the best way to live a better life is to act as if there are no problems, thus guaranteeing that all problems will disappear. Unfortunately for these people, reality has a way of interfering with dreams.

The fact of the matter is that we are on the cusp of significant change in the world, change that will be painful for many. Try as we might to avoid it, it is already well underway.

In times such as these, how our government, business and society leaders respond will play a key role in how painful (or not) this change will be and how well-poised we are to emerge from the chaos to build a better world.

History is filled with stories of great victories where leaders rose to the occasion, rallied their people around a vision that inspired and established a plan to guide people out of the maelstrom they found themselves in.

History is also filled with tales of great defeats, where leaders hid from the people or chose to take care of their own needs before the needs of the people, guiding organizations and even entire civilizations into ruin.

When great challenge was before Winston Churchill’s government during World War II, he had no doubt that they would do whatever they had to to push the Germans back. In his speech of June 18th, 1940, he concluded his vision for the future by saying:

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

We need leaders now who will bring a similar, powerful, inspiring vision to everyone around the world.

We need people to step up with plans to carry out this vision.

And we need everyone to do their part to build others up instead of tearing them down as we carry out this plan.

The Great Correction is upon us.

With it is our chance to define and live “our finest hour”.

Do we have the will and the courage to create it?

I hope so. Our potential indicates that we do. However, our historic track record is less optimistic.

It’s time for our government and business leaders to stop business-as-usual and inspire us with a vision to carry us through the Great Correction or help us avoid as much of it as we can.

It’s time for President Obama and other world leaders to show us that they can guide us through the minefields that we find all around us.

Leadership in good times is all well and good.

However, it is during the difficult times that real leaders show us what they are made of.

And in turn, help us discover what we are made of.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

2011-10-04T18:01:00.001-04:00

I just had the most intriguing interaction with a Twitter user by the name of @Donna_West that reminds me why we have so many problems in this world.

It’s because we are so busy trying to prove we are right that we don’t even bother listening to the other side.

In fact, we are so busy trying to prove we are right that we don’t even have time to respect the other side and understand their intentions before we slam them for something.

I had noted on Twitter that Senate Majority Leader Reid blocked the vote on President Obama’s Jobs Bill and within a few minutes, the White House issued an email asking people to demand that their Republican reps do the right thing and vote for the bill.

My tweet read:

Truth: Dem Senator Reid blocks vote on Obama jobs bill and then email blames GOP - tsk tsk tsk. http://t.co/lhz1g1Wa

Within seconds, @Donna_West replied:

@HarryTucker you are really so stupid you don't understand what happened and why?

Now … I hadn’t actually commented on who was telling the truth and who wasn’t. I had merely made an observation.

The exchange with Ms. West developed into a full-on confrontational exchange where I was accused of not understanding government, not understanding how to tweet, not “getting it” in general, having an alleged ignorance of how government works, etc. Her tweets flowed freely and venomously.

I tried to interrupt her emotional tirade with a couple of tweets, one referencing her Twitter profile where she describes herself as a “peace lover”:

@Donna_West I am always impressed when self-proclaimed "peace lovers" use intimidation to accomplish their means. #fail

@Donna_West Please find another direction to send your misguided, uber-aggressive, confrontational attitude. :-)

After a few more insulting tweets, this confrontational individual decided to report me to Twitter as a spam generator who was threatening her. Meanwhile, I am receiving the brunt of the intimidation from this person’s network, including this gentle tweet from @good2bgreene.

@HarryTucker So you're just some schmuchk who invented the term "leadership incubation" to have purpose? And you think @Donna_West is spam?

Ahhhhhh …. what it is to experience intimidation from people who need to get a hobby.

Or attempted intimidation anyway.

The funny thing is that as I write this blog, a couple of these people are still wound up about me and continue to issue one tweet after another insulting me. There is an incredible level of anger in them aching to escape.

Anger that is now directed at me because I posted a single tweet, disappointed that Republicans and Democrats can’t get along and solve the problems that need to be solved.

The response from a couple of people in the twitterverse doesn’t really matter. There are lots of people in the world who won’t agree with everything I say. If I needed 100% acceptance of every thought I ever had, I’d be waiting for the rest of my life.

What does bother me is how aggressive people will be in defending their position against someone else BEFORE they even know what the other person’s position is.

They make an assumption, the anger rises within them and they are off to the races.

Of course, what aids them in expressing their aggression is the anonymity they feel by targeting someone 1000 miles away. If they stood toe-to-toe with my 6’3” frame, I don’t think they would necessarily be as aggressive.

Then again, I could be wrong.

The funny, sad, predictable thing is that many of these people, after insulting the living daylights out of someone, will turn around and play the victim when the person defends themselves.

Many bullies like to play the victim – it somehow helps them rationalize their actions, forgetting that often they are the instigator and not the victim.

They do it with a misplaced desire to “win” the confrontation, even if the other side is not even arguing.

But in the end, when such interactions occur, no one wins.

When such interactions occur, the opportunity to collaborate dies and with it, the opportunity to really produce a solution dies as well.

When someone uses anger, intimidation or misrepresentation to assert themselves without understanding the ideas or intentions of the other person, everyone loses.

As long as this continues to happen, whether it be in social media or on Capitol Hill or anywhere else for that matter, we will never solve our problems nor meet our true potential as individuals or as a society.

Hopefully, we are not yet ready to write an epitaph that reads “Civility – RIP”.

If that day ever comes, that and the result it produces will be the greatest disappointment we as a species will have ever created.

We can do better … in fact … we must do better.

Our future depends on it.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I took a quick look at @Donna_West and @good2bgreene to see what they are posting as I published this post. They have moved on to aggressively intimidating other people now. Whew … I thought it was just me. :-)

Occupy Wall Street–The Wrong Approach

2011-10-03T13:32:00.001-04:00

I have been watching with some concern about the growing number of “Occupy __Insert Name Here___” organizations that have sprung up in recent days in the US, whether it’s “Occupy Wall Street” in my old stomping grounds, Occupy Chicago or any of the other groups.

I am not surprised that people are protesting. With the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in America, a lot of people are becoming angry at certain establishments, whether it be large corporations or governments. They are also becoming afraid of their inability to provide long-term sustenance for themselves and their families.

What worries me is the lack of understanding of how we came to be in this mess and how we will get out of it.

It is true that a number of people in the upper echelons of organizations had greed as their primary motivator as they manipulated a system for their own advantage. Some, like the Bernie Madoffs in the world, did make their wealth illegally.

However, many play completely within the rules to build their wealth and so if you want to protest against someone, you need to protest against the people who make the rules and not against the ones who benefit from the rules.

In addition, there are many wealthy people out there who earned their wealth. They didn’t step back and wait for a hand-out. Many put everything on the line to get what they have, all the while playing within the rules.

So people can’t protest based on some “moral” grounds. Morals are as much open to interpretation today as someone describing to a blind person what the color blue looks like. There are many protestors who, if handed a million dollars, would suddenly “understand” and would stop protesting. It is an interesting side of human nature that very few who benefit from the rules have an issue with the rules.

The other concern I have is that there are no actual leaders of these protests. There are no real stated intentions outside of protesting against “the man” for the reasons of fighting their greed or their alleged intentional oppression of certain classes.

There is no strategy outside of “let’s try to tear the whole system down and see what we can come up with”.

The problem with this lack of a coordinated plan is that it is very similar to the strategy currently in place by many government officials as we wrestle with the current economic crisis.

The current random strategies being deployed, whether it’s the latest flavor of quantitative easing that didn’t work, a hastily concocted round of spending cuts and tax increases that will magically create a bazillion jobs or something else all show that hurried execution without long term strategic planning and smart tactical execution produces a big, complicated mess.

Such a big complicated mess requires careful correction and not additional hasty, random measures, otherwise it produces a larger mess that will continue to grow until it’s too large to fix.

But economics, like nature, is self correcting. It will eventually correct itself, whether by our hand or by natural evolution. This correction, which I have often referred to as the Great Correction, will be the great equalizer and will sharply narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots. I wouldn’t be surprised if this occurs within the next 9-12 months, with a few worrisome warnings along the way.

So when I look at the “Occupy XYZ” groups springing up, I have one observation for them.

If you want to be the change you wish to see, then do it intelligently, strategically and tactically.

Otherwise your non-strategic, leaderless, random execution is no better than the system you are protesting against and is not going to produce much of any substance.

In fact, if you get too disruptive, you will probably draw the military in to establish law and order and by then, your claims regarding the lack of freedoms or excessive amounts of chaos in one of the greatest nations on earth will actually manifest.

The only difference is that you will have created it.

And by then, your opportunity to influence change will really be diminished.

So I respect the passion and intention of the Occupy Wall Street group. Once the passion is focused strategically, tactically and collaboratively with an eye towards real solutions, only then are real solutions possible.

Otherwise, we slip deeper into the mess we are in.

And that doesn’t help anyone.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS - A Conspiracy Spin

For those that like a good conspiracy theory (and the Occupy Wall Street group probably has people who embrace conspiracy theories), think of this. Mayor Bloomberg predicted a couple of weeks back that if we weren’t careful, we would start to have demonstrations and / or riots in the streets.

Did Mayor Bloomberg or a colleague:

a. Predict the current situation using his years of political and business experience?

b. Accidentally inspire someone to actually start the demonstrations?

c. Plant some organizers amongst the rioters in order to start the demonstrations, with intention to create trouble for some reason? (See my blog “Reading the Fine Print” for one suggestion).

Only hindsight will tell us for sure. :-)

PPS – CNN Speaks to Protestors

This was an interesting bit on CNN. Yes, I know the conspiracy people will say that the media is part of this …. but this is an interesting piece worth watching.

Reading the Fine Print

2011-09-27T23:09:00.001-04:00

Having been in business for more years than I care to admit, I have seen more than my fair share of contracts, NDAs and other binding covenants.

As someone who is known as Literal Man in some circles, I am fascinated and surprised by the number of people who circumvent their own legal guidance, glossing over the fine print and going it alone in creating, changing or signing such binding documents.

Too many people still sign these documents with the belief that the protection it offers to each party will never be needed. There is an assumption that neither party will ever renege on the promises and commitments made to the other. After all, there is an all-too-common reasoning that “why would one even enter into a professional relationship in the first place if one expected bad things to happen, therefore it must be safe”.

Pete Seeger once said

“Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.”

If only human nature allowed us to execute every relationship so innocently and so perfectly with the notion that any disagreement could be easily resolved over a cup of coffee.

That’s why I have been watching President Obama with some curiosity lately as he struggles to bring the economic woes of the US under control.

Many US citizens are unaware of a little-known directive that could prove to be interesting as the next election draws closer.

Specifically ….

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20, sometimes called simply "Executive Directive 51" for short), created and signed by United States President George W. Bush on May 4, 2007, is a Presidential Directive which claims power to execute procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency". Such an emergency is construed as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

The presidential directive says that, when the president considers an emergency to have occurred, an "Enduring Constitutional Government" comprising "a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President," will take the place of the nation's regular government.

There are a few other fascinating components to this directive as well, namely:

The powers bequeathed to the “Enduring Constitutional Government” allow the government to forego elections to maintain leadership continuity as the nation moves out of crisis.
The process for cancelling the directive should it be invoked are not publically defined.
The person(s) with the authority to revoke the directive are not publically defined.
The majority of the contents of the directive (as with most presidential directives) including the rights of the people and the powers bequeathed to the acting government are considered classified under the auspices of “national security” and cannot be viewed by most people, including members of Congress.

I added the underline for emphasis. I believe that we are already in an extraordinary situation with an economic crisis that is disrupting the nation and in fact, the entire world. The President of the United States is in a position to execute this directive right now should he be so inclined.

I wouldn’t have given it much thought until I heard this comment from North Caroline Governor Purdue today when she was discussing the economy:

This is what she said:

"You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It's a little bit more contentious now but it's not impossible to try to do what's right in this state. You want people who don't worry about the next election."

Her handlers later claimed she was making a joke or intentionally overhyping this scenario to highlight how voters perceive our legislators.

Sadly, she wasn’t laughing when she delivered it, neither was anyone who heard it and the function she was speaking at wasn’t a stand-up comedy competition.

In fact, I find the remark quite intriguing and leads me to believe that it may have been discussed in private (whether seriously or half-heartedly is another matter), which suggests that the option has been explored. Perhaps someone was testing the waters to see how the comment would be received.

In a world of ever-increasing complexity, challenge, paranoia and over-analysis by the media, one has to be very careful citing an option that many Americans would not like but which is legally within the President’s right to use.

Which brings me back to understanding the fine print.

Any time a business or individual is in difficulty in a contractual relationship, it is normal to review any binding covenants to review one’s options in order to bring about the best solution possible from the standpoint of the party reviewing the covenants.

As President Obama looks at what is happening in the economic world, how the economic engines haven’t responded to classic adjustments and a Republican stance that he is very unhappy with, he is looking at all his options with an eye towards solving the problems in the best way that he can visualize.

Executive Directive 51 is within his right to use, whether we like it or not.

Frankly, many normal people out there would look at this option and would use it.

I would if I thought that my ideas were the best ones available and I thought that the options of my opponent would spin the country deeper into catastrophe. You might also if you were the President.

Over the years, as politicians have gently (and sometimes not so gently) changed the laws that govern the land, many citizens never bothered to read the fine print of the legislation, assuming that “the details” weren’t important.

And now even if we wanted to get to the fine print, we are not permitted.

As Andy Rooney once said:

“Nothing in fine print is ever good news”.

What the directive would mean to the country, the freedoms and rights within the country and the future of the world’s greatest democracy is unknown.

But as always, that’s what we get for ignoring the fine print for too long. It puts us into interesting territory.

Derek Bok once said:

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”.

It is highly likely that the coming months will teach us just how much our ignorance of the evolution of our government and economic models have and will cost us.

Thinking back to Seeger and Bok, let’s hope our education is not too painful an experience and that the final experience is a positive one.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I was curious to see, as I watched Chris Wallace interview Rep Mike Simpson (R – ID) on Fox News Sunday on the morning of Nov. 6 / 11 when Rep. Simpson said, and I quote “"We've got to put aside our elections to solve this problem” when referring to the challenges facing the nation. Very interesting.

Truly Understanding Cause and Effect

2011-09-23T08:41:00.000-04:00

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on September 22, 2011 that growth is the main challenge faced by the world.

In making such a statement, I believe Secretary Geithner is either willfully or innocently ignoring the true primary challenge facing the world.

Yes, it is true that we are in very difficult financial times all around the world.

However, to cite growth as the problem is to be ignorant of the laws of cause and effect and only by studying the laws of cause and effect can we get down to solving the real challenges that are facing all of us.

Wikipedia defines cause and effect as:

…. an action or event will produce a certain response to the action in the form of another event.

When we analyze a problem, many times what we perceive as “the problem” is in fact a symptom to a more deeply-rooted issue – the true problem.

This problem may be many levels deep, lost in a web of data, over or under analysis or be intentionally hidden by someone protecting themselves or a personal agenda.

However, until we get to root causes and significant contributing factors we have no hope of solving the issues at-hand.

For example, if we look at the scourges of cancer, heart attack and stroke, many doctors and experts tell us that many of them (not all) are caused or exacerbated by lifestyle – excessive or inappropriate food intake, poor exercise habits or concerns with the environment: poor air quality, soil contamination, inappropriate food additives, excessive stress, etc.

That being what it is, we look to scientists to find the white pill to cure us and save us from the terrible diseases that “take us out of nowhere”. We know many of the contributing factors. We just don’t want to have to face up to our responsibility in addressing them.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the financial crisis, I see a different problem.

Think of it this way:

1. The powers-to-be have implemented fiscal policy over the years that have finally culminated in the difficulties we are living in today. These are not problems that developed overnight – they were many decades in the making.

2. When the financial tsunami was rolling toward us, the experts didn’t see it coming (or claim they didn’t).

3. Despite many of their efforts, the economy has not responded positively to classic corrective efforts that have been successful in the past.

4. Some of these people, such as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, admitted in the spring of 2011 that they have no idea what’s wrong or what it will take to fix it.

So it becomes apparent to me that the greatest challenge in the world is not the fiscal one that some people are referring to. The fiscal concerns are a symptom of a much larger problem.

If I architect a large-scale IT system for a client and it performs miserably, I would expect that I would be compelled to fix it. If after many attempts, I tell my client that I have no idea what’s wrong with it, it becomes clear to the client where the real problem lies.

It’s not the poorly performing system.

It’s me, the guy who created it, can’t fix it and admits that he can’t fix it.

And frankly, I shouldn’t act surprised when I am asked to leave.

By the same token, I think if we TRULY look at the problems facing the world, we will recognize that what are promoted as problems are in fact merely symptoms.

Symptoms that point to the true causes, ones that need to be addressed if we are to see any true progress in the world.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Not-For-Profits Needing For-Profit Discipline

2011-09-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia defines a not-for-profit in this way:

Not-for-profit organizations are able to earn a profit, more accurately termed a surplus, such earnings must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion, or plans. NPOs have controlling members or boards. Many have paid staff including management, while others employ unpaid volunteers and even executives who work without compensation.

Profit is not the primary goal of an NPO, but because an NPO can legally and ethically trade at a profit, the term Not-for-profit is often considered more appropriate than Non-profit. The extent to which an NPO can generate income may be constrained, or the use of that income may be restricted. Nonprofits therefore are funded typically by donations (which may be tax deductible) from the private or public sector, and are typically exempt from income and property taxation. Some NPOs may internalize profit in the form of comparatively good wages or benefits.

One of the primary differences between a for-profit and a not-for-profit is how surplus revenue is generated and how this surplus revenue must be handled.

I have discovered over the years, through serving on the boards of international charities and consulting to international charities of all sizes, that somewhere along the way this basic difference has morphed into something more insidious and disappointing.

For some reason, in more situations than I am happy with, this difference has morphed into the belief that appropriate business processes, methodologies and best-practices don’t apply to not-for-profits because “not-for-profits are different”.

Some examples …..

From the “We’re Different” Camp

1. One international charity whose board refused to take action against their Executive Director who was known to be taking money illegally for the purpose of launching his own organization. When I vehemently protested this as a board member, it was explained to me “Unlike in a for-profit business where a board provides transparency, accountability and governance, you should realize that the purpose of a not-for-profit board is to support ALL actions of the Executive Director and to provide guidance when asked for”. By the way, the board was made up of senior lawyers and well known executives. The board later came to its senses but in firing the ED, had to pay him a “keep quiet” bonus so that the ED didn’t blow the whistle on the board for allowing him to steal in the first place. Say what?

From the “You Business Guys Don’t Understand Us” Camp

2. Another household name in the international charity space that blows through tens of millions of dollars a year without having a single idea where the money is going or whether their use of capital is effective or appropriate. They garner millions of dollars a year in donations because of their internationally-recognized name and the assumption by donors that this charity must be doing the right thing. When I asked why they didn’t apply appropriate strategy and tactics to maximize their effectiveness and to leverage this demonstrable success to generate even more revenue, I was gently reminded that such practices only work in the for-profit space and attempting to apply processes to generate strategic, measurable outcomes are impossible in the not-for-profit space. Please forgive me for daring to think such audacious thoughts.

From the “You Should Be Kissing Our Feet” Camp

3. A multitude of charities that pay themselves quite handsomely but lament that there aren’t enough people in the world who are willing to provide them with quality pro-bono work for extended periods of time. They have the curious belief that the rest of the world should be aching to do for free what they in fact are unwilling to do without being paid extremely well. In fact, some of these charities have almost no budget for programs because their salaries and consulting fees have swallowed up most of the capital.

From the “I’ve Never Heard of This” Camp

4. A very large international charity that for over 40 years never had its books audited ONCE. The person in charge of the coffers lifted money from them routinely during that period and now the organization faces bankruptcy. The cry of “We didn’t know that we should have an auditor come in annually” doesn’t draw much pity in this day-and-age and proves that ignorance doesn’t always produce bliss.

From the “Dirty Little Secrets Aren’t Fatal, Are They?” Camp

5. The dirty little secret of many charities in Canada and the US that are routinely ripped off significantly by their treasurers or other execs. Why is it a dirty secret? Since many of these charities keep such events quiet for fear of discouraging donors, they have become a favorite target of some unscrupulous people. One well-known children’s charity in Canada has been robbed by their last three treasurers in a row. Charges haven’t been pressed because that would draw unnecessary attention from the media and so the game continues. If you need an extra source of income, email me and I will tell you who they are so that you can apply for the position.

From the “Money is the Root of All Evil” Camp

6. A number of charities, especially in the religious community, who believe that to raise money to maximize their effort is an affront to the true heart of charity or to God. For this reason, they avoid appropriate means of generating extra revenue because they believe that to generate this money places them in the “all money is evil” camp and somehow their acts of charity will become tainted as a result. Meanwhile, they constantly lament that they can’t help more people with their meager annual budgets.

It’s Not All Bad

Now don’t get me wrong.

There are MANY excellent, well-run not-for-profits in the world that make a significant contribution to the people and community that they serve. They are staffed by passionate, talented people who we should be grateful for everyday.

But there is another side to the not-for-profit world that is not as positive, with far too many organizations not living up to the commitments that they constantly promote.

The difficult challenge is that we can’t help these organizations to execute in a better fashion until they accept the need to do so. And until we help those organizations maximize their ability to serve their target audience, then we are all just pretending to do the right things for others.

The problem is that public disclosure, embarrassment and humiliation doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, the only thing it will probably produce is a lot of litigation in an effort to hide the ineffectiveness. Meanwhile, the people who need help are still not being helped and that’s not useful at all.

There has to be a better way – I just wish I knew what it was. Connecting those who execute well with those who don’t will help some organizations, the ones with enough humility to recognize a better way. For those organizations whose leaders are filled with hubris and bravado, such techniques will prove to be a waste of time.

Ultimately, it is the donors, board members, affected consumers and people at-large who must hold these organizations accountable to their stated purpose.

Pretty posters, nice slogans, rah-rah presentations, leveraging of international brands and inspiring commercials are all well and good.

But when much of the capital is wasted by people serving their own needs or executing with the belief that not-for-profits can’t leverage for-profit best practices, then we have a big problem.

Meanwhile, we are not making our best effort to put food in the bellies of the hungry, empower the homeless to become self-sufficient, help the downtrodden to feel human again or help children with special needs reach their ultimate potential.

And that is where the real shame lies.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS This blog post has only been out for seven or eight hours and I have been bombarded by emails. A few observations:

1. I cannot divulge the names of the organizations to people I don’t know. I do, however, find many of the guesses to be both interesting and revealing.

2. For some people who may have figured out that their charity is one of the ones referenced, what is more important … that the secret is out or that you do something to fix it?

3. In many of the examples, the stories shared only touch the surface of what is really happening within those organizations. I left out the juicy bits to avoid obvious identification.

4. Many of the respondents have shared their own stories, some of which leave mine in the dust in terms of negative impact and audacity.

The bottom line

Change is necessary – do we have the courage to be that change on behalf of the people who need it?

Being Clear With Expectations

2011-09-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Many years ago in a one-room school, a teacher had assigned some work to the students and was in the cloakroom rearranging a few things.

She noticed to her dismay that a student had left a puddle in the middle of the floor. Striding back into the classroom and asking for everyone’s full attention, she described what she had seen. She concluded with this request: “However, there will be no punishment if the student responsible for this takes care it. All the students and I will put our heads down and close our eyes and the student responsible will have an opportunity to go into the cloakroom and take care of the situation. This way, no one needs to be embarrassed.”

Everyone put their head down and closed their eyes. In a minute or so, a chair could be heard to push back, there was the patter of little feet heading to the back of the school and a minute later, there was again the patter of little feet and a chair being pulled in.

Everyone opened their eyes, the teacher assigned work to the students and went back to the cloakroom.

On the floor, she now noticed two puddles.

Meanwhile, on the wall in red crayon, was scrawled the phrase “The Phantom Strikes Again!!!”.

Expectations are funny, aren’t they? We give people half a thought (or they give us one), and the person receiving the thought merrily goes about the task at hand, often times with a 50% chance or less of meeting the expectations of the other person.

When I communicate with people, I have always preferred to have expectations clearly understood up front with no room for ambiguity. This desire for transparency and clarity sometimes irritates people since it requires them to have fully thought out their request before making it and it removes the opportunity for an excuse by any party should the expectation not be met.

It has also given me the nickname in some circles of “Literal Man”. :-)

It is better to possibly irritate people early on rather than deal with the larger, inevitable explosion that will result from not meeting expectations later.

It is a complex world that operates very quickly. Ambiguity, ever slight, can magnify and get out of control very fast. It’s like a house with a foundation that is off-square by half a degree in one corner. While half a degree doesn’t seem much, by the time the builders get to the other end of the house, they find that the walls on the far side don’t come together at all and the foundation is ruined.

Take the time and set mutual expectations up front Both parties will be grateful for it … and you will need fewer red crayons to explain yourself . :-)

In service and servanthood,

Literal Man …. I mean Harry :-)

Sometimes You Have to Know When To Quit

2011-09-20T16:33:00.001-04:00

Many of us remember our younger days when we were immortal and untouchable, taking on the world at any cost while daring the world to try and stop us.

Back in the 80s, I was one of those rebellious types, having not learned the subtleties and nuances of tackling problems where the reward wasn’t worth the risk.

In one example, a friend of mine who was a tribal chief on a reserve in Canada happened to mention to me that much of the violence on the reserve was as a result of a certain well-known large union that was responsible for running guns, drugs and other contraband through the reserve, which straddled the US-Canada border.

Being young, untouchable and immortal, I set about researching this to bring an end to what I thought was an outrageous series of actions on the part of this union. Everything was going great and in fact, I managed to prove that there was significant truth to the story.

It was going great until one day, a member of this union called me at my desk in a Government of Canada office, addressed me by name and indicated that he had all the evidence that I needed. In fact, all I had to do was give him my home address and he would deliver it personally.

This event, being before the days of the web, online directories and such, was quite intimidating. In addition, as a consultant, my name wasn’t associated with the phone and yet he managed to contact me anyway. He knew that it probably wouldn’t take much to scare me off and he was right.

Some months later, having forgotten my lesson, I became aware of a large-scale disappearance that had occurred in Western Canada some years before and once again, I was off to the races, determined to figure out what had happened to these people.

I called the RCMP in Ottawa and started to explain the nature of the information I sought when the operator interrupted me and said “I know exactly who you need to speak to”. A moment later, I was connected to the person in charge of federal investigations for this type of situation and as I started to explain my story, he interrupted me and told me he was quite familiar with it. He asked for my contact information and promised to call me back with the information I sought.

A little later that day, he did indeed call me back and informed me that the story had turned out to be a hoax. Ever the inquisitive person (but with less common sense then), I asked him if the file was still open with the RCMP. When he indicated that it was, I reminded him that if it were a hoax, the RCMP would have closed the file and since the file was still open, it couldn’t be a hoax. In fact, I went on, now feeling full of myself, I would use whatever it took to get access to the information. His response was “I told you this is a hoax”. With my heels dug in, I again repeated “I understand what you are saying but this is in contradiction to your policy of closing files that are known hoaxes”. He angrily replied, “Look, I’m trying to tell you something. You are not to pursue this further.” and he hung up.

Once again, it took an implied threat to shut me down (or to shut me up). :-)

Truth is, it took a few threats before I smartened up enough to not put myself or my family at risk by doing something stupid that I had no expertise in and that truly offered no measurable return commensurate with the risk.

Returning to the present, when I think about some of the business proposals that people have presented to me in recent months, the scenarios remind me of me back then. The overlaps are uncanny:

1. Diving into areas where the individual has no area of expertise (or any business to be poking around in).

2. People with so much ego present that they are unwilling to admit that they have no idea what they are doing.

3. Having no measurable, valuable end goals defined, with the hope that if enough noise and activity are generated, good things have to occur as a result. “After all”, as one person told me, “Good things always happen to good people”.

4. Containing astronomical risks, with no limit to the disaster that can be created for many people while at the same time, containing minimal potential reward at best.

5. The belief that gut instinct alone supersedes all the other laws of nature, including strategic planning, tactical execution and collaboration with others.

6. The fact that it will take a disaster or to be seriously kicked around a few times before the person finally understands that the whole thing is a potentially dangerous waste of time, energy and resources.

That’s not to say that really wild ideas shouldn’t be followed through to explore the potential of real success.

But when such an opportunity arises, know the difference between a great idea containing measurable end goals, smart strategy, sharp tactics, collaboration and excellent execution (all backed up by relevant data and analysis) versus an idea that is backed up merely by the belief that this is the best idea and I am the only person smart enough and passionate enough to do something with it.

Sometimes you need to know when to quit … or better yet … when to not start at all.

Otherwise, someone may be showing up at your door to deliver the news personally … and it probably won’t be good news.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Truth or Fiction–Perception and Life Experience

2011-09-19T17:31:00.001-04:00

People who know me well know that I’m as pragmatic as they come. In fact, I am sometimes perceived as one of the toughest skeptics in business because of my demand of others to back claims, beliefs and ideas with hard data and research. As I have often said to others when they approach me with a business intention and a gut feeling that they will make a bazillion dollars without a shred of evidence, strategy, research or planning, “it sucks when reality gets in the way of dreams”.

This afternoon, as I completed a stack of paperwork for clients and had a moment to pause, a conversation I had many years ago with my now-deceased father-in-law came to mind and it caused me to reflect upon it.

He had an interesting career. He was a decorated B-25 pilot in WWII (appearing on the cover of Life magazine at the time) and went on to serve his country in the USAF, Strategic Air Command and Air National Guard before retiring with the rank of Colonel.

He was sharp as a tack, uber-pragmatic and had zero tolerance for “BS artists”. He loved his country and while I knew he worked on some “interesting projects” at Wright Patterson AFB and other locations, he never shared his work or the secrets he was privy to.

However, he did have one interesting story that I have often thought about and for some reason as I completed my paperwork today, it came to mind.

One night we were sitting in his living room with its gorgeous views of the mountains. He had been partaking of a little Scotch and we had been enjoying some idle chatter about everything and nothing, including recent advances in military technology.

Suddenly he got really serious, looked at me with his piercing eyes and asked me “Where do you think most of our recent advances in military technology have come from?”

I stopped for a moment, shrugged and said “With so many contractors working for the government, it’s not hard to see how smart people can create this stuff”.

Without hesitation, he asked again “It doesn’t come from here. Where do you really think it comes from?”

Sensing that I had guessed poorly the first time, I responded “I don’t know. Did we steal it from someone else, maybe the Russians or the Chinese?”

Getting a little agitated, he said “I just told you that it doesn’t come from here. Where do you think it comes from?”

I had no response now, since if we didn’t create it and we hadn’t “borrowed it” from someone else, I had no suggestion.

He persisted and asked me again where I thought it came from.

It appeared that he wanted me to guess something without actually telling me. I was starting to get the idea of what he was inferring but I wanted to hear it from him and so I played dumb. We explored the topic for a little while before he called it a night and went to bed.

The next morning over breakfast, he looked at me across the table and said “I probably had a little too much to drink last night and may have said a few things I shouldn’t have said. Anything we discussed last night is not to be discussed further”.

I made some crack about sharing it only with my closest friends and he hit his fist on the table and said “God damn it, I’m not kidding. It’s in your best interests to forget what we spoke about”.

The look in his eyes told me he wasn’t kidding and I assured him that I would be quiet about it.

Over the years, I have only shared this story with a few close friends but I have never shared it publicly until now, even thought what I am sharing is only part of what we discussed.

Even as I write this, I have no idea why I am sharing it on a blog where I muse about about leadership, strategy, technology and living.

However, as I think about that late-night conversation, a couple of quotes come to mind by people writing off things as impossible:

"Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible." - Simon Newcomb, 1902

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932

So when I think back to the night when my father-in-law and I debated the mysterious, controversial origins of modern military technology and I think of brilliant people in the past who said that many of the things that we take for granted were once believed to be impossible, I wonder …..

Is it possible that in many situations, the difference between what we delineate as truth or fiction has nothing to do with what we are judging but is entirely based on the life experiences of the person doing the judging?

Perhaps if we were to come to this realization, we would stop looking at proving everything as right or wrong but instead, would use such opportunities to fill gaps in our knowledge.

As perhaps my father-in-law tried to do with me, the uber-left-brained skeptic who insists upon hard data before moving something from the “fiction” box to the “truth” box.

And besides, implying that modern military technology has its origins from “somewhere / someone else” is just fiction.

Isn’t it?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Governments and Venture Capital

2011-09-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

Or ….

Doing the Right Things For Success

As I read the latest stories of the US Federal Government’s failures as a venture capitalist, I am reminded of three things:

1. Not everything that the government invests in goes kaboom (despite the media’s attempts to convince us otherwise).

2. Many things that governments do invest in are beyond their ability to understand and do go kaboom.

3. Oftentimes, a government invests in something for political reasons first and business reasons second (if at all) and many of these also eventually go kaboom.

I remember a few years back when I was asked to audit a company that had accepted over $20 million in investment capital, including over $6 million in Canadian Government funding. The company appeared to be struggling and I was asked to find out why.

Now keep in mind that this company was not in a market that I had expertise in so I spent a whopping 24 hours in advance to understand the market space they were in.

My first surprise was that this company, after being in business for almost 10 years, was amazed at my knowledge of the market space. Keep in mind that they had 10 years in this space while I had 24 hours.

I sensed that my journey into the twilight zone was about to begin.

After spending a day with the company, I projected a complete and total failure of the organization by a specific week in the upcoming autumn unless a specific list of things were addressed immediately.

The executives and primary investors of the company dismissed my gloom-and-doom report and went blissfully on their way. It wasn’t a politically positive message either and so the Government representatives ignored it also.

I did not take delight in reading about them in the local newspapers later in the fall (during the week I had predicted) when they announced they had closed their doors due to “difficult market conditions”.

There is no joy in “I told you so” when many people lose their jobs and families suffer as a result.

A Minster in the Canadian Government later found out that I had predicted this failure and wanted to know the secret to my insight. I received a letter asking me if I would go to the nearest Federal Government location and offer my “top secret insight”.

I was happy to oblige, went to the nearest Federal Government office and we compared notes.

Here is what I noted:

1. The company had no business plan.

2. They had no measurable, strategic outcomes.

3. They had no tactical roadmap to get them from where they were to where they needed to go.

4. They had no product development strategy to see what their customers actually wanted.

5. They had not conducted any type of market analysis to understand who their customers were.

6. They had not conducted any competitive analysis to understand who their major competition was.

7. They had not adopted any type of best practices, frameworks or methodologies in regards to their technology implementation.

8. They had no sales and marketing strategy.

9. There was no communication between the different business units, so a CEO would make a deal with a client and not tell the product team, the product team would develop functionality for a client without telling senior execs and without bothering to get the intentions wrapped up in a legally binding contract, salespeople made commitments and didn’t tell the product guys, customers would cancel new requests but nobody told the product group and so they kept developing, product teams would develop functionality without asking anyone if it was needed, etc.

In total, I listed 30 items of concern.

The people who had done the Federal Government due diligence prior to the company receiving the money followed a different process.

They sent a request to the CEO basically saying:

"Please explain to us why this offering is so good and why we should invest in you. Be as accurate as possible since we are relying on you to inform us as to whether this is a good investment”.

So they invited the CEO to spin a good story, didn’t validate any of the claims by drawing in third-party expertise and in turn spun it as a real win-win from a public-private partnership perspective.

The rest is history.

Sadly, many private investors who came in later provided money with the mistaken belief that “since the Federal Government has already done its due diligence, I don’t need to do mine”.

Ignorance of strong business practices can be fatal.

By the way, the internal investigation was eventually hushed up and quietly went away also.

That’s unfortunate since the learning lesson and public accountability were also hidden away.

I’m not suggesting that governments shouldn’t invest in private organizations nor am I saying that every company they invest in produces a disaster. There have been success stories derived from such partnerships.

However, when people invest in companies in order to influence the public’s short-term perception in terms of job growth, to help a buddy at the cost of the taxpayer or to spin their political careers for their own benefit, they are looking at the short-term picture while seeing the long-term business success potential as being secondary in priority for the moment.

They are seeking an answer to the question “How can I use this to benefit me or help me to be perceived as a ‘winner for the people?’”. Such short-term thinking is rarely successful and relies more on luck than anything.

On the other hand, when people invest in companies from the standpoint of “how can I contribute to creating something that maximizes the return on my investment, both short term and long term?”, then the criteria by which success is judged gets much more stringent.

That’s not to suggest that this is a guarantee for success. Companies fail despite the best of intentions and potential.

When one follows appropriate business practices while evaluating investment opportunities, one maximizes the potential for success of that organization, hopefully by the most effective and efficient means possible.

When an organization or individual not held accountable for success and not known for efficiency sees an opportunity to spin political bonus points instead, we have a much greater chance for failure and for significant loss of investment capital.

Investment capital that ultimately belongs to us …

… which is why we should care.

It proves the old adage that “It is always easier to spend somebody else’s money”.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Paying Attention to the Little Things

2011-09-15T13:03:00.001-04:00

As I nurse an Achilles tendon injury, I am somewhat amused (painfully) at how a small part of the body that many of us don’t give much thought to could slow down someone who stands 6’3”.

It reminds me of how common this is in Life – how we often don’t pay attention to the little things in our personal or professional lives until we see the result of not paying attention; whether it results in degraded health or injury, a failed relationship, a dying business entity or a collapsing country.

As a strategy guy, the little things that many shrug off as not being important enough to worry about are the things I need to understand before writing them off as inconsequential.

Why?

Because when things fail or don’t reach their potential, many times this failure has its roots in that which we didn’t feel was important at the time. Those little important pieces of awareness were lost amidst the noise of the things we thought were important, we were mistaken about the truths of cause and effect or we just couldn’t get over our own ego.

This is why, after a failure has occurred in a person, a company, a physical object or a country, it is usually very easy to discover the causes. That which was ignored (accidentally or intentionally) naturally and logically progressed into something that produced failure.

When the analysis is complete and the reasons are obvious, we write them off by saying “How could we have known?”, “Who knew then that this was important?” or my favorite worthless cliché, “Hindsight is 20/20”. Oftentimes as a result of this analysis, we learn how to do things better. Sometimes we actually do things better. Many times we do not.

When I look at the current challenges in the economy and on Capitol Hill, the political noise that attracts the media like a moth to a flame intrigues and worries me.

The media likes to hype up all the bickering, the gloom and doom messages, the complexity, etc. as news.

I see it differently.

For the many people I have been blessed to work with over the years, there is a percentage of people who, in order to hide their incompetence, loved to hide behind noise.

You could pick them out quite easily – the ones who didn’t know how to make a decision or the ones who were driving a private agenda that was different than their publicly stated one. In order to disguise incompetence or motive, they would create a lot of noise through excessive posturing, intimidation, pointless meetings, useless information sharing, finger-pointing and fear mongering.

As long as they were able to keep up this noise, no one noticed that they were not competent enough for their role. People were too busy trying to survive the fire storm and so the incompetent survived. In fact, some who have mastered this technique actually find a way to become the hero when they put out the fire that they started and no one remembers who actually started it in the first place. Everyone is too relieved that the danger has passed.

And while everyone around them gets sucked into the maelstrom of confusion, the fire starter steps back, acting angry, confused or concerned while letting it explode around them, possibly thinking ‘Whew – that was close – almost got discovered there”.

So the next time you hear a lot of noise about the concerns on Wall St., the problems on Capitol Hill, the worries over wars around the world and problems in the nation in general, forget about what is being said and how it is being presented.

Listen carefully for what is not being said and then ask yourself “Why?”. Remember that the people who want to portray themselves as the hero may also be responsible for having created the challenges in the first place and must be held accountable as a result.

Once you have gotten past the noise, you are on your way to becoming more aware of the real issues and the real solutions that are needed.

This is not a call for panic. In fact, it is a call to increase one’s awareness and knowledge. In an ever-changing world of ever-increasing complexity, knowledge is power.

Pay attention to the little things. In the end they, like an Achilles tendon, are the things that will either hobble you or enable you to make greater strides in life …. for you, your family, your company, your country and the world

In service and servanthood,

Harry

The Fate of Empires …. and Companies

2011-09-12T12:18:00.001-04:00

I recently read a summarized version of Sir John Bagot Glubb’s “The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival” (1978, out of print), his fascinating observations about the rise and fall of key historical societies, all repeating the same results despite people’s desire for the contrary.

While there are parallels that readers could infer from the societies described in the book as compared to modern society, I was also intrigued by how the patterns described for typical society creation and collapse exist within companies as well.

Each dominant society, according to the author, goes through the following stages, specifically the ages of:

outburst (or pioneers)
conquest
commerce
affluence
intellect
decadence
decline and collapse

Dominant organizations go through a process that has often been described as the sigmoid curve, containing the following key stages:

inception – the company / project is often self funded and capital / resources invested often exceed results produced
growth – a positive return is being generated, with results producing (hopefully) some multiple of what is being put into it
maturity – the company is in a place of stability and is potentially a recognized leader in its space. Many companies fall into the “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” mindset at this point, created by self confidence in their success and potentially setting the stage for potential failure.
decline – if new products, services, partnerships, delivery techniques, etc. were not adopted in the maturity step, decline and potential failure are inevitable.

The Sigmoid Curve

The key with business success is to make sure the business leaders embark on new product or service offerings or better delivery techniques somewhere in the maturity stage in order to start a new sigmoid curve and ensure ongoing health of the organization. Failure to do so results in ultimate decline of the organization which may lead to reduced market impact, decreased valuation or total failure.

What I like about Sir John Glubb’s analysis of society is that it nicely correlates to the classic stages of the sigmoid curve.

Returning to his list as it pertains to business:

outburst (or pioneers) – the entrepreneur establishes a new idea that will “shake the world”
conquest – initial funding, perception, knowledge-gap, business or technology hurdles are overcome
commerce – the company gains traction and begins to generate sustainable income
affluence – the company begins to be recognized as a knowledge / market leader
intellect – the company has the resources and capabilities to explore R & D initiatives; seeking ways to increase market awareness and penetration or to explore things that it thinks are important to the consumer or to the organization
decadence – the organization loses sight of its competitors or the needs of its customers as it becomes blinded by “we’re the best in our space and we know what the customer really wants”
decline and collapse – failure to reinvent the organization’s offerings, branding, execution, etc. produce diminished results and the possibility of total collapse.

Within the first five stages (outburst to intellect), it is critical to recognize that one may or may not be the “expert” in all disciplines and knowledge. Failure to recognize this makes the final two stages almost inevitable.

One of the most common mistakes I see in organizations ranging from startups to well-established organizations is the belief that their organization is different than all the rest, that somehow they will avoid the “laws of nature” that all organizations are subjected to.

And when they do this, they provide a reminder, yet again, that:

“The one thing that history teaches us is that history teaches us nothing” – Hegel

We must become a student of history in order to maximize our future. When someone is not a student of history, it becomes easy to predict their future and sadly, it often resembles the history that they were ignorant of.

Regardless of the source, history provides the knowledge needed for success …. if we are open to the lessons revealed therein.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Carpe Diem–Do We Know What It Means?

2011-09-09T11:24:00.001-04:00

So many people use the phrase “carpe diem” (seize the day) as a personal mantra around manic productivity – that to seize the day means that one should drive one’s self into the ground in an effort to squeeze as much productivity out of the day as is humanly possible. Some use it as a rah rah in an effort to convince others that they are making the most of their day when in fact they are not.

I have come to learn that carpe diem means something else.

Some years ago, a dear friend of mine by the name of Narender Nath had been trying to get on my lunch calendar for weeks. While our relationship was very important, I kept deferring him because of my busy calendar. I finally agreed on a particular Monday to see him for lunch the next day (although I remember thinking at the time “how will I get all this work done if I take a couple of hours for lunch?”).

During the same period, my friend and colleague Eric Bennett had been nagging me about the need to relax and had kept offering to take me to a Yankees baseball game. He had box seats through his company and wanted to treat me to a night out. I was too busy living my interpretation of carpe diem and finally called him on a Monday afternoon and left him a message that I would take him up on his kind offer at whatever time worked for him.

I was attending a parent-teacher night one Monday evening and kept running into a friend of mine by the name of Stephen Fiorelli. As my family wandered from appointment to appointment, I kept passing Stephen in the corridor and at one point, he indicated that he had something important to talk to me about and wondered if I was available for a coffee after the event. I had had a particularly busy day and asked if we could reschedule for another time, which he happily agreed to.

It was Monday, September 10th, 2001.

24 hours later, it was too late to tell Narender I was sorry for not having gone to lunch with him sooner, to tell Eric that I should have taken him up on his offer to relax and kick back for a few hours or to listen to Stephen as he told me whatever seemed to be on his mind.

There are so many stories I could tell about these guys and the other friends that I lost.

Funny stories like how Narender and I created Yellow Shirt Day in our company, how he taught me to swear in Hindi to defend myself against an abusive corner-store owner in the basement of our building or how he was fascinated by TV commercials when he moved to the US because he believed that commercials provided true insight into the American character.

Stories of dedication about people like Eric Bennett who was the true epitome of a guy who went above and beyond to make sure that his colleagues were successful. It was his desire to help me be successful in my company that created the opportunity for him to introduce me to Narender.

Powerful moments like when we were at Stephen’s house with his wife, kids, family and friends waiting for news that Stephen was ok ….. at one point the doorbell rang and I looked out the window, seeing policemen and a priest at the door and my heart sank as I then knew otherwise.

Stories of bravery, after hearing that Stephen, as a Port Authority engineer, stayed behind with his team to help the firefighters with floor plans. They evacuated the building as it began to collapse. The team survived – he did not.

Stories that will live with me forever.

I learned a lot from these guys but the greatest thing I learned from their loss was the real meaning of carpe diem.

For me, it’s no longer merely mistaking activity for productivity.

It’s recognition that the world is filled with tragedy but it is filled with beauty also.

But unless we take the time to slow down, to enjoy it, to be grateful for it and to share it with the people who matter, then we haven’t really seized the day.

In fact, we’ve let the beauty and potential of the day slip by us.

Carpe diem, to me, is a reminder to focus on what is really important and not just what seems to be important.

I am a better person because of Narender, Eric, Stephen, their families and all the people I have been blessed to know who were lost that day.

Carpe diem calls me to remember them by treasuring each day as a powerful gift of Life.

Carpe diem.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the incredible bravery of military servicemen, search and rescue, firemen, policemen, EMS/ EMT and all first responders, both during 9/11 and all who serve so that we may be safe. I have reminded my children many times that when they see one of these people, they should always walk up to them and say “thank you” for putting their lives on the line, for so little pay and for people they will never meet. Many of the firemen that I used to wave to as I walked to work in the morning in NYC rushed in to save others and never came out of the buildings. We are grateful that they serve and sometimes, sadly, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that we may live ….. and they do so bravely and unselfishly.

Eric Bennett Stephen Fiorelli Narender Nath

Narender in his yellow shirt (it wasn’t yellow shirt day). I’m in the green shirt. The guy between us, Tom, was stepping off the PATH train in the basement of the World Trade Center at the moment the North Tower was struck and was able to leave the WTC safely.

Courage to Say “It Can’t Be Done That Way”

2011-09-07T11:24:00.001-04:00

I read an interesting statistic yesterday.

When the Social Security system was invented, the average life span of an American citizen was 61.

So offering to pay benefits when someone turned 65 was a pretty safe bet – there were very few people who would be collecting anyway.

Now that the average life span of an American man and woman is 75.6 and 80.8 years respectively, we are asking the Social Security system to accomplish the same result for which it was designed but with a completely different set of inputs.

We want it to be self sustaining while paying Americans a pension that allows them to enjoy their retirement, ignoring the fact that we have far more people drawing from the system, the ratio of contributors to withdrawers is unsustainable, retirees draw for much longer and the amount each individual needs to draw from the system is much larger than when the system was created.

Politicians, not often known for their bravery when it comes to revealing the true state of things, keep tinkering with the system with the hope that they can fix it without revealing to the world that it is broken. So instead of the desired result, we have a system that is bankrupting itself while at the same time, keeping the average retired American well below the poverty line.

The problem with reality is that we can’t hide from it, try as we might.

Sometimes we need to accept the fact that original intentions and assumptions, while having served their purpose for the day, are no longer relevant and in fact may be dangerous to embrace in the current environment.

When this happens (which, by the way, is a normal result in the evolution of any “system”), it is quite ok to admit that the current system doesn’t work at all and needs to be redesigned from the ground up.

Sometimes it’s better to gut something and start over - frightening, disappointing or angering everyone for the moment but then creating a result that everyone will like rather than deny there is any problem right up until the thing that needs to be fixed, whether it be a personal Life plan, organizational intention, large-scale computer system or government program, collapses beyond repair (taking innocent people and organizations down with it).

It’s like being given a Sopwith Camel (a World War 1 fighter plane with a maximum speed of 115 mph) and being told that we are to use it as a low-cost replacement for the Space Shuttle.

We can set an expectation now, temporarily disappointing people by denying the request and insisting that we be smarter with our intentions and our actions.

Or we can be another “yes person”, petrified of disappointing people and deferring the disappointment until years and bazillions of dollars later when people discover that we had no chance of ever getting it done.

In either situation, pain, anger and disappointment are inevitable.

However, in one case, the feelings pass when we focus on a solution, complete the project on a high note and establish the potential for a bright future. We might even provide the basis for a case study in a business strategy 101 course as the courageous way to do the right thing.

In the other situation, there’s also possibility of ending up as a business strategy 101 case study.

Just not the kind any of us want to be remembered for.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

9/11, Conspiracies and Communication Failure

2011-09-06T11:26:00.001-04:00

As I write this today, I am wearing a yellow shirt. It is, after all, Yellow Shirt Day for me, something a group of us co-created with a colleague who was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the media is rich with various forms of documentaries including the obligatory set of suggestions of conspiracy. Apparently people “in the know” know for certain, without releasing their secret sources, that 9/11 occurred because of government conspiracies, aliens, an angry God (or gods for someone), etc. One guy in a documentary on CBC in Canada said that he believed that WTC 7 was constructed in the 1980’s with the demolition charges already installed in preparation for such an event.

There is no limit to how deep they will dig to find something that resonates with their misfiring mind.

There is, however, ONE thing that does bother me about 9/11.

In 1993, after the bombing of the World Trade Center, I was talking to my former father-in-law (now deceased) about the security threats facing the United States. As a USAF colonel and former staffer at the Strategic Air Command (before it was folded into another entity), I felt he might have some insight.

He indicated that one of the US military’s greatest concerns at that time was the use of commercial aircraft against buildings and significant landmarks on US soil. It was a concern, he said, because it was difficult to prevent and would be incredibly disruptive to the American psyche (creating fear that terrorists wish to induce). There was also a great concern amongst military planners that should the need to shoot down an American commercial aircraft arise, would a USAF pilot be able to do it without hesitation and if he/she did it, what would the ramifications be that an American pilot was forced to kill Americans to protect other Americans?

Eight years later, the US was rocked by 9/11 and a number of us lost treasured friends, family members and colleagues. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others claimed we were caught by surprise – that no one could have predicted an attack in this fashion.

And yet I was told eight years prior that this was one of the greatest concerns of the US military and that they were trying to come up with mitigation strategies to prevent it or minimize its impact.

Now ten years later, former leaders are still saying that this attack and the techniques used caught everyone by surprise.

I don’t buy it. If a civilian (and a non US citizen at that) was told by a senior military officer in 1993 that defending against such an attack was one of the highest priorities of the US military in 1993, then many people knew this was coming.

Maybe the leaders who claim they didn’t know truly didn’t know. I leave that to conspiracy theorists to toss back and forth.

The fact that some people possibly didn’t know reflects how poorly our communications get when we have too complex a network to communicate across. Too many people with too many opinions and too many conflicting agendas create too much noise and when this noise is created, important information doesn’t get communicated to the people who need it. I see this level of confusion in many large organizations that I have helped over the years. In their desire to over-communicate, they have instead over-inundated and failure of some type becomes inevitable.

Sometimes, such poor communication creates an inconvenience.

Sometimes it may create catastrophic business unit results or total organization failure.

However, there are times it has the potential to produce fatal results.

Such as the day when my friends Narender Nath, Eric Bennett, Stephen Fiorelli and 12 others were 15 of the thousands killed on the morning of 9/11.

I’m not a conspiracy guy. But if a lowly civilian knew about the probability of these attacks in 1993, then I have to look at the poor communications and the billions spent on intel-gathering leading up to 9/11 as a huge failure in the intelligence community.

That’s not a charge of conspiracy.

It’s one of incompetence.

There is a huge difference.

Thomas Jefferson said it best LONG before 9/11.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS For an excellent analysis debunking traditional 9/11/ conspiracy myths, please go here.

My Corporate Christmas Gift

2011-09-01T13:13:00.001-04:00

It is a common tradition during the holiday season to send customers, prospects, colleagues and friends some variation of a Christmas / Hanukkah / Happy Holidays-type card.

While many of my friends will be receiving the same this year (in e*form of course), for some I want to do something a little different.

I’m thinking this year that I will buy a set of pocket dictionaries, tear out all the pages except for two and send those instead. It will definitely be of more value to them in the long run.

The two pages will contain the definitions of two words, strategy and tactics, because a lot of people still do not understand the difference between the two.

On the inside of the cover, I will write the following quote:

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." - Sun Tzu

Yeah, I’m a little agitated … mostly because I am witnessing great opportunities go down the drain because people don’t understand the importance of both.

Here is how the Oxford Dictionary defines and contrasts the two:

strategy - the art of planning ….

often contrasted with tactics - a plan for directing operations and movements

In essence, strategy defines the measurable intentions and outcomes (the big picture) and the process of defining the steps necessary to manifest them while tactics includes the detailed components of the plan and how the plan is executed.

Common sense, right? I thought so too … however …..

Despite the overwhelming amount of knowledge in the world that defines them and describes how to create them, people still confuse the strategy (which defines the end goal) with the tactics (the means to the end) or choose not to define one or both of them before setting out on their corporate journey.

For example, I know of one organization that has aspirations to be a major player in a specific space. They have no measurable outcomes or intentions at all. Their “trusted strategy advisor” tells them that the strategy for corporate success is based on how they define their website, right down to how the HTML will be structured to make best use of SEO (search engine optimization). When you ask them what the organization actually wants to accomplish and by when, they don’t know. When you ask what their exit strategy is, who their competitors are, who their markets are, etc, they have no idea.

They’re too busy defining the website rollout, without having any idea how the website contributes to the as-yet undefined ultimate objectives and intentions of the company. So they have confused random execution (poor tactics) with strategy.

Another organization has decided that they are going to roll strategy and tactics together into one package, trying things at random without any measurable outcomes and intentions while hoping at some point to randomly land on success. Why are they trying this hybrid role of tactics and strategy? Because they were told that it is impossible to create a plan with measurable outcomes – the best way to achieve your outcomes is to try a lot of things until you are successful (success, in their case, not even being defined until it happens, after which you can define it). Uhhhhhhh ….. huh? They have skipped strategy altogether.

Anyone want to take any bets on the success potential of these two organizations?

I agree – which is too bad because they are both onto fantastic ideas.

By skipping the need for strategic planning or by assuming that “my strategy is to start doing stuff and hope it comes together”, they are doomed to lackluster results at best (if they last that long) or failure in the worst case scenario.

If one doesn’t use strategic planning to know where the organization is going and how / why it should get there, then one shouldn’t even start out on the journey.

Once one has a strong strategic intention in place, then one must turn towards creating intelligent tactical roadmaps to bring that strategy to fruition.

All that’s left then is smart execution of the tactical roadmap. :-)

It’s like driving from New York to San Diego without first consulting a map or GPS but knowing that the drive should take 5 days. It is pointless to set out, drive randomly for 5 days and then stop and look out the window to see where I am. I have a greater chance of NOT having arrived than I do of being able to breathe the sweet Pacific breeze.

And that is now how I like to travel!

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS Moving From Strategic Planning to Tactical Roadmaps

Many people struggle with how to create the tactical roadmaps necessary to manifest their strategic intention. My website contains a complimentary diagram that explains the use of backcasting, a process growing in adoption that helps organizations create the tactical roadmaps necessary for sharp execution of their organization, rather than to randomly knock a plan together and hope for the best. Please click here to obtain a copy.

To your success.

No One Is As Smart As I Am … I Think

2011-08-31T14:08:00.001-04:00

I was sifting through a complex to-do list today, mostly around strategy initiatives that some individuals were NOT embracing as they should and I thought “Surely with all the knowledge that we have access to in the world, people can’t be making the same common business mistakes repeatedly. In fact, I’m sure Dr. Seuss could have explained how to employ strategy in a way that anyone could understand it”.

Then the light came on – I would write a cute little ditty under the guise of “strategy as explained by Dr. Seuss”.

Feeling quite content with myself, I thought “Maybe I should take a look around on the web to make sure someone else hadn’t already done it”.

And I stumbled upon this brilliant little piece:

A Common Seuss Approach to Strategy

I am strategic. Strategic I am.
Do you like to think strategically?

I do not like to think strategically,
not in an office
not in a tree.

It’s more fun to think tactically,
stuff I can touch,
stuff I can see.

……………..

Click here to read the rest of this brilliant work.

As I read this and realized that this author had written a better piece than I had envisioned, I was reminded of something.

When we go about our day-to-day work, we often think we have the best answer to a specific challenge or problem. Sometimes it may be true.

However, if we choose to ignore the possibility that perhaps someone out there has a better solution than we do or has the missing piece of a puzzle we are wrestling with, then we are denying an opportunity to discover or create a better solution.

Oftentimes, we go about believing that our way is best or our solution is THE solution instead of A solution while forgetting that leveraging the talent and skills in others is the basis for truly successful collaboration.

For all the teams I have built over the years, there was a set of characteristics that I always looked for in addition to the required technical and business skills:

Are you smarter than I am or at a bare minimum, do you bring things to the table that I don’t have within me or have access to.

If the answer is “yes”, then I want you on my team.

Because if my success and the success of people around me is limited to just my intelligence and capabilities, then I have condemned everyone to less than the best we are capable of.

And that is a shame indeed.

If my ego doesn’t like it, that’s too bad. I find it far more fun to promote the brilliance of others than to lay claim to my own clever insight. And when I think about the brilliance I have been surrounded by over the years, I am humbled indeed.

As Sir Isaac Newton said:

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Now … I wonder if I can do something with Dr. Seuss’s “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish”.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS For another brilliant application of children’s literature in conveying business knowledge, I highly recommend “The Ugly Duckling Goes to Work: Wisdom for the Workplace from the Classic Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” by Mette Norgaard.

Irene and the Media Leave Millions of Minds Devastated and in Ruins

2011-08-29T14:05:00.001-04:00

As of the time this blog was written, Irene will have caused approximately 25 deaths (Friday to Monday). With no disrespect to those lost, we really dodged a bullet, didn’t we? After all, Piers Morgan on CNN on Friday night said that 65 million people were threatened or in danger.

Of course, he used a statistic that referenced the number of people on the eastern seaboard who would be touched even by the slightest rain or wind and broadened it to suggest that each one of them was “at risk or threatened”.

Meanwhile in NYC, local TV stations on Saturday were showing what the flooding of a category 3 hurricane will (not might) look like in NYC (with much of lower Manhattan under 12 feet of water), even though by then, anyone who could read knew that the storm would be a low category 1 or a high tropical storm. Even on Sunday morning when the storm had passed, local stations, instead of showing that the flooding did not reach the panic levels that had been promoted, focused on “what could have happened if NYC had had a category 3 storm”.

The web is filled with videos and images of reporters who, while claiming that they could hardly stand because of the fierce wind gusts, were oblivious to people casually strolling, jogging, riding bicycles, texting, etc. in the background.

Yes … flooding did happen. When we build dwellings on sand spits, river banks, beach fronts and flood plains, this is inevitable.

This is not a shocking revelation that should occupy the media. One reporter on a small island in Queens, NY, waited for the flood waters to arrive while at one point admitting that the island actually floods twice a month year-round during new moon and full moon tides. So why should a little extra water be news there?

There is such a thing as preparedness.

To be paralyzed by hyperbole is quite another thing.

And this is the great disservice that modern media provides to us.

The one thing the media did little of was to help people with actual preparedness. Yes, they occasionally carried a valuable, important statement from a mayor, governor or emergency preparedness group. Years ago, normal programming would have been interrupted with these important announcements.

But now for the most part, they fill the “airwaves” with all the reasons why we should be VERY afraid without REALLY informing us as to the best way to protect ourselves.

Was the amount and type of coverage appropriate for the risk?

Consider these numbers:

25 people died from Hurricane Irene (at the time of this writing) over the four day period.

During that same time period (4 days, numbers are approximations):

1. 116,000 children under the age of 5 died worldwide from tainted water (source: WHO).

2. 400 US citizens committed suicide (source: CDC).

3. 448 US citizens died in vehicle accidents (source: CDC)

4. Of the 448 citizens who died in those accidents, 164 of them died in accidents caused by drunk drivers (source: CDC).

This doesn’t include deaths from cancer, heart attack, stroke or other diseases.

I don’t recall getting breaking news regarding any of these other, more significant numbers. I guess they just weren’t snazzy enough.

Sadly, while the hurricane deaths will mostly level off by now, the deaths noted above will continue to happen daily, all the while being mostly unreported.

When we stay glued to media that entertains and frightens rather than informs and teaches, we have a problem.

The problem is that instead of helping us become more informed, more knowledgeable and more capable to do the right things when challenges are before us, we lose that opportunity amidst the cacophony of fear mongering as promoted by the media.

And someday, heaven forbid, if we should be in the middle of a REAL disaster where mass communication mechanisms die and we don’t have the opportunity to be “entertained” by Anderson Cooper and others, we may find ourselves in real trouble.

And that won’t be their fault.

It will be ours.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS When I think about some of the statistics I cited, something intriguing comes to mind. We have the technology to correct the tainted water problem but don’t have the will or interest to implement it. Suicide prevention will produce better results when we work harder at reducing the stigma associated with mental illness (we have come far but have far to go). Most accidents are caused by driver error of some type. There is technology that can sharply reduce the ability for an intoxicated driver to drive a vehicle. Heart attack, stroke and many cancers have significant lifestyle causes, where we can make better choices to avoid these diseases but we choose not to.

Perhaps, maybe, this is why we don’t report these numbers, since to do so reminds us that we can do more to prevent them. Who likes to be reminded of responsibility put before us but not embraced?

Meanwhile, Mother Nature will always take some lives every year. To report such events allows us to wonder and be saddened about the loss while not feeling guilty that “we could have done more”.

Victimhood is a cloak more easily worn than the cloak of responsibility and accountability.

What do you think?

Ethics–Winning At Any Cost

2011-08-25T17:38:00.001-04:00

I overheard an interesting conversation this morning between a small business owner and a tax advisor that reminded me that ethics may be going the way of the dodo and the carrier pigeon.

This wasn’t just any tax advisor. This was a former senior employee of a federal taxation agency.

And it wasn’t just any tax guidance this person was providing. She was providing her client with ways to cheat the system (not just to use loopholes) in such as way as to not set off any of the internal alerts that the taxation authority might have. By the time they are done, pretty much none of his fairly decent income (in excess of $200K per year) will be taxed or even known by the taxation authority.

This got me to thinking about what we are willing to do ethics-wise in order to win, whether professionally or personally.

A little while ago, I was solicited by someone who wanted me to vote for their company in a competition that would award startup capital and guidance to the top entrants. Each entrant must be in business a year or less to be eligible for this funding. When I pointed out to the CEO who had solicited me that being in business almost four years disqualified them and potentially could deprive a real startup from obtaining this essential head start, the response was that they found a loophole that allows them to enter in good conscience, since the most recent version of their product was less than a year old. That’s not what the rules state, but he rationalized that it made sense and within the rules.

Here’s the funny part (not really) – they are winning the competition so far. The judges know but are ignoring the violation. Why? Because the competition itself is a sham, a piece of selfless promotion by an organization using it to find additional companies to sell their own services to and to find ways to take partial or total ownership of these entrants.

Each side is trying to out-scam the other, each side thinking they have fooled the other. They deserve each other.

A few months back, a household name in the not-for-profit space asked me to bid on a significant piece of work which I happily did, reducing the price significantly because of who they are. We had quite a number of discussions over the proposal until they admitted that they never had any money budgeted for it and never had any intention of paying for the work. They hoped that if I spent enough time exploring it with them, that I would eventually give it to them for free out of the kindness of my heart. This strategy was their plan all along.

However, my biggest surprise came when they became indignant over my observation that this wasn’t an ethical way to run a business. They thought I was the one being unethical, since I wouldn’t serve a well known organization for free.

This makes me wonder if to many people, ethics are merely a perspective, one that can be skewed to serve one’s needs (and to make them feel good about themselves in the rationalization process), even though ethics appears to be fairly cut-and-dried to many of us.

It reminds me of the old joke about the two guys who were always competing for everything no matter what the cost. One day, they were both skydiving. As one guy drifted lazily to earth, his friend whooshed by, his parachute and spare hopelessly entangled.

As he saw his friend hurtle to earth, he began to unbuckle his chute, shouting at the top of his lungs “Oh, so it’s a race you want, is it?”.

This is the way people who are willing to sacrifice ethics are acting. They are willing to do whatever it takes so that THEY win (or so that they think they are winning). They just don’t think far enough ahead to see what their actions are producing in the long run.

It is true that, just as the skydiver learned, we may win when we make sacrifices in common sense or ethics.

But will it have been worth it in the long run?

Those who still adhere to ethics learn that it may take longer to win than those who don’t, but the victory is sweeter, more long-lasting and produces far greater return for themselves and others.

And they will still be standing when many who don’t care about ethics have long since vanished.

But then again, this only happens when we work hard to create such a future.

How do you think we are doing?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS The company that was cheating in the competition won. However, business, like Mother Nature, is self correcting – I don’t think their success is going to be very long-lasting. Ethics DOES make a difference.

Jack Layton–Profile of Passion

2011-08-22T13:06:00.001-04:00

Many Canadians and fans of politics were deeply saddened today by the passing of Jack Layton, Leader of the Opposition, at the young age of 61. I am one of them.

While I wasn’t a big fan of the NDP platform and I didn’t admire everything that Mr. Layton held dear to his heart in terms of policy and political beliefs, there was one thing that I have always respected him for, going back to when he served on the Toronto city council.

I have always respected Mr. Layton for his passion, drive and belief that we can create a better world.

We live in a world that seems to have more complexity then ever, despite the fact that we have access to more knowledge and easier, faster ways of sharing this knowledge than ever, things which should contribute to solving the world’s challenges.

However, I often wonder if our processes around strategy and tactics, problem solving, knowledge sharing and such are not as effective as they should be because we don’t have enough passion to create the will that would enable us to solve these issues.

Mr. Layton had an abundance of passion and it was infectious to those who served with him.

His passion drove him to make a difference in his community, in his province, in his country and in the world. His belief in creating a better world was best exemplified in this quote by Tommy Douglas that he often signed his emails with:

“Courage my friends, ‘tis never too late to build a better world.”

And while we may not agree with some or all of his beliefs, I believe that if each one of us had the same level of passion that he did for the things that we thought were important in the world, the world would be a better place.

And this, above all, may be the legacy that Mr. Layton leaves behind – in a world filled with apathy and indifference, that passion to make a difference is essential to actually making a difference.

A difference that the world needs.

He was the perfect embodiment of the following quote by Howard Thurman, author and educator:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Mr. Layton followed his heart to make a difference and to inspire others to do so as well.

Are we doing the same?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

The Significance of Insignificant Events

2011-08-13T14:06:00.001-04:00

I have a confession to make – I am probably the last person to get around to reading “Outliers: The Story of Success”, a powerful book by Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favorite authors.

And as I devour the book that in a very compelling fashion describes what makes successful people successful, I feel compelled to share a story about an individual whom I will name “John”. I have John’s permission to share this story.

To understand the significance of insignificant events, I first need to provide a little background regarding John’s life.

John was born in the month of August in the mid 1960’s to a a less-than-wealthy family.

When it was time to attend kindergarten, the cutoff for admission was that the student must be five as of the end of September. Since John had turned 5 in August, that was no problem. Many of his classmates were born in October to December, but it didn’t seem important at the time that shortly after school started, they would turn six and be almost a year older than John.

At the end of kindergarten, for a variety of reasons the school selected eight students and forced them to combine grades 1 and 2 the following year. The thrust of the combined year would be focused on grade 2 material with the intention that at the end of the year, they would have finished grade 2 instead of grade 1.

John was one of those eight, participating in another insignificant event and now almost two years younger than his peers. Two years are significant at that age in terms of physical development and life experience. But this seemed insignificant at the time.

John being physically smaller in stature due to the age difference became a target for bullies because of his small size.

Being smaller in stature also meant that he was often not chosen for sport teams or for other “popular” events.

Since John was often left out of things and was bullied by his peers, he developed a low sense of self esteem that forced him to become shy and introverted at the time.

Many times, as someone who didn’t participate in the sports teams, when other kids were traveling for events, he was forced to stay behind and study.

Often times during recess and lunch, to avoid the bullies he preferred to hang out in the library and read in order to avoid their incessant intimidation. An interesting side effect is that when one spends enough time in the library, eventually the “favorite” section is explored completely and one is forced to expand one’s reading interests significantly.

Of course, the more he read and the more he learned, the more he was bullied and thus the process accelerated, forcing him to spend even more time studying.

He also learned to think quickly on his feet, learning to think strategically and to talk his way out of problems when confronted by bullies or when trying to explain why he should be allowed to participate in something that the bigger kids were involved in.

He was also driven to excel, with a desire to escape the torment around him.

John graduated high school at the age of 15 and started college at the age of 16.

Having been immersed in books his whole life and still being physically smaller in stature than his peers, college wasn’t much of a different experience than his previous education.

Once again, he found himself hiding from bullies by seeking the solace of the library or honing his strategy and negotiating skills for the same reasons as in school.

He also found the computer lab was a great place to hide and he spent hundreds of hours there, even turning the lights off and locking the door after hours (when no one was allowed in the lab) so that security guards doing their nightly rounds would assume the lab was locked up and closed as it should have been.

At the age of 17, because of the amount of time he spent studying, learning how to program computers and being able to negotiate his way in almost any situation, he was selected by an insurance company to be a developer and ultimately architect for Canada’s first PC-based insurance system. PCs were new then and the insurance company wanted to see if the technology had staying power or was a passing fad as many so-called experts believed. The system was a huge success.

Had he been born a few years earlier, even if he had obtained a job in information technology, by the time this opportunity arose he would have been considered not “fresh enough” to have participated in the opportunity or perhaps he would have been considered irreplaceable where he was with the older technology. Had he been born a few years later, someone else would have been provided the opportunity to work on this project while he was still in school and he would have missed the opportunity that was to prove crucial to his career.

So at the age of 17, John was blessed with an incredible opportunity to get into technology on the ground floor level and he took it and from there a career blossomed that eventually took him to Wall St. as a strategy advisor and global enterprise architect.

Of course, many of you who know me also know who John is.

I am John.

As a strategy advisor and global enterprise architect, I am often asked why things like strategy, technology and figuring out people come so naturally to me and for years I didn’t have the answer.

That is, until I read “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell.

And as I read his book and reflected on my Life, I discovered that when it comes to strategy, negotiating and technology application, I have an unfair advantage that I can’t apologize for because it was thrust upon me.

Many people start learning strategy and negotiating in school (and in Life) in a cursory way, learn the nuances of them in college and then refine them in real Life.

I was forced to learn them from the age of 5 onwards in order to survive. Skills learned in order to survive burn deep. They are not a passing interest – they are burned into one’s soul and become an innate part of who that person is.

Learning technology was an accidental Life choice as well, a naturally strategic choice that enabled me to escape the torment I experienced in college. Being born in the mid 1960s allowed me to be in the right spot at the right time when PCs came along and thus began a career in technology.

And as I reflect on all of this and think about what Malcolm Gladwell writes in “Outliers: The Story of Success”, I am reminded of something.

The career I have been blessed with, the people I have been honored to work with and the experiences I have been humbled to witness are not all a result of anything within me, per se.

They are a result of three insignificant events …

1. When I was born, which allowed me to be an early adopter with PC technology.

2. When the cutoff for kindergarten was, where being a year younger than my peers set the stage for a motivation within me to acquire skills that I would not otherwise have acquired until later in life (and possibly in a less impactful manner).

3. Being advanced a year, which made the learning opportunities created by the kindergarten cutoff even more necessary and focused.

All of this reminds me of something else.

It reminds me that the simplest, seemingly most insignificant events in our lives have the opportunity to have the strongest, most significant impact in our lives.

We can’t always go around analyzing every single event and ask “Is this the BIG one that will transform me?”. We would go crazy if we did.

But perhaps our lives would be more enhanced if we were open to the possibility of the significance of insignificant events.

Because they are all significant – we just may not know how or why until years later, if ever.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS At 6’3”, I am not the small, shy introvert anymore. :-)

PPS Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success” (and all of his books) are highly recommended. I will warn you though. When you read his books, you will not see the world in the same way again. But then again, that’s ok – we need a fresh outlook on the world. Or rather … the world needs us to have a fresh outlook.

The Secret of the “Soothsayer”

2011-08-12T12:46:00.001-04:00

I was contacted this morning by a young lady representing a Northeastern newspaper, looking for a comment on the accuracy of some of my predictions in recent years, most notably the downturn in September of 2008, the current economic struggles and some company successes and failures that I predicted contrary to the predictions of others.

She seemed to be fascinated that the things I have gone on public record about appear to have manifested as predicted and within the window that I predicted and she wanted to know how I did it.

In my reply, I mused about the potential sources of my predictions, namely:

1. Perhaps my Wall St. background and connections give me access to information not generally available.

2. Maybe its my recent work in predictive analytics, using math models to predict human behavior and the results of that behavior.

3. It would be nice to claim that I had a red-phone directly to God, but I don’t.

4. I can’t profess to have any belief in tea leaf reading and other forms of divination so that’s not it.

5. It could be my 20+ years providing strategy and global technology architecture, in a world where optimism must be balanced by pragmatism and where the art of listening is critical to providing solutions that work.

6. Maybe its my upbringing in a small community in eastern Canada, where common sense was bred into us (and beat into us if we still didn’t get it).

Yes, they may have all played a role (except for the red-phone, which hasn’t been installed yet but I have ordered one). :-)

But then I mused, that maybe, possibly, it is because ….

1. I can read.

and ….

2. I accept that information is just information. It becomes good or bad news depending on what I choose to do (or not do) with it.

and finally ….

3. I am not afraid to ask questions and to speak frankly about the responses that I receive.

Many people, in an effort to escape the squeeze of daily life, prefer to ignore most the important information around them, filling their life with distractions that are more time-waters or mind-deadeners than anything. If it looks like bad news (even though it is just information), they avoid it or embrace the mantra “I only read positive, reaffirming material”.

When I absorb information, I like to explore it, question it, evaluate it and analyze it, filtering out stuff like why some famous person spends $28,000 a week on her hair. Many times, my questioning makes the owners of the information feel uncomfortable, since my questioning reveals avenues that they hadn’t explored or truths that they hadn’t or don’t want to acknowledge. They forget that these truths aren’t good or bad – it is still only information until they make choices that turn it into good or bad news.

When I ask questions, I have a purpose behind them that was well described by my friend Bill H. when he said, “I am not trying to question your faith, I am trying to build mine”.

And finally, I am not afraid to speak my mind about the results. I try to present the information objectively, fairly and responsibly, but I share it all the same. If the emperor has no clothing, I have no qualms about saying it, as long as it is presented in an appropriate fashion.

Many people today hunger for optimism – if the news is good they want to hear from you as a fellow optimist but if it is bad news (as they perceive it), then they don’t want to hear from you with cries of “away from me, you pessimist”.

But I believe this is an unfortunate state of denial that doesn’t allow us to manage our lives in a better fashion and is largely responsible for how we have arrived where we are today.

And so when I examine things in front of me, whether it be the state of the economy or examining an organization to help them be successful (or warn them if the inevitable collapse is approaching), I strip the subjective fluff out of the information and view it as just that.

Information – pure and raw.

And then I ask a lot of questions until I am satisfied that I understand what I am looking at and can make appropriate choices with it.

The information is not good or bad until we make our choices as to how we will use it.

But if we ignore the information or our right and responsibility to understand it, question it, analyze it and apply it, then the results are VERY predictable.

And that’s not pessimism.

It’s reality.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

S&P Ratings–What We Need, Not What We Want

2011-08-08T13:14:00.001-04:00

I hear a lot of noise about the Standard and Poors’ downgrade of the United States current economic standing. Today, Standard and Poors downgraded Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the market is responding again with terror and fear. Meanwhile, we hear stories that the US Postal Service may be about to default (while running commercials on television that revenue from stamps and services makes them fully viable and self-sustainable).

What does all of this mean? Is this the end of the world as we know it in the US?

Not at all.

What it does mean is that we are being told by a lot of information sources and very intelligent people that the economic models we have adopted are not sustainable.

Unfortunately, human beings tend to ignore good advice until they are thrown up against the wall and told to listen up or face dire consequences. Many people who have challenging habits, whether it be poor spending habits, substance abuse or anything else will often continue those habits despite the pleas of others.

“I can’t stop”, they say, “or I will try better the next time”.

Meanwhile, their behavior continues unabated until they finally hit bottom and they are forced to listen to the advice they avoided before. Unfortunately by then, the pain and loss they have experienced is much worse – they just didn’t know earlier that it could get that bad.

In recent decades, politicians have been elected on the platform of fiscal prudence and responsibility and once in power, it’s “same old, same old” again. Spending and borrowing continue unabated and the savings that occasionally manifest are trumpeted as large and significant when in fact they are nothing in the big picture.

So instead of being afraid of the Standard and Poors downgrades, let’s look at it for what it really is and, dare I say, be GRATEFUL for it.

It is a wake-up call that what we are doing is not sustainable and doesn’t reflect our potential to do better. That being said, this is not a time for rhetoric or political positioning – it is a time for action towards strategic, measurable results.

The question becomes:

Are the people in office able to see it this way or will they choose the path that Treasury Secretary Geithner chose the other day when he went on a rant about how Standard and Poors doesn’t understand the mathematics of economics?

There is an old adage, Mr. Geithner, that if it’s you against the world, bet on the world and right now, the world is asking for the US to get its act together.

We are being called to wake up, straighten up and build an economic model that makes better sense for future generations.

We are being called to build a model that extends beyond the next election horizon and is built with the intention of creating a strong future for the citizens of America and the world and not for the politicians who hope to get reelected.

Are we ready to wake up or would we rather wait until the pain gets greater, the stakes are larger and we are REALLY forced up against a wall?

Based on past results, it is easy to assume that we will wait until the warning signs are so loud that we can’t hear ourselves think.

Hopefully, we won’t wait that long.

There is something to be said for being told what we need to hear, not what we want to hear. Unfortunately we often only see the value in what we were told AFTER the fact.

This is one of those times when we can’t afford to wait until later to see the value of what S&P is telling us now. We must suck it up and take action now. Empty assurances, rhetoric and rah-rah speeches just don’t cut it any more and haven’t for sometime.

By taking action now, we will see the wisdom in what groups like the S&P are telling us.

We can thank them later for saving our skins … if we listen to them now.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Bad News–Potentially Fatal If Ignored

2011-08-04T17:29:00.001-04:00

As I watch my various sources of information today, I am struck by an interesting disconnect.

From the world of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, CNN, Fox News and everyone else, I see mostly a cacophony of noise around things like:

1. David Cassidy seeking the “Partridge Family fortune”

2. A-Rod to be questioned about involvement with poker games.

3. Justin Bieber considering recording a new album with will.i.am.

Blah blah blah blah.

Unfortunately most of it is not news – it is entertainment presented as news.

Meanwhile, I don’t see the “air waves” being torn up over the fact that the Dow fell over 500 points today (about 4.31%), dragged down by the current state of affairs in the world and specifically within the US itself.

And that really worries me.

The news should concern us as it comes amidst a pile of troubling indicators.

But what I worry about the most is that the people most affected by it, the average person on the street, doesn’t seem too concerned as they tweet, share and muse about everything but the things that will impact them and their families for a long time, potentially generations down the road.

Einstein’s Law of Insanity … again ….

Maybe they are trusting politicians to get us out of it. That would be fine, except that up to now, it’s been the decisions by politicians that contributed to this mess and if Einstein’s Law of Insanity has anything to say about it, it would be silly to expect a different result to come from the same people who continue to use the same knowledge and approaches.

This reminds me of Gerald Weinberg’s Bread Recipe Rule; that if we use the same baker, ingredients and recipe, we will always bake the same bread.

Consider these elements:

1. The Baker(s) – the politicians who have been following specific policies for decades, unwaveringly.

2. The Recipe – the economic policies being followed, spending what we don’t have without any strategic plan that REALLY goes beyond the horizon of the next election regardless of what is promoted.

3. The Ingredients – the mix of indicators that keep telling us that we are making economically / societally / ecologically unsustainable choices but we keep making them anyway.

The Time article “What US Economic Recovery?: Five Destructive Myths” puts a lot of the current myths about our recovery into strong perspective and is a HIGHLY recommended read.

I am not worried about the drop on the Dow. The market rises and falls.

What I worry about is that the average person who will REALLY be affected by this is either not paying attention to it, doesn’t understand it or is trusting someone else to fix it.

Fixing it would be wonderful if someone were trying to strategically correct our challenges with new thinking as outlined in the Time article and other articles.

But they are not, which is what really worries me. And we don’t seem to care, which worries me even more.

One If By Land ….

Many of us are familiar with the line “One if by land, two if by sea”, Longfellow’s poetic description of the alerts used to describe the British troops preferred method of invasion.

What about if our greatest enemy now is from within – within our own policies, lack of strategy, lack of tactics, lack of creative thinking and lack of interest?

We face the greatest challenge to our way of Life that we have ever seen. That being said, today’s news is neither good nor bad. It is just information.

It’s what we are NOT doing with the information that makes it bad news.

Do we care enough to learn about what’s happening and what our options are or would we rather know what color Lady Gaga’s outfit will be in her next concert?

Which do you think will be of better use to you and your family in the uncertain times that persist?

Exactly – so what are you waiting for?

We need to show our families, communities and country that we expect and demand better.

While we still can.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Ignoring the Fine Print Can Be Fatal

2011-07-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

Most people who have had the opportunity to sign a mortgage contract have always been strongly advised to have a lawyer oversee the process, to make sure there is nothing in the fine print that could seriously hurt the people signing it.

Many of us have seen the car commercials where a really good suggested retail price is highlighted in large digits on the screen while a pile of fine print, accompanied by a fast-speaking voice, tells us in 5 seconds about the taxes, fees, etc. that are not included in the compelling price.

Even a single-page legal document is usually examined by a lawyer prior to signing to make sure ever period, comma and exclamation mark is in the right place.

Sometimes, fine print can be a source of fun, as shown in this sign:

In case you don’t have Superman’s super duper vision, the VERY bottom line says “Also, the bridge is out ahead”.

The devil is in the details, as they say.

So I wonder how it is that legislators on Capitol Hill (and on Parliament Hill in Canada to a similar extent) can sign 500 - 1500+ page documents without reading them or understanding them.

Even worse, our legislators sometimes tell us that when it comes to important bills, it is better to sign them first and worry about them later when one has time to reflect on them in a more quiet atmosphere.

Don’t believe me? I’ll allow then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to describe this in her own words where she describes the Health Care Bill passed in 2010:

Nancy Pelosi suggests that understanding a binding contract before signing it is not important.

The Democrat and Republican parties both insist that they want to find a solution to the current issues with the debt ceiling, the deficit spending and revenue potential, all at the same time.

Anything they come up with will bend the minds of the world’s greatest mathematicians and economists. Many conflicting opinions will result as people read this material and the disconcerting thing is that they will ALL be right using their respective rationale.

The impact of signing such a document will be almost impossible to predict, just as much of what we are experiencing now is the result of previous decisions that are producing our present-day outcomes - outcomes that were not anticipated when the decisions were made.

Meanwhile, our leaders assure us that everything is under control.

I wonder how they know, given that what they are dealing with is impossible for the greatest minds in the world to understand.

No offence to the wonderful people who serve the voters of Canada and the US with great sacrifice to themselves, but if matched up against the most brilliant minds in the world, not many of them would be on the same intellectual footing.

Try this for an experiment.

The next time new, significant legislation is being tabled for a vote, call your local Congressman, Senator or Member of Parliament and ask them to tell you in specific, concrete terms and without political rah-rah rhetoric:

1. How we will benefit from the legislation.

2. What are the risks, if any?

3. How will we mitigate those risks?

And above all, with all of the answers provided, ask them:

4. How do you REALLY know?

After all, buying a house is a relatively safe, painless, fairly low-risk / low-impact task and yet we still put this process under a microscope for our own protection.

And yet, with far-reaching, high-impact legislation, we hardly give it a second thought.

All of this being said, remember that the challenges of today come as a result of such legislation in the past.

And we never gave that any thought either.

An educated electorate is an informed and powerful one.

If we choose to not proactively participate in our democratic processes (which means more than just voting), what French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville once said is true:

In a democracy, we get the government we deserve.

And then when challenges like the ones we are currently facing threaten to derail our lives, we can’t really blame the people we put into office, can we?

We will have to hold someone else responsible and accountable for the mess.

We know exactly who the guilty parties will be, don’t we?

And that of all things is a most bitter pill to swallow indeed, unless we prefer the process of denial and blame government anyway.

But that’s as effective as applying a band aid to an amputation – and potentially just as fatal.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Strategy 101: What Are Your Objectives?

2011-07-25T14:35:00.001-04:00

It is generally accepted that any strategic intention requires a number of things, not the least of which are measurable outcomes and objectives.

As Michael Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, notes:

Sound strategy starts with having the right goal.

What About Democrat and Republican Strategy?

As I observe the Democrat and Republican exchanges with bemusement, concern and sadness and I listen to their saber rattling regarding the debt ceiling, spending reductions and such, I can’t help but wonder about their respective objectives and wonder if they are in alignment with the needs of the American people.

I wonder if they have any at all.

From a strategy advisor perspective, the goals proposed look more like reactive tactics than proactive strategies.

A proactive strategy would require that we define realistic stretch goals that contain measurable outcomes; measurable meaning that by date x we know we have achieved our strategic intentions based on some predefined, quantifiable, qualifiable criteria.

But I don’t see this in the debate on the Hill at all.

What I see is a call to increase the debt ceiling to allow for fuzzy spending while the other party seeks a hazily defined collection of spending cuts.

Neither side seems to understand (or at least want to share with the American people) what the impact will be of either of these self-described “strategies”.

Why Should This Worry Us?

The scary reason why they don’t share the potential impact is probably because they don’t know what the result will be and this should really concern us.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke even admitted a couple of weeks ago that he doesn’t know why the economy is not working the way it should.

And so despite historical evidence that our current economic models do not work, we continue to rely on reactive tactics, taking action only when the pain requires us to while hoping that our random actions will somehow fix everything as if by magic.

We don’t even know how we got here in the first place so how can we be so confident of our proposed solutions? Meanwhile, our debt grows larger, despite promises by many elected officials for many decades that “we have it under control”. If we really knew what we were doing, we wouldn’t have the current economic conditions that we have.

But how can we know what we are doing when we don’t set out with measurable outcomes, when we don’t compare current execution against those measurable outcomes and when we don’t have plans in place to make minor adjustments to our outcomes or strategy as needed, instead of waiting until the last minute when disaster is a heartbeat away.

Why Do Leaders Avoid Strategy?

Many organizations that fail do so because they do not know how to create a strategy from which a roadmap can be created – a roadmap that shows you how to get from here to there with some semblance of confidence.

Many leaders say that it takes too much effort, that it is better to just “dive in”. Some say that it is too difficult to figure out the outcome, that it will become easier to know where we are going once we are closer to the destination.

That’s like saying I’m going to drive from New York City to San Diego - I know it takes 5 days to do so but I will start out without a map and in 5 days I will look out the window and see if I have arrived and adjust my driving behavior accordingly.

Strategy – The Benefit of Accountability

One of the greatest benefits to a strategy with measurable outcomes is that it keep us accountable.

Unfortunately, it takes real courage and authenticity to allow ourselves to be held accountable.

More courage and authenticity than many self-described “leaders” have.

And when our leaders refuse to embrace accountability and measurable outcomes, the primary stakeholders, whether they be shareholders, voters or any other interested party, have to demand something better.

As Winston Churchill noted:

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

When you look at the results, then you will REALLY know how beautiful the strategy is and how effective the leadership is … or not.

As I observe the goings-on on Capital Hill, I wonder if the strategy embraced looks more like actor Ben Kingsley’s strategy for finding new roles:

I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I'm waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.

Without Strategy, Failure is Inevitable

We can wait and hope that the right solution magically appears.

However, if that is the strategy, I fear we will run out of time long before that happens.

The oil light on the dashboard of our planet has just illuminated. That’s ok – we can cover it up with a piece of tape.

Meanwhile, the low gas light has just illuminated. No problem – wherever we travel, we need to make sure we are going downhill with a strong tailwind to help keep us going.

Ah, but now the brakes are squealing really loudly. That’s why we have a radio – we just turn it up and the problem disappears.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately being reactive while avoiding reality is not going to get us where we need to go much longer, despite our intention to pretend otherwise.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Wanted: Salt and Light

2011-07-22T11:00:00.000-04:00

In the world I live in, namely strategy, technology architecture and leadership incubation, I am often asked in what area do we experience the greatest shortage in?

Is it technology xyz?

Is it strategy best-practice abc?

Is it …….?

It is easy to point to some technology, business best practice or other area and say “we need more / less of” but I wonder if in doing so, we are merely pointing at symptoms of a larger underlying challenge.

Is it possible that what we truly need more of is salt and light, specifically more people who stimulate and disrupt our world (the salt) and more people to point us in the right direction (the light)?

Stimulating our world doesn’t imply always being inspirational and motivational. Sometimes it is a calling to have the courage to tell us that the emperor has no clothing on, to encourage us to stand up for what we believe in and to make a difference as a result. In essence, it is a calling to tell us what we need to know, not what we want to know.

By the same token, being “the light’ doesn’t imply that such individuals are always showing us the beauty in things. Sometimes it means casting light on something that needs to be corrected, something that we may have been otherwise oblivious to but which is impacting our world in a negative way. Keeping challenges hidden or ignoring them is a surefire way of guaranteeing that they will be a larger problem later.

Being a motivational, inspirational all-star can be a lot of fun, especially when the accolades flow with relatively little effort. For some, it presents a tremendous boost to the ego when the “easy love” flows in.

It is the easier of two paths, requires little courage and is somewhat of a free ride. Everyone loves those whom they perceive to be the all-enlightened optimist who tell us that there are no problems in the world. It feels safe and doesn’t remind us of our own responsibility to make a difference in the world.

However, sometimes to be the salt and light means that one embraces difficult matters, things that people are afraid to champion or problems that are very difficult to solve but must be solved.

Problems that must be solved if we are to reach our fullest potential in our personal, professional and societal lives. Pretending they will go away if not addressed is the death knell of many uber-optimists.

Few have the courage or intestinal fortitude to call it the way it is, especially when the news is bad or troubling.

However, we should be grateful that such people exist, for their impact is often far larger, with far greater sacrifice to themselves and often with fewer accolades commensurate with the sacrifices they made. They are the pessimists, so we think, who keep disrupting our bliss by incessantly reminding us that there are things that need to be fixed. Shame on them. :-)

So …… salt and light …..

We can be relatively tasteless table salt and play it safe or we can be the vibrant taste of kosher salt, helping ourselves and others experience the full taste of Life.

We can be a match light in the darkness, illuminating a relatively small area while overlooking important items or we can be a powerful torch, maximizing the illumination experienced by ourselves and others.

In other words ….

We can choose the easy, seemingly painless road, with minimal impact on the world and be embraced as someone who doesn’t shake things up (thus not taking others out of their comfort zone).

Or ….

We can choose a road filled with challenge and complexity, one that creates an opportunity to make a long-lasting impact with far-reaching potential (taking people out of their comfort zone BUT providing opportunity for them to grow towards their potential).

We can be bland and dull or tangy and brilliant …. we can take the safe, easy way or the impactful one.

The choice is yours.

What kind of salt and light are you?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

PS. It’s no secret what side of the salt spectrum most people find me to exist on. :-) My friend Bret D. quoted Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy in describing my insatiable need to be “the salt”:

“I am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, elated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted, and I have to transmit my mental experiences lest I die. And although I may die. To write a book is no luxury. It is a means of survival.”

To be the salt often creates an interesting, complex structural tension with the very thing one believes must be changed. It can be thankless, extremely difficult and exhausting – but it must be done anyway. :-)

It May Not Matter To You, But ….

2011-07-21T13:25:00.001-04:00

I was recently approached by an organization looking for an injection of funding to cover capital expenses. This is a great organization with a great team and a powerful vision - an organization that has the potential to impact future generations in a positive way.

It sounds like something anyone would want to contribute to, doesn’t it?

There was only one issue that prevented me from being “all in”.

One of the key players responsible for capital attraction has a bit of a touchy history. He was in the media a couple of years ago for doing less than ethical (in my opinion) things to a not-for-profit, leaving them financially high-and-dry while he escaped unscathed.

He has a business reputation for being somewhat predatorial in nature, creating deals that benefit himself while leaving others to blow in the breeze. It doesn’t appear that way when the deals are crafted but many of them finish this way.

He also has a reputation for spinning opportunities that appear to be amazing but which all inevitably fail, wiping out everyone who participated in the opportunity while he moves on to the next one.

Meanwhile, he is on a speaking tour about how to create success built upon collaboration. Yeah …. my thoughts exactly.

And so when this organization came to me with this guy at the helm of capital attraction, I was touched by their potential but I struggled to get past the fact that this guy, a guy not known for creating “win-wins” was a key advisor and leader.

When I pointed all of this out, this great organization made a capital blunder.

I was told that my concerns don’t matter – that even though this person has a touchy history (by their own acknowledgement), I should look past all of this and invest in them anyway because of the potential contained within.

In telling me this, they violated what I believe to be a key rule when approaching others.

I believe that when one approaches someone else with collaboration in mind, one should strive to open the dialog with an offer and with the offer in place, one has an opportunity to make an ask.

In making the offer and the ask, we do our best to find an alignment of ethics, morals, sense of purpose, style of execution, measurable outcomes, complementary skills and resources and any other needs that each participant in the dialog has or may be sensitive to. The needs of the other side must be understood, appreciated and respected.

As soon as one side tells the other that their concerns are irrelevant or should be ignored, then one should expect the door to be slammed in their face.

Because when one doesn’t honor the needs and concerns of the other side, then one is saying that the other person doesn’t matter.

The truth is that we all matter.

When someone says or implies “forget about us, it’s all about me”, then the opportunity for collaboration is dead and we should move on quickly. There are many other worthy collaborations out there waiting to be created.

Some will.

Some won’t.

So what.

Someone’s waiting.

When we honor and respect others, we receive it in return.

And when this happens, there is no limit to what WE can create.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS After I posted this, Stephen Covey’s fifth habit of highly successful people came to mind: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”. Perhaps if people used this principle more often, the chances of creating collaborative success would increase sharply. :-)

If It Seems Too Good To Be True ….

2011-07-20T12:25:00.001-04:00

… then it probably is.

So goes the old adage.

However, I think many times we let this piece of wisdom influence us in ways that kill opportunities that otherwise could have created tremendous possibilities.

Some months back, I happened to be in a series of meetings with a well known organization that was pursuing capital to fund their various programs.

At the same time, some philanthropists in my network were looking for some fresh new projects to invest in and had asked me and others to keep an eye out for projects that we felt would resonate with their sense of community.

With that in mind, I extended an offer to the organization that I was meeting with that people in my network would welcome being solicited for significant donations. The offer was to connect them directly with the people in my network, I would step back and they would see what they could create. There was nothing in it for me outside of the feeling that I had done a good deed for a great organization and community-minded philanthropists.

My offer was politely declined.

In subsequent meetings where people lamented the lack of capital, I again mentioned that there were people in my network interested in contributing to their various campaigns and again the offer was declined.

I later mentioned this to other senior members of the organization in a recap of our meetings and they nodded but also didn’t choose to take action.

The third time is usually a charm – in this case it wasn’t and the philanthropists eventually found other outlets for their desire to invest in community.

I’ve been really curious about this since the event occurred, as I had not seen philanthropic offers turned down in the past. Did the funding needs of the organization in question change? It didn’t seem so. Was there an issue with the philanthropists in any way that the organization decided was problematic. Apparently not - they never reached out to them at all so they wouldn’t know if there was an issue or not.

While I was contemplating this, there were two interesting theories that were put before me by people observing the interaction.

1. That specific individuals wanted donors that they sourced out, not ones brought in by others. This would allow them to take the credit.

2. That the offer seemed too good to be true – the notion that philanthropists looking to make significant donations would just happen to be available when the organization needed them sounded like too perfect a coincidence.

The first scenario involves ego and there is little I can do to combat it.

The second scenario seems more likely. Unfortunately, the offer could easily have been verified with a quick phone call or email. Five minutes of due diligence could have produced a multi-million dollar, multi-year collaboration.

However, it seemed too good to be true and therefore was rejected outright as being impossible and with that, a collaboration that could have made a profound impact on many people vanished.

The old adage of when it seems to be too good to be true is valid wisdom that can often protect us from a lot of shady opportunities.

However, sometimes when an event actually seems too good to be true, we must be open to the possibility that we may be observing a miracle in the making.

Better yet, we may be participating in one.

The old adage will protect us often.

There will be times, however, when we must lay the old wisdom aside for a moment. After all, sometimes all that is needed is a little due diligence that can mean the difference between tremendous disaster and tremendous potential.

We won’t know if we are facing disaster or potential unless we at least entertain that which appears too good to be true.

We should learn to say “yes” more often (with appropriate prudence and due diligence) so that we open ourselves to the possibility of miracles.

Because when we fill our world with “no”, we are guaranteed not to create or participate in any.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

So I’m Inspired, Now What?

2011-07-19T12:31:00.001-04:00

We live in a world today that has easier access to more inspiring, motivational literature than ever. And yet, for the plethora of material that exists, it seem to me that the majority of people I know who are reading it are doing just that – they are just reading it.

Many of them seem unable or unwilling to apply it and spend years absorbing material while at the same time lamenting that they are waiting for their Life to move into high gear.

It’s almost as if they are hoping that the act of reading it alone will somehow cause the Universe to realign its rewards for them and that good things will happen.

They seem to have forgotten that at some point in the learning process, the material absorbed must be APPLIED. Actions must be taken in order to move a Life towards a desired outcome.

As I mused about this on Facebook one day, my friend Kevin Cullis (self described as published author of "How to Start a Business: Mac Version," entrepreneur, Mac evangelist, husband, USAF Vet, readaholic, analytical, and balding) tossed out the idea that there was a blog in this.

He was right – it had been percolating inside my brain for a while, itching to get out.

With Kevin’s gentle prodding, I offer my musing on “So I’m Inspired, Now What?” as a grateful guest writer on Kevin’s blog.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

You’ve Learned To Say No – How About Yes?

2011-07-10T13:40:00.001-04:00

There is an old adage that says that you become what you focus on.

As I contemplate that insight, I think about the many messages that we are bombarded with that insist we say “no” to.

Say “no” to drugs.

Say “no” to bullies.

Say “no” to the oppression of others.

Say “no” to ………..

I wonder sometimes if we have focused on saying “no” to so many things that we have forgotten how to say “yes” to much any more - that we have become conditioned to lean towards “no” when faced with a decision.

“No” seems so safe, doesn’t it? In a world of uncertainty, many people believe that while a “yes” may put them at high risk, the worst that a “no” can do is leave them where they were before with nothing gained BUT nothing lost either.

It is true that the ability to say “no” can be an important skill to have; for example if you are contemplating whether or not you should walk down that dark alley alone, invest in a company that claims to have perfected eternal life or jump out of a plane with a sleeping bag on your back instead of a parachute.

Perhaps the ability may be of some use when deciding if you really need that new car, the house that is twice is large as you really need or that second piece of cheese cake.

Yes, “no” can come in handy. :-)

However, sometimes, the Universe / God / karma / whatever will put things in front of us because we need to say “yes”.

Perhaps we need to say “yes” to better enable us for the next big step in our life.

Maybe we need to say “yes” to better enable us to serve others.

It is possible that we need to say “yes” to allow us to find a solution to a challenge.

Perhaps we need to say “yes” to create or experience collaboration, healing or love.

If we constantly use the word “no” every time an opportunity manifests, for whatever reason, then perhaps we are denying ourselves and others a chance to reach our fullest potential.

Learning to say “yes” more is not easy. The inability to say “yes” is rooted in many things, but I think the most common reasons are excess ego and fear.

Excess ego tells me that there is not enough in it for me, I can do it better myself or that the only one who can be trusted to get it done is myself.

Fear tells me that perhaps I am incapable of rising to the occasion of “yes”, that I may screw it up once I get engaged in the opportunity or that I am unworthy of the opportunity.

So “no’ slips out of our mouth or manifests in our actions much easier – there is a lot less to contemplate. After all, “no” doesn’t set us back (so we think) while “yes” often has to run the gauntlet of internal struggle, before eventually acquiescing to a “no” or the equally dangerous “maybe” that is presented as a potential “yes” but is actually meant to be a disguised “no”.

We can look at every experience that is placed in front of us, say “no” to everything (thinking we are playing it safe) and live our lives, oblivious to the potential we are denying in ourselves and others.

Playing it safe …….. yeah …… right.

I shared on a previous blog (“The Importance of Conversation”) how I happened to be in a situation a few years ago where a woman in my presence was contemplating suicide (I didn’t know it at the time). Something told me that something was wrong and I initially fought off the urge to say or do anything.

I wanted to say “no” to the feeling for a variety of reasons, but eventually I gave in to the feeling. I said “yes” to the Universe and engaged in conversation with a complete stranger.

In turn, she could have said “no”, discouraged my help and then completed the deed she had intended for herself.

However, she also said “yes”.

We both said “yes” and that made all the difference.

Perhaps if we explored “yes” a little more often we might find that Life is a lot more rewarding for ourselves and others.

I’m not suggesting that we be reckless about how we say “yes”.

However, to say “yes” more often is no more reckless than to say “no” more than we should.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “You’ve Learned To say No – How About Yes?” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Seeing It Again For the First Time

2011-07-08T16:28:00.001-04:00

I was making a turn at an intersection today when I noticed, for the first time, that if I look between two buildings across the street, that I can see the Rocky Mountains in the distance.

I’ve made this turn a gazillion times.

I’ve seen those buildings a gazillion times.

Therefore, I have to have seen the Rocky Mountains between them a gazillion times.

But today is the first time I was aware of them.

A minor event that was occurring across the street as I was making the turn caused me to see them

As I completed my turn and drove on, I got to thinking about how often this happens in life.

Perhaps a similar situation exists in:

…. a relationship that is at an impasse because no one can see a way to heal it.

…. a business challenge that seems impossible to solve because it appears to be too complex.

…. a personal obstacle that one strains to overcome but stress levels or mental baggage prevent an objective evaluation of it.

…. an unexpected event that comes out of nowhere but threatens to delay a personal or professional project in play.

…. a global issue that threatens everyone but contains no obvious solution as people put posturing before solutions since posturing seems like the only way out.

Many times, the answer to the challenge that threatens to undermine the parties involved is right in front of them, literally staring back at them.

However, they have spent so long staring at the answer that they don’t actually see it.

Maybe, sometimes, we need to allow an external influence to help us to really SEE.

The external influence may be a seemingly random, insignificant event that distracts us for the brief moment that allows us to see things differently.

Perhaps it is something as simple as intentionally looking at something else for a short while (not recommended while driving).

Perhaps the external influence may be a fresh set of eyes who haven’t grown weary staring at the same thing that appears to have numbed our ability to see the obvious.

Perhaps …

Here’s an interesting experiment to try.

If you have a phone book (printed, electronic, whatever) look for your name or the name of someone you know who will be in the phonebook.

Scan down through the list until you find the person you are looking for and then scan across and look at their phone number.

Now …. close the book.

And with the book closed, identify the name of the person that appeared two names before the person you were looking for.

Most people cannot. You saw the name, you processed it for the moment and then you discarded it from your memory as no longer being essential, having served its purpose.

Some things are like that – essential for the moment but not important from the standpoint of being analyzed and remembered.

However, many things are important and yet we still don’t see them or make cognitive note of them.

When an external event, an objective observer or other influence causes you to “stop and see”, make a note of what you are experiencing. The message contained in what you see may be more important than you realize.

When I sit in quiet contemplation, seeking guidance to challenges and obstacles in front of me, I don’t pray for quick solutions or easy bailouts.

I quietly ask for guidance to help me to see.

What are you observing today?

More importantly, what do you SEE?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS. Maybe when we stop to “see”, we might also discover the beauty that exists in what we previously perceived as “the mundane”. :-)

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Seeing It Again For the First Time” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Sowing the Seeds of Hope

2011-07-07T18:06:00.001-04:00

As a strategy guy, I look upon the world some days with great concern. In fact, if I evaluate the world using the same lens and filters that I use when working with Fortune 25 companies, I am alarmed about where we are heading and how we are getting there.

However, every once in a while, I am reminded that we have reasons for hope.

Today I happened to overhear a performance review in a local Starbucks.

It was a very positive review for the Starbucks partner, which in itself is nothing new to any organization that values its processes and its staff.

However, listening to this review, I was deeply touched by the interaction.

The young partner is a wonderful example of the gifts that EVERYONE brings to the table in the journey we call Life.

She exemplifies the notion that EVERYONE on this planet has potential to make a huge difference to those around them.

She is an example of how EVERYONE deserves an opportunity to allow their gifts to shine.

She is also an example of someone who powerfully demonstrates that sometimes, if a person may not feel like they have equal opportunity to bring their gifts to the table, that ANYONE can accomplish what they put their mind to when we all work together to bring out the best in each other.

This young partner has Down’s Syndrome.

So what?

She is a powerful reminder that we must never dismiss someone just because we might perceive they are not as capable of others.

Because in truth, that is merely a perception and a poor, inaccurate one at that – nothing could be further from the truth.

And as I listen to this exchange built upon respect, love and encouragement, I am reminded of something else.

That as long as exchanges like this occur around the world, the seeds of hope are still being planted.

Seeds that have the potential to blossom into a world of incredible potential and beauty.

We are called every day to help plant seeds of hope whenever we can.

Have you planted your seeds today?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Sowing the Seeds of Hope” is the same as this one and can be found here.

The Blame Game – Less Fun Than Monopoly ….

2011-07-06T12:52:00.001-04:00

…. and not as productive either.

Recently, as an intellectual exercise and in the midst of all the hacking going on with large organizations, I explored some companies in the oil and gas sector in Canada in a non-intrusive way to see how secure their infrastructure was.

If I saw holes in their security, I sent the CTO / CIO / CEO (in that preference order, depending on who I found on their website) an email similar to the following:

Dear <<Mr. / Ms. so-and-so>>.

I am a Fortune 25 strategy and global technology advisor. As a professional and intellectual curiosity, I have been scanning companies in <<city removed>> to see how they compare to companies on the east coast from a technology and security perspective.

I noticed that your servers have a number of ports open on them that make them potentially vulnerable to a security compromise. Specifically, ports .. << details omitted for privacy >>.

Please have your webserver administrators change these ports in the following way: << detailed omitted for privacy >>, thus minimizing any efforts people might take to compromise the integrity of your operation.

This is not a solicitation for business on my part – just trying to help out! :-)

Take care and create a great day, <<Mr. / Ms. so-and-so>>.

Harry

I received a few thank-you’s and an “F off, we know exactly what we are doing” (literally, although they spelled the word out). I didn’t really expect much as I wasn’t asking for anything. I also know that such an email might be received with a little skepticism, as people who have an interest in helping while expecting nothing in return may be viewed with suspicion.

However, an email response I received this morning deserves special mention.

According to the email, one of the companies that I had contacted was in fact hacked over the weekend and some information was lifted from the servers.

The reason the CEO was writing me was to assign partial blame to me for the success of the intrusion attempt.

“Why was I to blame?”, you may ask.

Well, it turns out that when the CEO received the email from me, he assumed it was either a solicitation for business or was fake and in either case, he was, apparently, dead set against responding or acting on it.

When the very thing I warned him about came to fruition, he thought of me. To quote the gentleman from his email:

“I hold you partially responsible, Mr. Tucker. If you had worked harder at convincing me that you weren’t soliciting me and that your email wasn’t a prank, I would have taken the appropriate action that would have prevented this from happening.”.

Ah yes, the blame game. A one-minute test by his IT team would have determined that my email was quite authentic, both in diagnosis and recommendation for correction.

This was one minute he was unwilling to spend.

However, it took him more time to write the email to me than it would have taken to authenticate the message that I sent to him. The downstream ramifications of the intrusion are also unknown, depending on what information was lifted and who lifted it.

The universe is filled with messages, some containing opportunity and some containing warnings.

Oftentimes, we are so busy or we are so filled with ego, that we don’t hear these important messages.

Unfortunately, if we miss these messages and pay some type of penalty as a result, it seems pretty easy to find the time to explain why others are responsible for us not hearing the message.

I know for the many mistakes I have made in my Life, I could, at the time, find many people to blame.

Innocence feels pretty good, doesn’t it?

In retrospect, if I look at those events objectively and honestly, my involvement, my level of responsibility and my failure to hear the warning signs was much greater than I would have liked to admit.

Even if someone / something else eventually pulled the trigger on an event that created trouble for me, my actions (or lack of) leading up to the event should have been different ….. if only I had been listening.

Yes, it is easy to blame others.

But if we do so, we hurt others unnecessarily and miss the opportunity for personal growth.

And if we insist on blaming others while missing the learning opportunity ….

…. the lesson will repeat itself

….. perhaps with increasing pain and pressure

….. until we finally get it.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a few messages to listen to from the Universe.

How about you?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “The Blame Game – Less Fun Than Monopoly ….” can be found here.

“I’m Lost”

2011-07-04T16:41:00.001-04:00

Allegedly you will never hear these words come out of the mouth of the average male driver. Apparently, we of the male gender would rather get lost in the middle of nowhere and die of hunger or thirst rather than admit that we don’t know where we are.

I wonder sometimes if this is true of many government or business leaders as well.

Perhaps it is true of many of us in general.

As a strategy guy, measurable outcomes are everything for me. My thought is that if you don’t know where you are going, you will never set out in the right direction, you will never know how close you are to your destination and you will never actually know when you arrive (if you do at all).

I often hear people say “we are tracking towards our objective”, “we are halfway there”, “we are almost there”, etc. and when I ask if they can actually define what the destination looks like, they haven’t the foggiest idea.

So my question then becomes …..

How do you know?

This question makes many people uncomfortable. They would rather live in a fantasy world where knowing is less important than just having a gut instinct that they will know what it looks like when they get there or where excessive ego assures them that they have it all under control and don’t need anyone else’s help to get there.

If they get there.

Lewis Carroll, with his brilliance in many areas, captured this conundrum perfectly with this insightful quote from “Alice in Wonderland”:

“ One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter. ”

So whether you have a personal or professional destination in mind, make it a point to know where you are going and having determined this, know the path you intend to take. You may not know what every inch of the path looks like in advance but choosing a path is still critical.

Because if you don’t know where you are going, any path will do.

The only problem with this is that the likelihood of you reaching your intended destination, having selected a path at random or allowing a path to be selected on your behalf, is relatively slim and for many people, almost non-existent.

Some people enjoy the journey, ignoring the destination. For those people, the path is probably irrelevant.

However, if the destination is important for you or for others who are depending on you, know what the destination looks like and have some idea how you are getting there.

Otherwise, at some point, there is a good chance that you may find yourself uttering the dreaded words:

“I’m lost”

Or even worse ….

… someone else, through their words or actions, may be telling you:

“You’re lost”

“We are all lost, thanks to you”.

Each of us is far too amazing a miracle to allow our gifts and talents to be hidden, misdirected or untapped because we didn’t know where we were going ….

…. or where we were being called to be, in fulfillment of our purpose and unlimited potential.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “I’m Lost” is the same as this one and can be found here.

If You Wait Until It’s Really Painful ….

2011-06-29T15:17:00.001-04:00

…. it may be too late.

I had the privilege last night to speak to Steve Nicander. Steve is an amazing man, having reduced his weight from around 650 pounds to 270 pounds and he is not done yet. The story of his courageous journey can be found here.

As I listened to the story of his incredible journey, I had to ask him, “What motivated you to change?”.

His answer was blunt and authentic. “I was in so much excruciating pain that I didn’t know how much longer I could continue”.

When I asked him what would have happened if he had pushed through the pain without making changes in his life, his reply was equally authentic, “I would have been dead in less than a year”.

Many times when organizations come to me for help, they are in a similar position. They have deferred or avoided important decisions, each decision seemingly insignificant at the moment but each one contributing a little more towards an inevitable, painful future.

The reasons for avoiding the decisions are common across many situations but the end-results are also … sadly … very similar.

They eventually find themselves in a very painful position, where decisions need to be made quickly, where the actions that must be taken may be extremely difficult or expensive, where the ego that says “I still have it under control” must be set aside and yet, if they delay much longer, they won’t have anything to fight for.

The life of their project or organization hangs in the balance.

Just as Steve’s life hung in the balance.

Unfortunately, many organizations and human beings don’t realize that every choice they make or fail to make takes them closer to or further away from a future filled with unlimited potential or painful disaster.

When we don’t appreciate the importance of every choice, we have a better chance of creating a future of reduced potential then we do of creating an empowered future. Unfortunately, the little bit of pain that we add with each poor choice is not noticeable until often it is too late.

While we think the choices that we have to make today are difficult, it is better to face them today then face life-or-death choices tomorrow.

Steve waited until he was forced to make a choice. Fortunately for Steve and for the many who will be inspired by his journey, it still wasn’t too late to make the right choice.

Not every person or organization will be so lucky when they reach the point where they are blinded by “pain” and don’t know whether to stop and get help or push through the pain.

They may be closer to finality then they realize.

When decision points are placed before us, we must always choose to step up and make the best choice we can.

We must choose to make them as if our Life depends on them.

Because it does.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “If You Wait Until It’s Really Painful ….” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Yellow Shirt Day – The Importance of Tradition

2011-06-28T11:24:00.001-04:00

Today is “Yellow Shirt Day” for me. I try to wear a yellow shirt every Tuesday if the opportunity allows.

Sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it?

About 11 years or so ago, I happened to wear a yellow shirt to work on a sunny Tuesday morning. One of the guys who worked with me, Narender Nath, also happened to wear a yellow shirt and we joked that no one else in the office had gotten the “Yellow Shirt Memo” and nothing else was made of it.

The following Tuesday, I thought of the laugh we had had and so I wore a yellow shirt to work just for fun.

As people arrived in the office that morning, I noticed something interesting.

Everybody was wearing a yellow shirt. Even people who didn’t own a yellow shirt had gone out and purchased one for that day. People saw the fun we were having the previous week and wanted to be part of it.

We thought it was so funny that we went out as a team for lunch and made a point of complimenting every random stranger who was wearing a yellow shirt on “Yellow Shirt Day”.

It was New York City – nobody thought we were weird.

“Yellow Shirt Day” became a part of our culture and we tried to wear a yellow shirt every Tuesday after that.

Now it is 11 years later, almost 10 years since Narender was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and I am still wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday.

In the busy world we live in, we often overlook the importance of tradition.

It has a way of bringing people together and keeping them together, in spirit if not in body.

It can be a source of comfort.

It can give us something that unifies us, giving us a sense of commonality or camaraderie with others.

It can provide a link back through time, providing great memories.

It can be a source of inspiration, especially if the tradition is around giving or sharing.

And sometimes, as in this case, traditions provide “an inside joke” that create a sense of levity at the moment, something needed in the busy world that we live in.

Given all of this and at a time when the world can be a challenging place to live, I think traditions are more important than ever.

Traditions, whether at work, at home or amongst a group of friends, can be a powerful force that build upon friendship and love, creating memories that will be with you forever and potentially impacting people in unanticipated ways.

Traditions are important.

If you don’t have any traditions, look for ways to create them or be open to experiencing them. If you have them, cherish them and work hard to preserve and build upon them.

But don’t be surprised if many of the best traditions you may experience are the ones that start by accident.

And whether or not anybody else thinks they are cool, relevant or even make sense, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the tradition matters to you.

And that’s all that matters ……

…… like ‘Yellow Shirt Day”.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “Yellow Shirt Day – The Importance of Tradition” is the same as this one and can be found here.

The Elusive Miracle

2011-06-24T13:52:00.001-04:00

I took a little time this morning to reorganize a gazillion projects that are going on at the same time, to prioritize my tasks and to drop a few things that were taking up too much of my brain.

I noticed at one point that I was surrounded by a LOT of newborns and I was struck by the contrast ….

…. of a new generation that is just coming into this world, with no knowledge of who they are or who they will be versus those of us whose lives are filled with responsibilities, opportunities, desires, dreams, successes, failures and everything in between.

… empty plates filled with potential versus full plates filled with expectations and responsibilities.

As I thought about how we are transformed from the moment of birth to the point where we are cognizant of our world and begin to make choices that affect our world and the world of those around us, I couldn’t help but stop and reflect on the miracle that this is.

The human mind begins with unlimited potential, ready to be developed into a powerful force that is able to create inspiration in art and music, observe beauty in the perfection of nature, collaborate with other human beings to create things greater than individuals could create by themselves, manifest tools that extend our ability to explore, learn, share and communicate or create weapons of destruction that defy human imagination.

As I reflected on this, I think of all the times people hope for some miracle to manifest in some aspect of their Life, whether it was for health, wealth or something else that seemed important at the moment.

I also thought about the people who have been disappointed that the elusive miracle that they hoped for never happened.

Then it occurred to me.

I wonder if our perception of what a miracle is is perhaps flawed.

We tend to see miracles as some external event or influence that many of us hope to manifest to “save the day”.

I wonder what would happen if we turned the definition of miracle around and instead of perceiving it as an external event, we perceived it as something we are living within - not something we are hoping will happen.

Every day … in everything we experience.

As we with our unlimited potential ride our little lifeboat that we call the Earth, itself participating perfectly in the miracle that the Universe is, with it’s perfect collection of planets, solar systems, galaxies and other things yet to be discovered.

Maybe … just maybe …. we need to stop praying for, wishing for, hoping for or dreaming of miracles.

Perhaps if we recognized and were open to the fact that we are already living in the middle of a miracle every moment, then we might change how we choose to manifest the future that we desire and perhaps might even change the results of our actions.

And as we recognize this, perhaps we need to acknowledge that the inability to say a resounding “yes” to the offerings of the Universe can be just as debilitating as the inability to say a resounding “no” to that which we don’t like.

Maybe the miracles we seek aren’t so elusive – maybe they’re all around us and within us. We just need to be open to accepting them.

We are all living miracles – it’s time we started living as them.

The next generation is counting on it.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

The Musings-in-a-Minute version of “The Elusive Miracle” can be found here.

Strategy and Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch

2011-06-23T12:37:00.001-04:00

I was in a meeting with an organization and their PR firm a couple of days ago to attempt to save a company that had flat lined when all of a sudden I felt like I had been written into Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot Sketch”.

For those who are not familiar with the sketch, John Cleese plays the role of a guy who bought a parrot at a pet shop but the parrot that had been sold to him was dead from the start. When he returns it to the store, the store owner does everything he can to prove that the bird is not really dead but is resting. If you are interested in the clip, I have a link to it at the end of this blog entry.

The organization I was speaking to was in real trouble, hemorrhaging money for years and with no semblance of any type of strategic plan or tactical roadmap in any area including corporate, finance, product development, competitive analysis, sales, etc.

The reason they had no strategy was because the PR firm in question had challenged the need for strategy some years before. Apparently they had reasoned then that it was better to craft a strong branding strategy than it was to set strategy around things that might be impossible to attain. Plus, it seems that the financials for this organization looked pretty bad a couple of years ago and it was more fun to dream about pretty promotions than stark realities. “You’ve got to think positive” was the mantra of the PR guy.

As I listened to this, I couldn’t help but think of the “Dead Parrot Sketch”. While John Cleese was describing how his parrot was dead, the pet shop owner, ever the spin master, was complimenting the bird on it’s beautiful plumage. When Cleese pointed out that the bird never moved, the pet shop owner indicated that it was resting after a long squawk. Finally, Cleese said that the only reason the bird was sitting on its perch was because it had been nailed there, to which the pet shop owner indicated that if he didn’t nail the bird to the perch, it would have “muscled its way through the bars”.

Fortunately or unfortunately, reality is not always pretty or fun and spinning it to look like that which it is not is not helpful or useful. It therefore makes sense that the process of strategic planning must be grounded in reality (even when the reality is not pretty), otherwise the results of the organization will be haphazard at best and probably fatal in the long run.

Casting a bright, empowered future is fun and exhilarating.

However, if we don’t accept reality in assessing our as-is situation or we choose to spin it to look like something else, then we have no hope of getting to the desired outcome that we dream about.

In fact, we may have a dead parrot on our hands.

Beautiful plumage … but still dead.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “Strategy and Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Here is the clip – warning – strong language in parts.

As You Sow …..

2011-06-21T12:56:00.001-04:00

… so shall you reap.

So goes the expression.

Financial institutions, government organizations and other corporations have found themselves to be hacked at-will in recent weeks by a couple of different hacker groups. The organizations who have been hacked claim to be victims of “Internet bullies”, citing they are doing all that they can to prevent loss of data, customer privacy and consumer confidence.

And so I wasn’t really surprised when a household name in the US banking industry posted a position last week in some of the major job search engines, looking for a senior security expert, someone who would help them architect a stronger, more hack-proof system for their infrastructure.

However, I was really surprised to see the minimum qualifications:

Must have graduated high school
Should (not “must”) have two years experience in IT

Meanwhile, a retail giant and household name brand (in sports apparel and clothing verticals amongst others) in Canada seeks a corporate strategy advisor to lay the roadmap for the entire organization’s strategy as they make their way through the challenges the world currently faces.

While they require more education than high school, they also preferred a minimum of two years experience.

Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs on the line, in a world that is complex to navigate …. all hanging in the balance with someone who should have at least two years experience.

As someone who spends his day helping people navigate the complex world of strategy and tactics, when I see these organizations making such choices, I realize that it is time to short their stock.

Why? Because the outcome is extremely predictable and unfortunately for many innocent people, it won’t be pretty. As the leaders of these organizations sow, so shall their customers and staff reap.

And that is the most unfortunate part of all.

We must do better – we owe it to the generations that follow ours if we are to remain a society of strength and opportunity moving forward.

Don’t we all want the best for our children and the next generation?

I thought so – then it’s time to demand the best from ourselves and others.

For as we sow, surely we will reap.

And I’m not entirely convinced the current harvest is the best we are capable of.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “As You Sow ….” is the same as this one and can be found here.

I’m Getting Nothing Done Today …. Or Maybe …

2011-05-10T16:06:00.001-04:00

I started the day with a lot of great intentions , many of which I am making my way through but not quite the way I had hoped. I’m usually fairly disciplined about how I approach my day and goodness knows that I have a full task list of high priority items these days.

So what’s slowing my day down today?

Interruptions …. by people who have always wanted to say hi to me but didn’t previously, by people intrigued by a book in front of me, by people who just wanted to stop by to say “hi”, etc.

Ordinarily, I have no issue saying “no” to people.

However, today, despite the pressure of my workload, I didn’t say “no”. In fact, every time someone stopped by to chat, a quiet voice said “Be still and listen”.

And I did.

And by doing so, I was blessed, honored and privileged to share some time with people who, like all of us, are on a journey filled with wonder, excitement, complexity, difficulty and challenge.

Journeys that invite us to be the best we can be while challenging us to overcome obstacles that we may sometimes feel cannot be overcome.

Many times on such journeys, it is beneficial or essential to stop, to rest, to recharge or just to exchange a thought with someone else on their own journey.

And so today, different people on their respective journeys took a moment and provided me with the privilege of exchange, inviting me into their journey while asking me about mine.

These little moments may seem like coincidental moments, fleeting, random connections that have no impact.

But everything we do in Life has impact.

Sometimes we may not see it or believe it.

But the impact is there if we embrace the moment and allow the seed of potential to be planted.

And as I think about this seed of potential, I wonder what our encounters may have created today.

Maybe such encounters will have an impact far more profound than finishing my to-do list ever would have.

Which causes me to think that maybe I actually achieved a lot more today than I could have ever hoped to accomplish by myself.

Or rather … perhaps WE achieved a lot more today than WE set out to accomplish.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “I’m Getting Nothing Done Today …. Or Maybe ….” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Time to Wake Up and Smell the …

2011-05-04T11:42:00.001-04:00

Some interesting headlines in the news this morning ……

1 in 7 Americans are now using food stamps or some other type of assistance (source). I guess it is good to see that the economic recovery is well underway in America and that the average citizen has nothing to worry about. Maybe the lawmakers are so far removed from this that in absence of pain on their part, they assume all is going well.
US military used the name Geronimo as the code name for bin Laden, proudly announcing they had killed “Geronimo” when the task was completed (source). No disrespect intended to our indigenous people, right? Yeah …… sure.
President Obama plans to use a Ground Zero speech to propel his personal political future (source). Because there’s nothing better than leveraging the loss of thousands of innocent people for personal gain, is there. Bin Laden is dead … but this changes little for many people who would rather have their loved ones home, alive and well.

While I am usually tremendously optimistic about the future of America, the possibility of such a future doesn’t just happen because America is a great country, because it has positive momentum towards unlimited potential and because it’s leadership is solely focused on the great citizens of America and not on their own personal gain.

It’s because the wonderful people of the great country that is the United States of America have always been known for doing the right thing and not just following the rhetoric being dished up to them by anyone, home or abroad.

But when I see headlines like the ones I note above, I can’t help but wonder if those wonderful people aren’t paying attention, since I don’t hear the public outcry demanding that things improve.

Or maybe these wonderful people are so crushed just trying to survive that they are unable to worry about these types of headlines. After all, isn’t it easier to be consumed by the features in the next “smart phone du jour” than the future of one’s country?

If only such priorities improved the potential of the country.

The fact of the matter is that until we find the strength, courage and desire to hold our leaders accountable for providing accurate, transparent, authentic, respectful information and leadership, then we are not assured of being able to make the best decisions possible in our lives.

And when this happens, the opportunity to create continued growth and optimism is limited or delayed, creating additional difficulty for the millions of great Americans who are good, honest, hard-working people trying to create a better world for themselves, their families and their country.

So when the rhetoric or misinformation flies, it is indeed time to “wake up and smell the coffee” and to call it the way we see it, demanding better of our leaders just as better is demanded of us by them.

Otherwise it may not be coffee we are smelling … and that’s not helpful for anybody.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Time to Wake Up and Smell the …” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Random Connections … Or Are They?

2011-04-29T16:59:00.001-04:00

It’s a quiet afternoon at Starbucks store #4853, in a community within Calgary, Alberta known as Copperfield.

It’s rarely this quiet, although I savor the moment and reflect on the time I have spent here, Starbucks being my office away from the office when I am not with clients.

I am reflecting on the Life stories of everyone here, whether it be the GREAT staff or the customers who come and go in a steady stream.

I find it fascinating to see how the Life stories of people are brought together randomly in places like this, sometimes for a brief, temporary moment and sometimes planting a seed for a lifelong relationship.

These connections are random, aren’t they? What value would there be in assuming they are anything but accidental, meaningless interactions?

Assuming they are merely a collection of chance encounters, wouldn’t it be a tremendous waste of time to bother attempting to create anything from them?

Perhaps.

But imagine, just for a moment, that none of them are random, accidental encounters.

Imagine if we were privy to the secret that every random encounter was a gift, a chance for us to create something of unlimited potential between two or more individuals.

Maybe the encounter was put before us to create a new friendship.

Maybe we are being offered a new business opportunity.

Maybe we are being offered a chance to learn something or share knowledge with someone else.

Maybe we are being provided with an opportunity for us to lend an ear to someone who needs it.

Maybe the connection has been created so that someone may lend an ear to us just when we need it.

I can’t help but think that if we looked at every chance encounter as a gift of unlimited potential, we might look at every encounter a little differently.

I’m not suggesting that we start passing out business cards to every stranger that we meet.

However, if we were more open to hearing the “quiet voice” as we go through our busy lives, we might allow ourselves to be open to the fact that every person who crosses our path has done so for a reason.

We may not know the reason right away. It is possible that we will never learn the reason at all.

But to acknowledge the gift of connections opens us to new possibilities that we may have closed the door on before.

When we have an opportunity to look back through our memories, every connection seems to be anything but random.

Recognizing this should remind us of the potential gift in every connection that we make.

Such a gift only matters if we accept this gift with gratitude and do something to proactively acknowledge and nurture it.

Otherwise, we may be saying “no thank you” to the most profound potential imaginable in our lives.

And who wants to do this?

So if I see you in a Starbucks (or anywhere else), please forgive me if I say “hello” and strike up a conversation.

By doing so, I am simply acknowledging and exploring the miracle of our seemingly random connection.

And the miracle of our unlimited potential.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “Random Connections … Or Are They?” can be found here.

If My Question Offends You ….

2011-04-21T14:59:00.001-04:00

As a long-time strategy and global technology adoption architect, my opinion is often solicited, whether it be by a start-up, a not-for-profit, a Fortune 25 company or anything in-between.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for the people who solicit my help, I am known as the “asker of audacious questions”.

People come to me expecting to ask a lot of questions, get a lot of answers and move on.

However, many are surprised that I often have more questions for them than they have for me and if they are unprepared or have weak egos, they will be offended by them.

There is a little secret about why I ask so many questions.

It’s not an attempt to assert one person’s intelligence over another. We are all gifted in intelligence in different forms.

It’s not an attempt to embarrass them, create a contest of wills or play ego-Olympics. What a waste of time and energy that is.

Frankly, I find everyone’s ideas fascinating. I am curious to know if you find your own story as compelling and based on reality as you would like me to believe it is.

However, the most important reason I ask so many questions is because I believe, as I learned from Gerald Weinberg’s writings many years ago, that when people come seeking advice or a solution to a problem, often they as the subject matter expert actually have within their mind the very solution they hope to obtain from someone else’s mind.

Mr. Weinberg posited that if one listens carefully, the owner of a problem will actually state the answer in the first five minutes of dialog. Mr. Weinberg named this rule …. gasp … wait for it … The 5 Minute Rule. It is brilliant in its simplicity.

Of course, the owner of the problem is so buried with mental baggage that they can’t see the answer. The people they approach for help are often so focused on proving that they are the “right person for the job” that they don’t hear it either, since in an effort to demonstrate intelligence or qualifications their own voice drowns out the person asking for help.

However, if the right questions are asked, probing the mind of the person with the problem and one listens carefully to the answers, the solution often presents itself.

People like me don’t just help others find a solution. Often times they had it within themselves – they just needed a little help finding it, bringing it out and expressing it.

Asking appropriate questions provide an opportunity to explore within another, the strength of an idea, the thoroughness of the foundation that converts the idea into a result and the willingness of an individual to collaborate in making the idea into a reality.

It is also an opportunity to assess how strongly someone feels about their willingness to do whatever it takes to make their dream come true.

If they get offended by a question, there is a good chance that they prefer not to deal with realities or that their ego doesn’t want to acknowledge that they may need some help.

For those people, being offended by simple questions should sound an alert that they are either not prepared for success or hungry enough for it.

And so if my question offends you, forgive me if I tell you that I won’t apologize to you.

If you are offended, you, me or both of us may have been saved from a disaster.

Maybe ……. unless you choose to go somewhere else where you hear what you want to hear and not what you need to hear.

Unfortunately in those situations, reality is a persistent beast. It tells us what we need to hear repeatedly until we get it.

Or … if we ignore it too long … it gets us.

But then, you already knew that … didn’t you? :-)

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “If My Question Offends You ….” is the same as this one and can be found here.

An Army of One

2011-04-12T17:11:00.001-04:00

“Be An Army of One” was a short-lived slogan used by the US Army in the mid 2000’s. The vision of a single individual, bravely fighting off the hoards was thought to be an admirable vision to promote.

The great challenge with an army of one is that no matter how romantic the notion of the valiant solider holding off the masses in Rambo-like fashion is, eventually the army of one runs out of energy, resources and luck and is overrun.

The same is true in Life. There are times when we must be the army of one, bravely standing up for what needs to be stood up for, striving for a vision that is important or courageously fighting off the hoards until the cavalry arrives.

Many times a situation calls for a leader to step forward whose vision, insight, knowledge, strengths and charisma inspire us and lead us towards whatever we define as victory.

However, once the leader has identified “the hill to be taken”, does the leader charge up the hill without support?

Not at all – because an army of one quickly becomes an army of none.

I am in the process of watching two not-for-profits and three for-profit companies die, taking tens of millions of dollars with them, because their leaders have decided to take the hill on their own.

Meanwhile, the talented, enabled, empowered members of their team who would help them take the hill are waiting for their orders or have been ordered to stand down until needed. Some have gone AWOL with the hope of finding a better leader.

Perhaps the leaders of these organizations have plans to name the hill after themselves when they take it. Owning the credit is something their ego-based existence dreams of, even as they deny it to themselves and others.

The thing that these leaders miss is that if they really want to plant the flag at the top of the hill, then they need to take the hill as a team.

Every one of their team members bring strengths, insights, talents and knowledge to the table that will help the team take the hill together.

Leaders who don’t effectively use their teams to be all they can be in taking the hill together soon discover an interesting lesson.

When it’s you against the world, the safest bet is on the world.

Leaders have a choice – they can plant the flag on top of the hill when the team succeeds together.

Or they can choose to be buried at the bottom of it.

The choice seems pretty obvious if the focus is on the ultimate result rather than the promotion of someone’s ego.

But then again, if it were so obvious, I wouldn’t be watching these leaders storm the hill by themselves right now, would I?

Be an army of one when you need to be – but know when the cavalry is needed to carry the day.

The result will be something to celebrate together.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “An Army of One” is the same as this one and can be found here.

I Met a Man On a Journey

2011-04-10T16:28:00.001-04:00

As I sat in Mass this morning, I happened to catch sight of a middle-aged Asian gentleman with a slight limp.

The origin of his limp, which he plays down, includes a complex voyage that started in an Asian nation in turmoil in the 60’s, hiding from troops from both sides of the conflict, coming to Canada as a boat person in the 70’s and devoting himself to service to others in the 21st century.

He has been on quite a journey up to now, but you will never hear any stories from him. His humility prevents him from sharing his story and so you must hear his story from others.

As I thought about his journey, I couldn’t help but think of the journey that everyone in that church was on and the stories they could tell.

Stories of overcoming difficulty, of sharing with others in need, of receiving help when needed most, of laughter and loss, of victory and defeat.

Some of these stories are almost too incredible to believe; stories that if presented as a Hollywood movie would invite many to scoff at the impossibility of such perceived fiction.

And yet these stories happened.

Stories that could make the most hardened person laugh in delight ….

… the thickest-skinned weep …

… the most down-trodden see hope …

… the most negative person see potential …

… the most proud feel humbled …

… the most humble feel exalted.

Every day, billions of people set about creating stories and participating in them, each collection of stories appearing to be its own unique collection.

Despite our differences of genetics, culture, race, religion, creed, careers and social status, it is our Life stories that define who we are and create the potential for what we can be.

In our busy Life, it is easy to forget the journey that others are on. Our own journey either overloads us with amazing joy or threatens to overwhelm us with its crushing challenges.

It is easy to forget others in need when our world is filled with plenty. Conversely, it is easy to feel alone when we perceive the rest of the world as having moved on without us or not pausing to lend us a hand.

However, as we go through Life creating new stories (or reliving old ones), there is an important thing we shouldn’t forget.

Our stories are actually not individualized collections of stories at all.

They are in fact one very large story with many perceived insights into the same story. Everything we think, say and do in the process of creating our perceived individual stories contributes to the story of others, including many people we will never meet.

And by the same token, their experiences of triumph, challenge, victory, defeat and love influence our Life Story, even if we are not aware of it.

Such is the Story of Our Journey.

I met a man on a journey.

It wasn’t his journey to share with me.

Nor was it mine to share with him.

It was ours to create together.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “I Met a Man On a Journey” is the same as my detailed blog and can be found here.

Passion is Great … Most Times

2011-04-06T17:41:00.001-04:00

I have been watching the Canadian election unfold on Facebook, Twitter and other media and frankly, the process that is evolving is somewhat disappointing.

The passion that both candidates and voters are exhibiting is quite cool. Having a passion for what one does and believes in is an essential part of Life. In some parts of Canada, such as my native Newfoundland and Labrador, politics is right up there with religion as a way of Life.

However, once one gets past the passion in search of the facts that can make a voter an informed one, things become a little murky.

I have asked different people in various forums to explain how a policy by insert federal leader name here would be paid for or is better than an opponent’s idea and in over 90% of the cases the result is the same.

No matter whose policy I name, the people defending that person deliver a litany of personal remarks against the followers of any of the other leaders.

But alas, very rarely does anyone just answer the question in a fact-based way.

This suggests that the rabid followers of the different political parties don’t know the facts (either that or the facts are so secret that the rest of us aren’t privy to them).

It has often been said that people who don’t know the facts or run out of facts or justification for an opinion often resort to personal attacks or insults with the hope of bullying their opponent into submission.

This happens in business, politics and Life itself – a sad, unfortunate truth that prevents us from reaching our ultimate potential in so many aspects of society. Many times, the loudest person carries the day over the smartest one.

The great challenge is that when we use passion alone to steamroll over people instead of choosing to be informed and using this knowledge to convince others, there’s a good chance we turn many people away whom we may have convinced to become a partner or collaborator with us.

When this happens, the result we are trying to bully others into creating for us becomes even more elusive.

And instead of creating a desired result, we may end up creating the very result that we complained so hard about needing to avoid in the first place.

Ahhhhhhh …. I really am a dreamer, am I not … to be trapped in the belief of a utopian world where:

We seek knowledge to be informed and educated …
We use logic and facts to respectfully make a point or to convince an opponent …
We value the opinions of others, even when we disagree with them …
We embrace the notion that no matter what happens, we are all in this together, to make our world a better one for all of us …
We find a way to wrap passion around all of this so that we push ourselves and others to be the best we can be without wasting our potential by crushing each other.

I guess I am more an idealist than I thought. :-)

As a Canadian who has lived abroad for a long time, the one thing I worry about is the level of disrespect I see between Canadians who are passionately promoting their choice while using their passion to trash the opposition.

Facts are often absent or seem irrelevant – steamrolling others seems to carry more weight.

Canadians often espouse their passion but also their humility, pointing at their neighbors to the south and saying “thank goodness we don’t act like them at election time”. Hmmmmm …. are we sure about that?

I believe that the longer one stays uninformed about the workings of the world, the greater the chance the world will move in a direction that we may not be happy with. By not choosing to understand it, our ability to influence it diminishes over time.

And this above all, worries me.

How about you?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “Passion is Great … Most Times” is the same as this entry and can be found here.

Quarantine Area - Fragile Ego Present

2011-03-30T17:16:00.001-04:00

I have noted with interest and concern in recent years, a sharp increase in a terrible disease that can destroy individuals, projects and even corporations.

No one is exempt from this dastardly scourge and many of us have witnessed it’s deadly impact or been adversely impacted by it.

It is also highly contagious and we must be wary lest we become infected, caught up in its deadly embrace.

The disease is known as egofragilis, better known as fragile ego.

We all know about ego, the oft-explored, well-documented element of our psyche that provides us with the confidence to do what needs to be done and the cockiness to destroy it all in the process.

When we embrace and direct our ego appropriately, we create the opportunity for our unlimited skills, talents, strengths and abilities to create things that stagger the imagination.

When we allow our ego to control and direct us in turn, we nullify our opportunity to create these amazing things, limiting our results and the results of others to a small fraction of it’s ultimate potential.

If we allow our ego to be crushed altogether, we become a doormat to the world and feel like we have little of value to contribute.

Perhaps you have seen these symptoms (not a definitive list):

A specific individual who needs to take the credit on a project and will do what it takes to get it, at the expense of anyone
People who are afraid to admit they have made mistakes or are wrong, for fear of being perceived as weak, less intelligent or less capable in general
People who are afraid to hire people who may be perceived as more intelligent or enabled than they are (even if the truth is to the contrary)
People who are afraid to say “I don’t know”
People who hide their self-observed weaknesses behind bullying or bravado
People who insist on doing everything themselves, assuming that no one can do it as well as they can as they embrace the mantra of “if you want to do it right, you have to do it yourself”
People who are so proud of their humility that they brag about it and highlight it constantly, unintentionally creating an excess amount of hubris, the very thing they brag that they do not have
Conversely, people who martyr themselves at the expense of everyone because they feel that they are incapable of contributing anything of value.

The worst part of this terrible affliction is that while it is easy to diagnose it in others, it is not always easy to self-diagnose it in ourselves.

And that fact alone makes such a disease so dangerous, that we could become afflicted with something that could be destroying the potential of others as well as our own potential and we wouldn’t be aware that it is happening.

Never be afraid to stand up to ego when one sees it steamrolling over others.

But more importantly, be open to the suggestion that one’s own ego may be doing the steamrolling.

We can’t always improve the behavior of others.

However, we are accountable and responsible for our own behavior –it is something within our power to improve.

And since we are responsible for such improvement, we have an obligation to strive every day to be a better person ….

… including eradicating the terrible affliction of egofragilis.

Sometimes it takes a cranial defibrillator to fully get rid of egofragilis – but it’s worth it. :-)

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Quarantine Area – Fragile Ego Present” can be found here.

An Entrepreneur’s Checklist

2011-03-30T00:31:00.001-04:00

Over the course of the years, I have been blessed to be approached by many self-professed entrepreneurs who have great ideas they would like me to partner on.

While the ideas are often great, my primary interest is in the person behind the idea. After all, there are many great ideas out there waiting for the right collaboration of minds to execute.

The right minds that can create success from such collaboration are rare.

And with that, I was musing about an entrepreneur evaluation checklist that would include but not be limited to the following criteria.

Be …	Don’t Be …

Humble	Filled with low self esteem

Audacious	Arrogant

Aggressive	Reckless

A collaborator	A one-man-band

Patient when needed	Complacent

Transparent	Mysterious

A visionary	A dreamer

Strategic	Paralyzed by excessive analysis

Tactical	Chaotic

Someone who perseveres	Someone who doesn’t know when to change direction or stop altogether

Proud	Too proud

Data / fact-based	Wishful thinking-based

Outcome-based	Luck-based

A communicator	Vague

Someone who understands one’s strengths	Someone who doesn’t understand or accept their weaknesses

Someone who will do what it takes	Someone who doesn’t know when to pull back

An educated risk-taker	A misinformed one

Confident	Uncertain

Focused	Random or all-over-the-map

Innovative	Regressive

Direct	Evasive

Passionate	Wide-eyed and scary

Proactive	Passive

Respectful	Wimpy

Flexible when required	Too flexible or inflexible

Stalwart	Cocky

Values / character-based	Wishy-washy or unpredictable

Authentic	What everyone else wants you to be

Gracious with accolades	Needing all the credit

Yes, these are obvious, common sense concepts. However, I wonder why they are not commonly held by entrepreneurs given the fact that they are such common sense.

A great idea is obviously critical to a successful venture.

Equally critical to a successful venture is the nature of the minds behind the idea.

It is because of this simple fact that so many brilliant ideas that should have been successful have failed while some seemingly innocuous ideas have propelled to greatness.

Knowing the nature of the minds behind the ideas will help identify the difference between failure, success or entertainment for others.

Understanding the mind of the entrepreneur will also help you to know whether you are about to make a leap towards success for yourself and others or you are about to waste your time, energy, talent and possibly money.

Be audacious in your evaluation – you’re worth it.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “An Entrepreneur’s Checklist” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Addendum – March 30, 2011

Maybe this is not just an entrepreneur’s checklist. As I absorb the emails being sent to me about this blog, I wonder if this is a checklist for how to engage with and collaborate with others.

Maybe ……………………

I have also received a lot of comments about the importance of faith. I deliberately didn’t mention it here as faith is a very personal choice. I will say that for those who make their faith an important part of their Life (as I do), may they use it to find wisdom, strength, courage and insight and not use it as a hammer to wield power over others or as an excuse to execute poorly with the belief that “Someone Else” will bail them out constantly from their own ignorance, stupidity or slothfulness.