My Obituary

As someone who receives alerts on the use of my name, I often receive references to obituaries for Harry Tuckers all around the world.  Sometimes I’ll joke with colleagues that apparently I died again today but this is what I accomplished in the meantime.

I got to thinking about this this morning as I read “my” latest obituary and I took a moment to write what I thought my obituary would look like.

As I did, I reflected on events-to-date in my Life, visualized possible events that will occur in my future and I thought about the people who are important to me.  I also wondered what they might write for my obituary.  After all, our obituary is other people’s perceptions of our legacy. 

William James noted:

The great use of Life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

Our obituary is in essence an encapsulation of James’ thought … a description of what outlasts us.

I wonder if the obituary that I would write and the one that others would write would be similar.  While we shouldn’t spend our time worrying about what everyone thinks of us, with appropriate (not excessive) levels of humility, there is much to be gleaned from the potential gap between them.

And in that gap, there may be a call to action.

If you have a moment, I would recommend that you give some thought to your obituary and what you think it would say.

Having described the legacy you wish to leave behind, ask yourself if you are on track to meet or exceed it.

And then ask yourself what, if anything, needs to be done to close the gap.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Addendum – June 19, 2013

I posted a revised version of this post in support of the brilliant campaign, #SurrenderYourSay, being run by the Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada .

The revised post can be found here.

In Memory of Zig Ziglar–Building a Legacy

Many people around the world are mourning the passing of Zig Ziglar today - master salesman, speaker extraordinaire,  the king of inspiration and a great father and family man.

Many of us can relate stories how the right piece of wisdom at the right time from Zig’s amazing repertoire helped us to close that big deal, persevere through difficulty or even pull us back from the brink.

And there were times when Zig provided us with a bit of fun even when he didn’t know it.

There is a story on Tom Ziglar’s (Zig’s son) blog that I shared with Tom a few years that I would like to share here.

The story was written from me to Tom directly and he posted it on his blog.  I include the story here exactly as I wrote it.

==========================

Before I retired my strategy brain to devote my time to important challenges in the world, especially the needs of children, I used to work at Microsoft in NYC as a strategy advisor.

During difficult meetings or when teams would get stuck, I would often quote a story or two of your father’s to help people see things in a different perspective.  At some point, people began to call me into meetings that I wasn’t a member of to hear me share a story or two from your father’s incredible repertoire.  I helped create a lot of fans of your father’s work.

At some point, people started calling me “Zig”, after your father’s stories and one day someone said “There is only one Zig Ziglar – we will call Harry “Dig Digler” because we really dig the stories he shares with us from Zig Ziglar’s collection”.

At that time I was living on the road in a corporate apartment and on the day it was time for me to leave the apartment, I took the last of my stuff and went to a local Starbucks to relax.

A couple of hours later, a good friend of mine called my cell phone and he was very angry that I hadn’t told him I had left the apartment.  I replied that I didn’t think it mattered but apparently it did and here’s why.

Jonathan and I are very close, having worked together in NYC for about 15 years – our spontaneous banter and humor was well known.

Apparently, a fine southern gentleman had taken occupation of my corporate apartment after I moved out.  Jonathan called the apartment, he answered and Jonathan asked to speak to Harry.  The gentleman indicated that there was no one there by that name and Jonathan made the incorrect assumption that I was trying to impersonate your father’s southern accent.  So, being the spontaneous person he is, he asked to speak to Zig Ziglar.  The gentleman indicated there was no one there by that name either so Jonathan then asked to speak to Dig Digler.  The gentleman said there was no one here by that name and feeling a little frustrated, asked Jonathan who he was really looking for.

My friend was getting frustrated also since he thought I should have stopped playing games by now and so he said “I’m looking for you and I’m coming over right now”.  The guy replied “I’m calling the police” and hung up.

Apparently he used the caller id to call the local police and they stopped by my friend’s house just to make sure my friend was “ok”.

It was after the police left that he called me.

So I love your father’s stories and the way he presents them – they have been a great source of inspiration for me over the years and I have been blessed with the opportunity to connect many people with your father’s work.

However, when I think of your father, I also think of my friend and the day police visited him because he was trying to find “Dig Digler”.

Thank you for letting me share this story, Tom, and thank you to you, your father and your supporting teams and families for making this world a better place.  We need the work of people like you more than ever.

==========================

There are millions of people who were touched, inspired and educated by the great Zig Ziglar and his legacy is immeasurable.  His son Tom and the great people in the Ziglar family and organization continue his great work.

Can we say the same about our legacy?

Are we trying hard enough to make this place one that has more knowledge, more inspiration and more love in it?

Are we striving hard enough to live by his many life principles, one of my favorites being “Make Gratitude Your Attitude”?

How do we know?

Rest in peace, Zig – you have earned your rest.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Building Sandcastles–Taking Life Too Seriously

As a long time entrepreneur and Fortune 25 / Wall St. strategy and technology guy, I stand accused of the following charges:

1. Taking myself too seriously while not taking the value of my time / “fun” relationships seriously enough.

2. Always preparing for tomorrow instead of cherishing the moment that is today.

How do I plead?

Guilty, your honor.

Yes, there are times I would like to believe that I have optimized everything perfectly in my Life.

But I know I haven’t.  I am human, after all.

And no, I don’t sit in regret, looking at my Life as a collection of woulda-coulda-shouldas.

My Life has been the perfect collection of memories, events, relationships, victories, challenges, stumbles and learning lessons that make it what it is today.

And so is yours.

While we see a lot of “experts” espousing the ideals of being more efficient, more productive, more intelligent, more wealthy, more beautiful and more “everything else”, we need to recognize the importance of being a little less efficient, a little less productive and gasp, yes, even a little less intelligent – on occasion, not as a way of living, of course.

And as we run around in circles building our legacies, building the legacies of others or having a legacy built for us by someone else, sometimes it is nice to build something temporary, enjoy it for what it is and then let it dissolve with no regrets or attachments.

After all, while we would like to believe that we are the masters of our destiny, having wilful control over everything in our lives, some of the most powerful things in our Lives are created when we step back and just let things occur as they are meant to occur, not caring what others think about what we are doing or what the long term contribution is to our Life.

And for us to savor those moments as they are revealed.

The beauty of a sandcastle

Some of us may have cherished memories of building a perfect sandcastle with its wonderfully imagined details.  At some point, we were called in for the day and regretfully, left our sandcastle behind to the whims of the tide.

And while the sandcastles of our youth are long gone, the memories that were imprinted in our psyche will last a lifetime.

Some of the most powerful memories in our lives are of the victories we have achieved, the relationships we have built (and possibly lost) and the challenges we have overcome as we attempt to live a Life of purpose and meaning.

However, some of the most powerful memories in our lives will have been created when we didn’t take ourselves too seriously at all and we participated in an activity because it was fun and not because it was a step in some master plan that we had contrived.

Tomorrow will be filled with the excitement and challenges of Life, as we work with others to write the story of our lives.

But today I think I will head out to build a sandcastle.  In the storybook of my Life, those pages are important also.

How about you?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Premier Williams and His Legacy

Many people in Newfoundland and Labrador were stunned this week to discover that Premier Danny Williams is stepping out of politics effective December 3rd, in essence providing 8 days notice.

As he steps down, what is intriguing is the clamor around the legacy that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador claim the Premier is leaving.

The truth about analyzing someone’s legacy is that it can only be truly known in the future as people look back on the accomplishments of an individual. Today’s analysts have a bias one way or another and not all information needed to assess a legacy is available, therefore making it impossible to really know someone’s legacy when it is still being evaluated in the present.

The one unfortunate thing that Premier Williams has created is a vacuum in the leadership within his party.

One of a strong leader’s greatest responsibilities is to create the next generation of leaders; the next generation being smarter, more knowledgeable, more capable and able to take the current leader’s ideas further than the current leader ever envisioned.

Such leaders do not exist within the PC Party of Newfoundland and Labrador.  That’s not to say that they can’t be groomed but they are not there yet.

There has been much conjecture around whether Premier Williams’ ego would allow him to create the next generation of leaders who would be perceived as stronger leaders than he.  There have been suggestions that he felt that he didn’t have enough to work with within the party to create such leaders.

The reasons for the lack of groomed leaders to take over from the Premier are irrelevant.  The fact remains that the leadership void is there and the PC Party is saddled with a staggering load of outstanding work.

And with that load, Premier William’s legacy may be tainted as the governing party struggles to get on top of this workload.

If they fail and the government collapses then this will be Mr. Williams’ ultimate legacy as he never prepared them for continued success.

Premier Williams’ sudden departure is also intriguing, given that someone who works in a donut shop should probably give at least two weeks’ notice. 

When someone leaves as quickly from politics as he is, oftentimes there may be a scandal that is about to break or perhaps there is a serious illness not yet known to the public.

I hope for Premier Williams’ sake that neither of these are the case.  He recently had heart surgery and I hope there are no complications from this. 

If it turns out that he left politics suddenly to seize another opportunity for his own personal gain, then personal greed will have encouraged him to abandon his party and the people when they needed him most.

Only the historians of tomorrow will be able to accurately assess Premier Williams’ legacy and whether the things he has accomplished are of long-lasting, positive impact for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Until then, it’s not worth arguing over.  There is much that needs to be accomplished in the province.  Fighting over what someone has accomplished as he is leaving won’t get the current to-do list finished any faster.

The people of the great province of Newfoundland and Labrador must keep moving forward to create the positive future they are capable of creating and worthy of harvesting.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Addendum: The story is that Premier Williams is leaving for private business interests.  To step aside from the role of Premier with only 8 days notice and to do so for personal gain is not the stuff that strong leaders are made of.  If a CEO guiding a Fortune 50 company did such a thing, we would be advocating a punishment of some type but in this case, the praise continues to pour in.  Such is the mystique of the unforgettable Premier Danny Williams.

Answering the Call of Your Holy Discontent

I receive hundreds of emails a day with questions covering a broad spectrum of subjects, ranging from corporate strategy, technology architecture, leadership and everything in between.

However, one email this morning made me stop and think.

While it was quite lengthy, the person I will only identify as John in New York City asked me this:

Why do you do what you do and why do you do it with such passion and conviction?

John was referring to my passion for tackling things that needed to be addressed in the world instead of taking the safe, quiet road that many prefer to travel.  After all, he notes:

… with your strong belief in the unlimited good in the world, isn’t it more rewarding and easier to simply write about the good stuff than to be always be contemplating the stuff that needs to be fixed.

I agree with John that it is VERY important that we embrace the great things we see in the world and to promote the great people, results and events we see all around us.  By doing so, we take comfort in knowing that the world is a much more positive, inspiring place than the media would have us believe.

However, I see all of the great stuff as a teaser, as something to multiply in both effort and results.

So when I see 10 strong leaders who inspire organizations and people, I want to see 1,000 more just like them.

When I see us feed 10 hungry people, I’d like to fill the bellies of 10,000 more.

When I see technology used to enhance society, I want to see it amplified to enhance society all that much more.

While promoting great people and results is VERY important, oftentimes the only people who hear the message are the ones already achieving great results or the ones who would like to accomplish something similar but they believe they cannot.

In such instances, the ones who need to hear the message or need to be shown how to share their gift, whether it be one of hope, inspiration, knowledge, love or making a difference in the world will not receive what they need; that which allows them to share their gift in the greatest way possible.

When this happens, many of the hungry remain hungry.

Many of the corporations in need of stronger leadership continue to produce less than optimal results.

Society continues to not embrace technology as effectively as it should for the betterment of all.

Governments continue to lose sight of the fact that they exist for the people and not the other way around.

We all pay the price for this, which is why we need to own the solutions.

We need to shine a bright light on those who inspire us, who teach us and who encourage us to stretch ourselves constantly to make a difference in the world.

We need to thank them and honor them.  But we need to remember as we honor them at various functions that it’s like preaching to the converted.  Those present are already making a difference. We need to reach out to the unconverted, to help them see a better way also.

And so I wonder if the best way we can honor those who inspire us is to improve upon their execution and results - to make an even greater difference in the world with the gifts that we have.

If we rest on our laurels (or someone else’s), we can take comfort in the fact that someone has made a difference.  We can and should always be proud of what has been accomplished.

But we should remember that there are still many great things remaining to be accomplished, despite the message from many people that everything is “under control” and “your help is not needed”.

Passionate people executing with conviction often make people feel uncomfortable.  However, if we choose the comfortable route and don’t strive to stretch ourselves for the betterment of others, our greatest accomplishments will remain undiscovered.

And so, John in NYC, this is my Holy Discontent (as noted in the great book by Bill Hybels).

For all the things I have managed to accomplish with the help, inspiration and support of so many wonderful people, there are still so many people who need help. 

With this in mind, I believe that we need to:

• passionately ask intelligent questions
• challenge ideas that have room for improvement and growth
• collaborate aggressively
• share unconditionally.

We need to move forward with passion and conviction to make the greatest difference we can with the time we have remaining.

And remember this:

EVERYTHING WE DO MATTERS

The results of everything we do become our ultimate legacy.

There is a quote incorrectly attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. patent office in the 19th century where he is alleged to have said "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

If we believe that everything that can be done to improve the world has been done, then we should stop trying to make a difference now.

However, I don't believe this is the case.

Do you?

In service and servanthood, passionately.

Harry

To see my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Answering Your Holy Discontent”, please click here.

Goals for the New Year? How About Your Legacy?

I’ve spent some time with my grandmother this week as she lies dying in hospital.  It is a small, rural hospital that mostly caters to the dying – those who are not dying are usually sent to the larger center in the city.

My grandmother doesn’t react to many of the things that I say to her but she appears to enjoy hearing me read from Scripture.  Her favorite, as I have discovered, is Psalm 23.  For those who ask “which one is that”, as soon as you say “The Lord is my shepherd” they often say excitedly “Hey, I know that one”.

As she rests, I take out my journal and think about her life.  She brought 12 children into the world.  She lived in a small rural town that has seen it’s boom and bust cycle now settle into the steady decline so unfortunately common in remote, rural places.  She never had much but she made do with what she had.  Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren went on to become doctors, engineers, nurses, fathers, mothers, IT experts and just about everything else under the sun.

Now here she is – alone and in her final days.  She doesn’t have time to change anything even if she wanted to.  Everything she can create has been created. 

Her legacy lives on in her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

She has made mistakes.  She has won her victories.  She has made her share of friends and enemies.

Haven’t we all?

New Year’s Resolutions

As we move from 2009 to 2010, I am receiving the typical end-of-year plethora of emails about goal setting, New Year’s resolutions and such.

Many of the people who respond to these talk about what is important to them.  This year they are finally going to lose the weight they always wanted to get rid of.  Maybe they are hoping to shrug off smoking, not saving enough money or some other thing they feel is important.

However, as I think of these things, they always seem to be “small potatoes” in comparison to the important things in life.

I think of Dr. Stephen Covey’s 4 L’s of Life, namely:

• Live
• Love
• Learn
• Legacy (as in, to leave one)

Many of the resolutions that people make don’t seem to fit into a larger picture.  For example, if you ask someone why they would quit smoking, they cite reasons such as “it is not socially acceptable”, “I will live longer” or “I will save money”.

These are all excellent reasons.  However, if one asks them the obvious next question, such as "what will you do with the longer life or additional money?”, you discover they haven’t figured out that far ahead yet.

Without that compelling “bigger picture” question in mind, many of their New Year’s resolutions will fall flat.

After all, their larger life goals remain undefined so there is no compelling reason to actually live up to the short-term resolutions and goals.

Life Legacy – What is That?

They have no idea what their Life Legacy is all about – why they are here on this planet, what can they do in the relatively brief time they are here and how will they be remembered when they are gone.  They believe it is too difficult to answer these questions and having come to that conclusion, move through their life with short-sightedness.

The interesting truth is that even if they don’t know what their legacy could or should be, the very act of living their life is producing a legacy anyway.

When they get to their end-of-days as my grandmother has, they may like the legacy they have created.

It is possible they may not.

However, if they build their life purpose and life actions around an intended legacy, they have a better chance of creating one closer to that which they desire.

Your Resolutions

So as you go through the typical year-end gyrations for what the New Year brings, ask yourself these questions:

1. How can I live a life with purpose?  Better yet, do I know what my purpose is?
2. Who can I love more and in an unconditional manner?  How can I welcome more love?
3. What can I learn in 2010 that will make me a better person?  Once I have learned it, who can I share it with?
4. What legacy am I leaving behind?  How will I be remembered?  Am I happy with this?

Our end-0f-days draws closer for each of us with each passing day. 

As you establish your resolutions, dreams and aspirations for 2010, keep the big picture of your life and your legacy in mind.

Your life, your gifts and your talents are too valuable to settle for anything less. 

I raise a toast to your legacy.  May it be everything you wish it to be and more.

I wish you all a blessed 2010 filled with abundance of life, love, learning and sharing.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

To see my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Goals for the New Year?  How About Your Legacy?”, please click here.

Legacy – Being Aware of our Impact

I was thinking about my friend Donna Butler today.

Donna is one of those people who always comes up in conversation whenever people of my graduating class get together.

Earlier this summer, I was reconnected with two friends from high school that I hadn’t seen in 28 years.

Within five minutes of each of our initial conversations, the inevitable question was asked by each of them:

Do you remember Donna?

Both guys went on to describe the impact that Donna had in their lives.

I know all about it – I think about her impact on me all the time.

If you will allow me a moment, I will tell you about Donna.

She was like any other typical kid in many ways.  She was smart.  She was cute.  She seemed up more than she was down.  She always had a kind word to say about someone.  She spoke of her brothers a lot.

Her life in many ways seemed to be quite normal.  She didn’t aspire to be in the limelight and her impact on others seemed to be typical for a kid her age.

Donna did have something that we didn’t have.  She had a heart that wasn’t healthy.  She died in 1983 at the age of 18 of a congenital heart defect.

While we were stunned and saddened at the time, such things occasionally happen and we moved on in life.

So I thought.

I thought I was the only one that thought about Donna a lot but it seems like a lot of people think about her on a fairly regular basis.

I was thinking about this today and wondering how one who lived such a seemingly ordinary life could have left such an impact on us.

Then it occurred to me.

Donna saw the best in people, regardless of who they were.

She worked hard, not because it brought her public acclaim, but because it seemed the right thing to do.

She spoke words of wisdom without trumpeting them or pushing them down your throat.

She wanted everyone to be happy and did her best to help everyone around her.

If someone spoke harshly to her, she didn’t return the act with venomous words.

She was always smiling.

She did all of this for only one reason – it seemed to be the natural thing to do.

In living a life of unselfish giving and doing it as naturally as you or I breathe, she left an incredible, powerful legacy on those who were lucky enough to have met her.

This got me to thinking about the legacy that we all leave behind.  Many times, we work so hard to leave a personal or professional legacy as we would want it defined – wanting to get the legacy just right.

Many times, the legacy that we leave will not result from the things that we tried to create willfully.

Our legacy will come from the things we do naturally, from the things we do when no one is looking, from the things we do when we are significantly challenged and from the things we do because they are simply the right things to do.

That’s what Donna did.  While many of us have gone on in life to create personal or professional success, the one that everyone remembers and talks about is Donna.

Thank you, Donna.  Twenty six years after you have left us, you are still teaching us.

Which brings me to this question:

How is your legacy doing?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Legacy – Being Aware of our Impact”, please click here.

O Passion, Where Art Thou?

Para leer este blog en español por favor pulse aqui.

I’ve been feeling lately like I have been working double-shifts in the ER.

Many of the patients who have been admitted haven’t been in any type of accident.

They are suffering from what I will define as deficientia passio – passion deficiency syndrome.

As each patient is rolled in, a quick assessment is usually all that is required.  I grab the passion defibrillator, yell out CLEAR and zap them with the passion they need to make a difference in the world.

Ah, if it were only that easy.

A lot of wonderful people have come my way lately whose passion is either gone, never manifested in the first place or manifests in destructive ways instead of constructive ones.

The reasons are many, I’m sure.  We can can all psychoanalyze the many reasons – fear of this or that, bad life experiences, the stress of living in the 21st century, etc.

All I know is that when it comes to making a real difference in the lives of ourselves and others, when all things are equal;  opportunity, networks, intelligence, etc., there are two things that will separate those who can’t or won’t from those who do.

The ones who ultimately get it done exhibit ferocious amounts of passion but do so with an inner humility that allows the passion to be directed in a positive manner.

I have worked with a number of business leaders lately who exhibit one or more of the following symptoms of deficientia passio.  If you have any of these symptoms, please see your “passion therapist” right away.  The symptoms may appear similar to one of the following:

1. People who wonder why their team doesn’t seem to care about exceeding expectations (or even meeting them).  Meanwhile, the team leader doesn’t seem to care either, focusing on irrelevant things but getting upset when their team is not focused.
2. Leaders who hope that their company can survive while telling everyone that they are doing everything they can.  At the same time, offers to inject capital or help of any kind are spurned and some go off on vacation at the wrong time, with the scarcity mindset of “the company is lost anyway so I will take one more vacation on someone else’s dime”.  These people also embrace the concept that to own all of nothing is superior to owning a smaller piece of a much larger entity.  Passion to protect ego is stronger within these people than passion for success.
3. People who lead organizations or groups with little or no communication, have meetings with no purpose or have no clearly established vision, mission and goals.  These leaders will lament ad nauseum about how their people won’t get engaged or are worthless.  How can they get engaged – the team either doesn’t know how to get engaged, what they should engage in or why they should even bother?
4. Leaders who demand respect from the environment while at the same time, perform acts that violate most acceptable HR principals.  “My people are professionals”, these leaders reason, “they should be able to do as I say and not as I do”.
5. People who are in constant “hurry up and wait” mode, right up to the final demise of their team, committee or organization.  These are the people who exhibit less passion for their team and their purpose than the people who are called in to help them.  They are the ones who will ask for help or money but when it is offered to them, take weeks to respond.  Weeks later, the cry for help comes again and is even more desperate.  The offers of help go out again and again there is silence.  The cycle continues for a while until suddenly there is long-term silence.  A year or so later, you run into this person and they tell you the sad story that everything collapsed because of the fault of everyone but them.  They in fact snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
6. People who constantly talk about the need to improve themselves or their company.  They never make any progress towards improvement but they will meet with you forever and never do anything themselves.  Some even get angry when you won’t do it for them – that somehow you must be more passionate about them than they are.
7. Leaders who demand strong values of respect, honesty, collaboration, etc. and yet do everything to undermine these values.  Eventually the team members get disgruntled, performance levels fall, team members leave and the leader blames all the problems on the team members. 

I guess I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t add that other symptoms also include dry-mouth, headache, stomachache, a sense of fatigue, a sense of hyperactivity, constipation and diarrhea.  It seems that all diseases and the medications that treat them include these symptoms also!

There are amazing opportunities all around us.  There are more than ever, despite the projection of gloom and doom.

We only come this way once.  We get one whack at whatever our purpose is and then we are gone.  In the grand scale of things, our limited time on this earth is a blip that doesn’t even register within the context of time in the Universe..

However, that blip has huge potential within the context of our lives and the people around us.

We all have different impacts on this earth.  Some of us live quiet lives and impact a few people.  Some impact a lot of people but still do it quietly.  Others prefer to be “out there”, using their gifts in a more noticeable way.

Whatever we do, we need to make sure our passion is engaged. 

Our passion changes our result from good to excellent.

It is contagious.  A strong passion brings other people into your circle to help  you achieve that which you are striving towards.  Lack of passion is equally contagious and can kill projects (and sometimes people).

When Life gets tough as it always does on occasion, passion (with other things) helps us to move forward.

A lot of people are afraid of passion.  I’ve been told that my passion is intimidating.

That’s fine – don’t waste your time trying to make them passionate.  You will burn yourself out and upset them at the same time.

Find others who are equally or more passionate.  This is not always easy.  However, when it comes to finding passionate people to engage, remember the law of the 4 SWs.

Some will

Some won’t

So what ….

Someone’s waiting.

St. Augustine wrote:

The fire you wish to enkindle in others must burn in yourself.

Find your purpose.  If you don’t know how to do that, send me an email.  I’ll help you find it. 

Why would I do that? 

Because the world needs your passion for success, excellence and contribution.  It needs you to share your talents, knowledge and strengths and to do so with as much enthusiasm as you can muster.  It needs you to light the fire of passion in others as well.

A world of apathy and indifference is a world that will ultimately collapse.  Read your history books – organizations and nations have fallen when leaders either didn’t have passion or their passion was misdirected.

As Earl Nightingale once said:

Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.

Be passionate.

Associate with passionate people.

Make a difference in your life and the lives of those around you.

Do it with the best of your ability.

Make the most of your time.

After all, when it comes to time:

• We are born with a finite amount allocated
• We don’t know how much is remaining
• Once it is burned, it is gone forever

Now if you will excuse me, I have to run.

Another patient has been rolled in and it looks like a really bad case of deficientia passio.

<<Ok … I need 10 ccs’ of purpose here, 20 cc’s of legacy definition and 30 cc’s of enthusiasm …. and get that passion defibrillator here … stat.  C’mon people, move it  – this person’s in trouble.>>

Yours in service and servanthood – passionately.

Harry

For other musings about passion, please check out:

Check Your Passion at the Door

A User’s Guide to Passionate People

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “O Passion, Where Art Thou”, please click here.

Para leer este blog en español por favor pulse aqui.

Entrepreneurs – A Long Distance Dedication

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Entrepreneurs – A Long Distance Dedication”, please click here.

I have been blessed to have been an entrepreneur for many years and many of my dearest friends are entrepreneurs.

When we get together we laugh, swear and weep over the world that we live in, a world that can only be appreciated by a fellow entrepreneur.

As we used to joke years ago in the software company that I co founded in New York - “Some day we will look back on this day and nervously change the subject” – and then we would laugh.

For any of you not familiar with Kasey Kasem and his long distance dedications, people in one part of the world would write a letter to Kasey that was directed towards a friend, parent, lost-love or some other person of importance.  Kasey would read this long distance dedication and would then play a requested song.

Before I send Kasey my long distance dedication, I would like to share some thoughts about the entrepreneurial world.  If you are an entrepreneur, you will identify with many of these.  If you are not, it will either entice you to join us or frighten you away.  :-)

As I think about the world of entrepreneurs, and speaking from one entrepreneur to another, do you remember when:

1. You were first seized by an idea that seemed ready to take on the world but no one else agreed?

You went ahead and followed your dream anyway.

2. You weren’t the first to come up with an idea but once you saw the potential of someone else’s idea, you were more passionate than the people who came up with the idea.

You stepped around their fear of “going for it” and created a dream.  Some may have accused you of stealing it, but they never had the guts to go for it anyway.

3. You struggled with balancing family and work, recognizing that both deserved 100% of your time.

You did your best to balance both, second-guessing yourself the whole way - “maybe I could have done ______ better”.  Some of you couldn’t balance both and one of them died.

4. You stood on your deck at 2:00 in the morning, looked up at the stars and asked the Universe for help with __________.  Maybe you wept as you did it.  Maybe you made heavy promises if favors were granted.  Maybe you sold your soul in exchange for success.

You look back at those moments now and remember them as pivotal moments, either taking you closer to success or convincing yourself that it was time to get out.

5. You spoke incessantly about your idea to everyone who would listen to you, like that first boyfriend or girlfriend years ago that the rest of us got tired of hearing about.

Your passion either branded you as crazy or inspirational. You didn’t really care because you knew that the people who matter cared for you and supported you, even if you were insane.

6. You wondered where the next payroll was coming from and lost many nights of sleep over it or perhaps chewed your fingernails off thinking about it.

You dug deep and pulled it from your personal line of credit, your friends, an investment round that closed at the 11th hour or by some other stroke of luck or brilliance.  You swear this will never happen again but for some reason, it does anyway.

7. You wanted to share your mental load with your team but you felt it would freak them out and so you shouldered the burden alone and in silence.

If you never got pushed right to the edge, it is a secret that is going with you to your grave.  If you did get pushed to the edge, you surprised yourself with your ability to write powerful, emotion-filled, transparent emails that really helped people understand the pressure you face as a leader.  Maybe you rallied around this and saved the day together.

8. You wanted to be a rah-rah guy but discovered that sometimes you have to make tough decisions that you fret about.

The decisions that you thought would ruin someone else’s life often turned out to be blessings in disguise for everyone and everything worked out in the end.  As Mark Twain once said (paraphrasing) – “I have discovered that most of the worst things in my life never happened”.

9. You wanted to offer more rewards to your team but the budget didn’t allow for what you thought they deserved.

You created what started out as small things that evolved into legendary corporate practices that people speak lovingly of as in “I was there when we created ______”.

10. You doubted yourself the whole way, wondering if you were good enough, smart enough, connected enough, passionate enough or had an idea that was good enough as you faced bankers, investors, customers and future employees.

The person on the other end of that conversation was wondering the same thing about themselves – you just didn’t know it.

11. You wanted or needed some high-priced talent to give you client contacts or credibility but you couldn’t afford them (or so you thought).

You ended up crafting a deal that worked for everyone and helped your company move closer to success.

12. Your creation felt like a living, breathing entity because that’s what it was to you.  If you heard me talking with my team over lunch, you would have assumed that we were talking lovingly about a member of the team and not “just” a piece of software.

13. You wondered why no one else had your passion to just throw worry to the wind and go for the big dream.

Maturity that came later taught you that not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, even though it seems the most obvious and fulfilling thing in the world to be from your perspective.

14. You thought you knew it all but discovered quickly that you were indeed the student and not the master.

15. The person you met for coffee envied you and the life you lived as “your own person”.

As they heaped praise on you, your mind wandered to five customer proposals that needed to be done by Friday, two investor dinners next week, your son or daughter’s upcoming school play, three performance reviews that need to be done in the next week, etc. etc. etc. and you think – would you REALLY want my job?

And then you think – would I REALLY want to be doing anything else?

No way.  This is where you are meant to be.

This is how your passions come alive.  This is an expression and extension of you.

Of course, these things apply to the entrepreneur who eventually made their dream a success.

What about the ones that didn’t?

If you didn’t make your current dream a success, you didn’t fail.  You were merely offered an extraordinary set of life lessons.

The key lesson if you didn’t succeed the first time is:

Will  you get back up and try again?

Because in the end, that’s the real lesson of entrepreneurship.

Despite everything you will learn about networking, financing, execution, business plan writing, exit strategies, negotiation, IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, HR rules, real estate, contracts, pipelines, lead generation, deal closing, reports and everything else, the real question is:

How badly do you want your purpose and passion to be fulfilled?

So my letter to Kasey Kasem would read:

Harry writes:

Dear Kasey.

I am a chronic entrepreneur who is sending words of support to all other entrepreneurs.  For the great obstacles they will either step over, around, go under or learn that they need to be doing something else, the world of the entrepreneur is filled with the greatest rewards.

They create friendships that last a lifetime.  Friends like RL, CDT, MdC, JP, NN and others will live in my heart forever.

Being an entrepreneur allows your purpose and your passion to manifest – to provide an opportunity for you to have a lasting impact on others.  It helps define your legacy – that marker that says “I was here”.

Being an entrepreneur is rarely easy.  In fact, many times it will knock you to your knees.  But we get back up, learn from our challenges and move forward.

In the end, we always win.  Sometimes the victory is obvious.  Sometimes, the lessons are not obvious until much later.

So, Kasey, for fantastic entrepreneurs out there, people like MP, AG, BJ, KC, MB, RM, HJ, GP, MC and all the other people who dare allow their purpose and passion to fly, could  you please play “Don’t Stop Believin” by Journey?

Most sincerely,

Harry

Ok, Harry, here’s your long distance dedication.

To the entrepreneurs I have served with, I thank you – you have blessed my life tremendously and I owe you a lifetime of gratitude.  The lessons we have learned together are deep, broad and rich.

To all entrepreneurs, you are closer to your dreams than you realize. 

It all comes down to how badly you want it and what are you willing to do to make your dreams come true?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

PS I would be remiss in my duties if I neglected to write about the importance of family and friends.  While you may think that others don’t understand the world of entrepreneurs, they know more than you realize and they care more than you know.  One of the greatest lessons I learned despite all of my so-called confidence in my own abilities was the ability to be able to ask for help when I needed it and to be open to receiving help.  I have my friend Leonard to thank for this lesson.  When all is said and done, humility may carry you further than confidence.

In addition, if you are a person of faith, hold onto it, however you define it.  It will be an incredibly powerful, guiding, nurturing light when darkness seems all around you.

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Entrepreneurs – A Long Distance Dedication”, please click here.

Accountability and Authenticity

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version, please click here.

As I dressed this morning, I donned a pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt and prepared to meet the day - nothing significant to report there.

However, to a small band of entrepreneurs in New York in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Tuesday was Yellow Shirt Day.

I had forgotten about it until this morning.

The origins of Yellow Shirt Day were innocent enough.  One Tuesday, a member of my team, Narender and I wore a yellow shirt on the same day.  We laughed about it and said every Tuesday should be Yellow Shirt Day and dismissed the joke.

To my surprise on the next Tuesday, the entire team wore a yellow shirt.  Guys who didn’t own a yellow shirt went out and bought one just for the day.

The tradition being born, we embraced it every Tuesday.  On Tuesday, we would go for a walk during our lunch break and compliment other people who wore yellow shirts.  The reaction from strangers on the streets of New York covered a broad spectrum, ranging from humorous to angry.

The co-founder of Yellow Shirt Day, Narender Nath, was killed in the World Trade Center less than a year later during the horror of 9/11.

Narender came to mind this morning as I realized I was wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday.

Narender was as close to a perfect human being as I have been able to find on this planet. 

He preferred humor over anger.

He chose directness instead of misdirection. 

He selected honesty over dishonesty.

He embraced transparency instead of being opaque. 

He wished people to be accountable for their actions and was quite direct about it.

He preferred to be proactive and to embrace his passion instead of being apathetic and indifferent.

He avoided being a one-man-band – he was a collaborator by nature.

He didn’t reinvent what someone else had already created.  He recognized the value of leveraging what someone else had worked hard to create.

He asked nothing of anyone.  He led by example.

As I thought about Narender this morning, I was wondering if we have learned anything as a society since he died.

Greed, apathy, indifference and corruption appear to be around us more than ever.

Deception seems to be the way the game is played in many levels of society.  The model of “say one thing and do another” seems to be commonly practiced by leaders and those who are led.

Senseless wars against “this and that” appear to be the preferred model of solving anything.  We have a war against terror, a war against global warming and a war against extinction.  We appear to always be fighting what we don’t like instead of embracing the solution we should be striving for.

Headlines of failure in the housing market, the financial market and the employment market hammer us daily.

The starving, impoverished, diseased and destitute continue to cry out for help.

The media encourages us to focus on the disaster all around us under the guise of informing us.

Many of us who are hammered by the media do the best we can, all the while struggling with our need to be more authentic to ourselves and to others.

If only we could get some breathing room, we reason, then we could be more true to ourselves.

We could then shake off the negative messaging from the media and truly discover the world for its beauty and potential.

Narender looked at this challenge differently.

He didn’t wait for the breathing space in order to create authenticity within himself.

He knew that if he waited for the opportunity to be authentic with himself and with others, he would wait forever and would be incredibly frustrated as he waited.

If you were to ask Narender what he saw in the world, you would swear he lived on a different planet.  In a world allegedly filled with collapse, Narender saw growth.

In a world of war and hate, Narender saw love and nurturing.

In a world of indifference and apathy, Narender saw the opportunities that lay before those who followed their passion to make a positive impact.

Our world is what we believe it to be.

The media wants us to believe it is all coming apart.

Narender believed it to be one of unlimited opportunity for living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy.

I know you believe this also.

However, when you find yourself in the structural tension between what you believe and what you manifest, remember this:

Each of us owns the responsibility for changing our own world and subsequently the world around us.

If we wait for the world to give us the opportunity to become self-enabled to the point where we can finally start living an impactful life we will never get there.

And that makes for a pretty depressing journey of wasted, unrealized potential

Don’t let this happen to you.

As many experts say and as Narender practiced:

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yes, it is an overused statement.

But perhaps it is overused because we still haven’t learned the truth within it and so we need to keep hearing it.

How do you see the world today?  How badly would you like to see it in a different light?

Look around you – there are many people who are ready to collaborate with you to create that world.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS – A guy by the name of Mike walked into the coffee shop as I was writing this.  He was wearing a yellow shirt also and so I couldn’t resist introducing myself and telling him the story of Narender and Yellow Shirt Day.  As he left, he laughed and said “maybe we can start Yellow Shirt Day where I work”.  That would be cool, Mike!

It sometimes doesn’t take much to influence someone else in a positive way.

Simple actions touch hearts and in turn influence minds.  Whose heart are you touching today?

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version, please click here.

Nominating A Few Heroes

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Nominating a Few Heroes”, I invite you to click here.

In my typical day of driving my life at 1000 miles per hour, I am blessed with the opportunity to share with and learn from many people.

Every person, whether they represent something we like or don’t like, provides us with an opportunity to marvel at the creativity of the human mind and the notion that unlimited potential exists in all of us.

Whether we choose to take action with our potential and whether we choose to leave a positive or negative legacy is up to us!

Given all of this potential, today’s world is complex and there are many people out there crying for help – perhaps one of them is us.

In this same world, there are many people who are answering the call, bringing their wonderful talents, strengths and compassion to bear to help in any way they can.  Perhaps one of these people is you also! :-)

I’d like to nominate a few heroes today – people who have stepped up to make a difference in the world.  I’d invite you to do the same if you have a moment – to publically thank people and to share with the world why you believe they are people we can learn from and model.

There are many people out there who deserve to be nominated.  Obvious examples include people who put their life on the line every day for us in a number of services – the military, firemen, policemen, EMS, Search and Rescue, etc.  There are others who serve, including doctors, nurses, politicians, volunteers and other community leaders.  I am grateful to them for the freedom and safety that I feel blessed to enjoy because of their effort and passion.

However, today, I’d like to nominate some regular “Joes on the street”, who go about their business of making a difference in the lives of thousands of people without asking for recognition.

Without further ado, my nominees for “Hero of the Day” are as follows.

Mark Hundley

I met Mark quite recently via Twitter (http://www.twitter.com).  He and I began experiencing a mutual resonance with the messages that we shared with the world and that resonance expanded into an opportunity for us to have a conversation about our respective passions.

Mark is a speaker, author, psychotherapist and life coach.  His heart is gripped with helping people find a way to creating a more self-empowered life.

Mark’s life is also gripped with the need to help people overcome grief.  His blog (http://livinginthemeantimes.typepad.com) has a wonderful tagline - “Encouragement for persistent, positive, purposeful living when times get tough!”.

His passion to help others led him to cofound the Journey of Hope Grief Support Center (http://www.johgriefsupport.org) in Plano, Texas.  Their mission statement reads:

The mission of the Journey of Hope Grief Support Center is to provide support at no cost for children, teens, young adults and their families as they learn to mourn the death or impending death of their loved one in a safe, caring and nurturing environment.

After getting to know Mark, I have discovered him to have a heart of gold, dedicated to helping others, especially at those critical times that we all face when we wonder how we will endure a particular event or crisis in our life.

Mark doesn’t just think about ways to help people – he acts from his heart and makes a difference to people.  He is instilling a legacy of hope and love for everyone who encounters him. 

Many people send thoughts of support to others.  Mark is an amazing example of how one can convert thoughts into action, manifesting tangible, measurable means of supporting people when they need help.

He is a model of converting compassionate thought into action that impacts people in a measurable, authentic, reinforcing way.

Terry Reilly

I have known Terry for about 15 years.  I first came to know Terry while vacationing in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador and I attended an outdoor concert that he was presenting to children.

I was immediately struck by several things:

• His teddy bears – he has an amazing collection of them
• His playful and gentle spirit
• His obvious love for everyone he interacts with.

My oldest son practically wore out the cassette that we bought that day, insisting that Terry’s music be his “good night” music.

Over the years, I have had the blessed opportunity and privilege to interact with Terry on a more regular basis.  As I got to know him, I was even more astounded at the width and breadth of his talents.

I have discovered that Terry (http://www.terryrielly.ca) is not only a talented children’s entertainer but is also a phenomenally talented composer, playwright and performer of what we adults would refer to as “deep” material in addition to the fun stuff.

I also discovered that his love of people and his passion for people to become more engaged with helping each other runs a lot deeper than I realized.  His broad acceptance of everyone and his ability to interact with the youngest child, the most passionate human being or the most intelligent human being is indeed a rare gift.

If you want to know how to live a life built around creating love and respect in this world and finding a way to do it with a vocation that brings light to the world, then I would suggest you look to Terry as a fantastic role model of what a loving, compassionate human being looks like.

Leonard Szymczak

Leonard and I met over a chance encounter on the web (although Leonard and I agree that there is no such thing as chance).

He is a psychotherapist, author, licensed clinical social worker, educator and life coach.  His website is here http://www.leonardszymczak.com.

I stumbled upon something that Leonard had written and as I often do when I see something I like, I dropped Leonard a note to compliment his work.  He and I exchanged pleasantries after which I thought nothing more of the conversation.  Many of us have conversations that are pleasant but not long-enduring.

A little while later, Leonard invited me to participate in a weekly editorial process to review and provide feedback on his new book.  Leonard would send a chapter a week out to a select group of people and we would meet once a week via telephone to provide constructive feedback to Leonard. 

It takes incredible courage and humility to accept comments from groups of people around the world and Leonard accepted all comments with gratitude and humor.  This process, which I highly recommend to any author out there, provided me with some insight into who Leonard really is.

Leonard has an incredible life history, having lived in various places in the United States and Australia.  He is a man dedicated to helping people throw off the millstone that weighs them down so that they may live the life that he believes every person is capable and deserving of.

His knowledge of overcoming challenge comes from personal experience. His own life story of overcoming orphanhood is powerful and inspiring.

When Leonard provides guidance to you, he is not speaking to you as an academic or a clinician.  He is speaking to you from the context of someone who has experienced the same experiences as you.   He has been there and when you interact with him, you feel it.  He doesn’t just tell you things – an interaction with Leonard is a powerful, transparent, authentic mutual sharing.

He is soft-spoken yet direct.  He is gentle yet his words carry power right to your soul.  He is quick with laughter.  He feels your pain because he has lived it also.

Most of all, he not only cares about every person he interacts with, he authentically loves each person he shares time with.

How many of your friends and acquaintances can you say that of – that when you interact with an individual, you are in fact the most important person in the world to that individual at that moment.

His book, tentatively titled “The Roadmap Home – Your GPS to Inner Peace”  will be published soon.  If you are seeking insight into a means of living a life that matters and to see insight into the mind of a man who demonstrates this every day, then I recommend you keep an eye out for this book.

I have often teased Leonard that if he lived next door, we would spend every spare minute in a coffee shop.  When someone makes you feel that special and loved, you can’t help but want to spend time with them, learning from them.

My Family

My collective family, immediate and extended, are incredible heroes to me.

Many people who read my material or hear me speak often tell me how blessed my family is to have me in their life.

I think it is the other way around.

Living with me is not easy.  My mind never stops (which often means my mouth doesn’t either) because I am consumed with ways to help people or correct wrongs that I perceive.  I can’t sleep at night because my mind is a constant stream of ideas to help others. I once had a doctor offer me valium (which I politely declined) so that I could stop thinking for a bit every day.

My mind is very private and I don’t share or open up easily.  I don’t do this with any specific intention behind it – it is just the way I am.  It is pretty frustrating for someone who may be trying to help me with something.

My desire to find the good in people means that I sometimes don’t easily allow someone else to express a reservation about someone – which is not fair because this expression is often a necessary part of life.

I often have 100 projects in my mind at once.  Imagine having a conversation with someone where that person’s subject du jour changes midstream during a conversation but the shift wasn’t made clear – leading to confusion and a possibly frustrating conversation.  Why can’t they hurry up and invent ESP so that people can easily know when my mind has shifted to the next subject?  :-)

I am impatient with people who don’t want to step up and manifest what they are capable of.  I shouldn’t be but I am.  After all, I reason, if people expect this of me, why can’t I expect the same in return.  The world doesn’t necessarily agree and my family often experiences my frustration with this.

I don’t worry about things that other people feel are important and I fret over things that other people can ignore.

I don’t care what the world thinks I should be or how I should act.  I need to be me – not something that someone else wants me to be.  This is a bit of a radical model and if you have been raised differently, may make you a little uncomfortable (or REALLY uncomfortable).

I have embarked upon an exploration of faith that has exhausted many people who have tried to understand it or keep up with it.  I have frightened clergy with my passion around faith exploration.  :-)

I finally unloaded hundreds of books that filled every nook and cranny of our house – books that I haven’t read in 20+ years.  That’s a lot of books to keep moving, stepping over, packing, unpacking, etc.

At the core of my manic, hyperactive execution is my passion for people – my passion for encouraging others to stand up and be the best they can – my passion to encourage others to share love with each other in an unconditional manner.  I mused about passionate people here Blog: Check Your Passion and here Blog: A User's Guide to Passionate People.

My passion frightens people.  As my new friend Anne W. so perfectly described to me yesterday when she explained to me why this is so:

We're drawn to passion like moths to a flame, but it scares the dickens out of us. The passion of another is too often taken as an implied criticism of self, and indictment for our inaction, our fear, our isolation, our laziness.

Despite my many flaws, my family embraces me and for that I am incredibly grateful.  I am not perfect and I am not easy to deal with (yet alone to live with) and despite this, I am loved unconditionally.

I often wonder how I could live with myself – so when I see others who love me unconditionally for who I am, then I am grateful for the heroism I know is required to love me in this way.

I often joke that I would hate to be on the receiving end of my passion and yet they love me anyway.  My family are heroes in my mind.

You

You are my final nomination.  Your life is filled with fun and fear.  You do your best to make a difference.  You feel insecure on some days and confident (or over confident) on others.

You make mistakes – sometimes really big ones.  You experience victories big and small.

You help others when you can.  Sometimes you need to be helped by others.

Some days you are embarrassed or feel ashamed about something.  Other times, you are incredibly proud of something you have accomplished.

You stand up for others when you can.  You experience worry or anger when you see people being abused or mistreated.

Some of you are easily influenced while others are more independent.

You are home makers, business persons, employed, self-employed, unemployed, athletic, not athletic, world travelers, stay-at-home people, parents, children, married, single, divorced, widowed and contain varying degrees of externally-expressed and internally-incubated passion.

Above all, you are a human being who wants to love and to be loved.  Some of you like to express it openly – others are more private about how you express or receive love.

Either way, you are a hero.  You have overcome much and you have unlimited potential within you and before you.

You are in the process of crafting a phenomenal legacy to others.  There is no need to compare legacies with others – it is not a talent competition.

What matters is that you leave a legacy – that you overcome that which challenges you and that you serve as a role model to someone else as you make a difference.

Thank you for being a hero.

Now – find someone else and nominate them.

Despite what some people would say, the world is filled with heroes.  Let’s bring them out in the open and celebrate what makes them special.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Nominating a Few Heroes”, I invite you to click here.

A Quest for Authenticity – How Many Lives Are You Living?

For my “Musings-in-a-Minute” version of “A Quest for Authenticity”, please click here.

I am running into more and more people these days who are living two or more completely different lives.

One life is the life of their dreams – passionate and living on purpose.  In this life, they are living their dreams, creating their own companies, making a huge, positive impact on the world.  Many of them are best-selling authors, in-demand speakers or high-powered consultants offering advice to the elite.  Their home life is right out of Leave it to Beaver, the Brady Bunch or some other idyllic family experience.  They live in a world where they speak freely and passionately about their purpose, their faith, their ideals and core values and their vision of the world. It is a beautiful life without fear of anything.

What a beautiful image they weave.

The other life is the life the same people are currently experiencing.  They are frustrated with their boss, their business partner, their client, their spouse, their children, their President or Prime Minister or someone else.  They feel frustrated that nobody seems to care about their vision for the world.  They are afraid to expose their core values, their faith or their belief structure.  They are afraid to stand up and speak out when they witness something that is legally, ethically or morally incorrect.  With this in mind, they assume their own personality is flawed or unworthy and thus they create new personas based on the situations they find themselves in.

Life is challenging enough when you have one life to live.

How do these people manage when they are living two or more lives?  They live one in private, one at home, one with friends, one at work, one at church …. the list goes on.

No wonder people are more stressed now than ever – they are worn out trying to be something that someone else wants them to be.

What’s wrong with us just being ourselves?

As with many things in life, we are either all in it or not in it at all.  This applies to us living our life on purpose, embracing the talents, gifts, resources and dreams that each of us are blessed to have.

How can we expect to establish momentum and traction in life when we are living so many lives at once?  That’s a lot of traction to acquire and will result in a life of complexity and frustration.

Consider these examples:

1. The person who witnesses an illegal act in an organization and chooses to say nothing so that they will continue to be perceived as a team player or so that it doesn’t impact their ability to score some other position they are seeking.

2. The person who joins boards or organizations that are totally out of congruence with their own personal values, but they do so because it “looks good on the resume”.

2. The individual who has a strong faith in God or other Higher Authority but keeps it to themselves when amongst friends or coworkers so as to not be portrayed as a Bible-thumping proselytizer to be avoided.

3. The person who talks incessantly about the dreams they have for self-employment or rebuilding their organization – and years later are still telling the same story after having made almost no effort to put the dream into action.

4. The team leader or company owner who constantly complains about their team in private but publically praises them (praising them because they know that a team’s performance is a reflection of its leader).

5. The people that protect (or even promote) a “look the other way” policy, since they know if someone really knew what was going on in the organization, the person in charge would be questioned as to why such apathy and indifference have gone on for so long.

6. The folks who attain some level of public office and immediately focus on how to get re-elected, forgetting that they are there to represent a group of people.

7. The people who draw too much from their network, expecting everything for free but who feel incensed if the network pushes back and requests compensation for knowledge shared (or the network reaches out to them and asks of their time for free in return).

8. Leaders who hide behind complexity and noise on their projects because they don’t want people to see that there may be something they can’t do.

9. People who promote or teach the “miracle product du jour”, knowing that they are doing it for the money and that they don’t really believe in the value of what they are pushing.

Some people are oblivious of living multiple lives.  Many people realize the multiple lives they are living and for them, this adds extra stress, because they want to escape from those multiple lives – to get back to the core of what they are.

For some reason that escapes them, it is easier said than done.

However, as in many situations, they are driven by fear.

1. Fear of not being accepted.

2. Fear of having a dream that others may ridicule.

3. Fear of expressing an interest, belief or value that others may not embrace or support.

4. Fear of expressing their faith at a time when some people may not find it “cool”.

5. Fear of being perceived as not being in control of their life, be it personally, professionally or otherwise.

6. Fear that we have only one whack at something (as in political office) and so rather than being judged on our performance, we immediately set out to assure our continued re-election by becoming vague, fuzzy and not clearly aligned with any issue.

7. Fear of not being viewed as intelligent, good lucking, connected, skillful, empowered or anything else as our peers.

8. Fear of failure, thereby introducing the notion that it looks better to be thinking big all the time than to risk it all and fail. 

Since we are bound up by these and other fears, it is better to portray ourselves as the ideal person in the other person’s eyes.  That way, you feel more comfortable with the “new you” since it seems to draw accolades from others.

Guess what?

We will attract people much more in congruence with who we are when we express our true self – when we are authentic with ourselves and others.

After all, if we are not our true selves, how do we know that any of our relationships are authentic?  There’s a good chance that our relationships with different people are as artificial as the personalities that we created in order to be connected with them in the first place.

We discover how real or artificial our public personas are when we need help.  If people vanish when we need them, there’s a good chance we have not built our relationships on solid, authentic values and belief systems.

Why would we want to create a life that is that complicated?

Isn’t life complicated enough?

As Scott M. Peck wrote in The Road Less Travelled, the opening line is “Life is difficult”.

Given that life is difficult, why don’t we choose to live one life ?

One that allows us to embrace and maximize our gifts and talents.

One that allows us to live by our core values, not someone else’s.

One that will occasionally cause life to be pretty scary but will produce more powerful results, important learning lessons and rich memories.

One that will have a greater potential to leave a positive legacy on this planet, since I doubt that any of us are dreaming of a life of smaller results than we are currently experiencing.

One that allows us to live by our faith if that is an important part of our life.

One that may produce fewer relationships but relationships that will be stronger, higher quality and more authentic.

When we reveal our true self, we attract people and circumstances that are more in alignment with our core values and belief structures.

When we do this, we live one life, a much simpler concept than multiple lives.

That’s not to say that this automatically makes life easy.

However, when life gets complex, if we are living by our core values and are aligned with others with similar values, it helps to know that we should push through because the results are worthy enough to persevere for.

If we are pushing something that we are not in alignment with, then we often wonder why we should bother.  After all, we may be pushing for something important for someone else and not for ourselves – living a life for someone else.

If that’s the life we want to live, then we should select a person that we are living our life for and ask them if we can leave their name on our headstone when our end-of-days has arrived.

We might as well, since we lived their life based on their values, beliefs and expectations anyway.

Wouldn’t it better to be remembered for who we are and not for how we reflected the best of someone else?

Exactly – so what are we waiting for?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For my “Musings-in-a-Minute” version of “A Quest for Authenticity”, please click here.

Maximizing Our Result – Collaboration vs Ego

In my 25+ years in business I have been blessed with so many wonderful projects to participate in.

That is not to say, however, that every project that I participated in was a success.  Some were total, dismal, embarrassing failures.  As with most of us who are human, I had my part to play in the successes and failures and as most of us will admit, the greatest lessons come from the latter.

Of course, there are libraries of books that discuss “the secret of a successful project”.  There are great books on leadership, strategy, team building, processes and methodologies.  There is so much stuff on the market these days, we could spend the rest of our lives devoted to learning how to create the perfect project but never find the time to actually be involved with a project because we are too busy learning.

Over the last couple of years, I have been invited to participate in or make observation on a large number of significant-scale projects, projects on a national or international scale that hope to achieve large scale impact in a number of areas.

These projects have an interesting life cycle that I found myself musing upon this morning. 

All of the projects start with phenomenal fanfare.   The world has been waiting for us for years and we have arrived.  So we believe and shout to anyone who will listen.

The projects are staffed with enthusiastic people but not necessarily with the right blend of gifts, talents, strengths and knowledge to carry the project.  It’s kind of like the 100 meter sprinter who decides he or she will run up the side of Mount Everest.  Ahhhh – the power of enthusiasm.  Not every project can be accomplished just because WE BELIEVE.

Generous amounts of capital are infused into these projects by public and private organizations who share the enthusiasm that they too have an opportunity to change the world.  Often times they have no idea what they are investing in but they find the enthusiasm to be contagious and so common sense due diligence is circumvented.

Measures of success, critical success factors and measurable objectives are defined vaguely or intentionally left out.  After all, who needs this type of stuff when you know that the world needs what you offer and your enthusiasm and willpower can overcome any obstacle?

Execution and strategy details are not important.  The commonly offered explanation for this is that it will slow down our momentum.

For some, the details would reveal that the emperor is not wearing any clothing.  That wouldn’t be a good thing, would it?

And so the project begins.  The Big Bang has occurred, the universe that the project exists in has been created and the world waits with bated breath for a phenomenal result.  That is what our ego tells us.

Along the way, many, MANY meetings are scheduled and tons of reports and presentations are created.  The reason?  Nothing shows productivity like a lot of activity.  Who needs traction when we have tons of action?  Action implies results and results can be used to draw in additional capital if nothing else.

What about the ultimate objective?  It has kind of faded away in a haze of ego and obfuscation.  That’s ok claims our ego – we can reconstitute the objective and make corrections towards the goals at any time.

So everything is all set – the project to change the world is on its way.

It is at this point that, in my observation, project leaders and team members make a critical choice that determines how successful the project will really be, regardless of what the owners think (or hope) their impact will be.

At this point in a project, the project team has a choice to make regarding how they will maximize their result.

Do we choose to maximize our contribution and result using collaboration or do we choose to maximize our individual recognition using ego?.

Approximately 80% (Pareto rules again) of the projects I have observed come to the incorrect conclusion that every other attempt has failed or will fail because the people who are running those projects don’t have what it takes – knowledge, passion, skills, leadership abilities or some other ingredient that somehow we have a monopoly on.

Having made this decision, that 80% proceeds to reinvent the wheel, thereby condemning themselves to repeat many of the mistakes that their peers and predecessors have already made.  Oftentimes, they repeat the ultimate mistake – abject failure with no positive impact or results.

Remember the bread recipe rule that I quoted from the brilliant Gerald Weinberg in an earlier blog?

If we take the same ingredients, the same recipe and the same baker, we will always produce the same bread. 

Their ego believes that they will bake a better loaf even as they bake one identical to the disaster that others have baked.

As this happens, their ego, not willing to accept responsibility for failure, then begins to find a rational explanation for the failure.  Reasons like “so and so didn’t do their job right, the economic situation we are in today caused our capital or markets to dry up, my best person left when I needed them the most, the government passed legislation that derailed us, etc”.

Infighting begins as egos attempt to find out who is responsible for this failure.  Morale falls as the seeds of disrespect, mistrust and intentional misleading take root.

The organization or the project is dying but ego refuses to believe it and so the fighting continues until the meltdown is complete.

Meanwhile, the other 20% are asking themselves a different question:

In order to maximize my result, a result that matters more than maximizing my recognition, what organizations, people, technology, processes or anything else exist that I can leverage such that we produce the greatest result that is possible?

When one asks this question, one acknowledges a simple fact:

Not only am I not the only game in town or the smartest person on the planet, if I go it alone and a bet is made on me versus the planet, the odds-on favorite will not be me.”

We also acknowledge something else.

Not only can someone help me maximize my dream but I can help someone maximize theirs as well.

How powerful is that?

Leveraging a collaborative collection of knowledge, skills, talents and networks, a collection of people can become a phenomenal unstoppable force when the sum of those gifts is used.

When ego steps in, we use the least common denominator of all of those gifts, a very small percentage of the overall potential.

Refusing to accept a collaborative approach produces a lot of wasted resources (effort, time and money), a lot of frustration and a lot of cynicism.  We also waste a phenomenal amount of time addressing needs on this planet that are here right now and need a solution very quickly.

A touch of ego provides us with self confidence and drive.  I am not saying that we subsume our ego such that we are living doormats.

However, we need to temper the ego such that when we observe what the other person is doing and accomplishing, perhaps we need to do it with an eye towards collaboration and not using the cynical eye of competition or envy.

Maybe if we asked the question “What does this person do that I can benefit from and what can I offer to that person to help their cause?”, perhaps we can move some solutions along a little faster and with a greater impact.

Perhaps the initial question should not be an ask but an offer. 

How can I help you?

The road to success, surrounded by friends and people passionate around a common purpose, is an emotionally powerful one that not only lives with the participants forever but creates a legacy that others can duplicate and build upon.

To follow the other path, attempting to brute force one’s way without actively seeking and accepting the help of those who can make a difference simply because our ego has convinced ourselves that no one is as capable as we are, often produces lonely, frustrating, sometimes explosive, depressing failure.

While I am an optimist who looks for the best in everyone and every situation, I will say that there are some egos out there that need a failure or two to recognize the importance of collaboration.  When the lessons have been learned, those people will be the greatest champions of collaboration.

We often hear the great clichés about leaders, teams, all for one and one for all, etc.

They are great ideas.

Many a corporate rah-rah session is filled with such drivel.

However, let’s make it such that our actions speak so loudly that we can’t hear what we are saying when it comes to collaborating for success.

If we don’t, we are wasting everybody’s time – and that is one commodity that we have a limited amount of and which no known science can ever help us recover.

As Berlioz wrote - "Time is the great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all of its students.”

We have a choice of maximized, impactful legacy or a hope of maximized recognition.  What happens if the recognition is one of greed, distrust or some other attribute we would rather not be known for?

I know which choice you would make.  Let’s make it happen instead of espousing one thing while practicing another.

A lot of people are waiting for the phenomenal results you are capable of producing.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Creating an “Oprah Moment”

I receive hundreds of emails every day, many from people who are soliciting me for money, ideas or something else that they are in need of.

Many of the solicitation emails are from complete strangers and most of those get deleted pretty quickly.  We can’t help everyone.

Some time ago, I received a message from a complete stranger and as I read the message, I did not experience the desire to automatically hit delete.  In fact, as I read it, something in the back of my mind told me to sit up and pay attention to this.

It wasn’t the way it was written.  It had nothing to do with the subject.  However, something in the message resonated with me and I decided to dig deeper.

The author of this email tells an incredible story.  It is a story of a woman living in Germany in the 1960’s who was in a situation of relationship battery.  She was rescued by a knight in shining armor whom she fell in love with.  Her knight, who was stationed in Germany with the US military, was transferred out of Germany and went to serve in Vietnam.  She never heard from him again.

However, she discovered that she was pregnant and gave birth to a son. 

It was her son who reached out to me.  He is now a strong family man himself who runs his own company in the US. 

He is hoping to find his father, to say thank you for being there for his mother during her time of need.  He seeks nothing other than to express gratitude for giving him life, a life that he expresses gratitude for on a regular basis.

Why did he reach out to me?

The man he seeks is Harry Tucker.  He has been reaching out to all the Harry Tuckers he can find with the hopes that he can find “the one” to whom he can express his gratitude to.

Something told me not to delete this email.  I did my own check of this person and found that his story appeared to be legitimate.

I felt a strong calling to help this man and a friendship ensued.

I think he was just as surprised to find a complete stranger who wanted to help him as I was that I felt so strongly to help him.  :-)

In the course of using my network to find the other Harry Tucker, I have become reconnected with people I haven’t spoken to in over 30 years.  I have also been connected with other incredibly passionate people who are adding to my life in so many ways as we all become gripped with the desire to find the other Harry Tucker. 

As we make progress towards finding this guy, I am witnessing something else.

I am watching love and kindness develop between a bunch of complete strangers over a story and a group of people who could just as easily mean nothing to us.

We are creating what I like to call an “Oprah moment”, the type of thing we often see on shows like Oprah where a bunch of people find their heart seized by a purpose-filled calling and they go for it for reasons they can’t explain.

Sometimes the story is the classic reunion of long-separated people that causes the viewers to cry and laugh as they watch and listen to the story of seemingly impossible odds that were overcome in order to create the Oprah moment.

Are we heading for an Oprah moment with this story?  I sure hope so.  Nothing would make me happier than to see these two men embrace and to tell their story.  All I can say for now is that the sequence of events that have transpired since this gentleman and I have connected are beyond simple coincidence.

I believe we are being guided by a Higher Authority who seems to be guiding us in an interesting direction.

The way this manifested makes me realize that there are many Oprah moments developing all around us.  In some, we are being invited to answer someone else’s call.  In others, we are hoping someone will answer ours.

In either case, there is an unlimited pool of connected, intelligent, kind, loving people waiting to help manifest these Oprah moments.

In a world where the media wants us to believe that everything is falling apart, including human values and virtues, I believe that the reverse is true.  I believe that human values and virtues are alive and well.

What stands out is what we choose to focus on.

If we believe the world is filled with hate, violence, disrespect, distrust, lack of faith and people focused on destroying everything of value, then we are right.

However, if we think that the world is filled with love, kindness, faith, respect, trust and people committed to offering a helping hand to those in need, then we are right also.

We attract and create that which we believe in and embrace.

The Universe is constantly sending us signals of potential Oprah moments.  Whether they manifest or not depends in large part to how receptive we are to these signals and whether we take action once we have received the signal.

Remember how those Oprah moments always make us feel good when we see them or read about them?

Imagine how they’ll make us feel when we are participating in one.

C’mon …. make the rest of us cry and laugh and feel good about humanity by embracing or creating one.  Let’s open ourselves to feeling the love that envelops us when our heart is seized by an Oprah moment.

Right now.

Our beautiful world has an infinite supply of potential Oprah moments.

There is at least one within each of our spheres of influence right now …..… waiting.

We need to be alert and receptive to them.

Once we are there, we just need to step up and participate in them.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Check Your Passion at the Door

I was thinking the other day of a sign I saw on a developed beach many years ago.  I don’t recall the exact verbiage on the sign but it went something like this:

Beach Rules

No ball playing

No Frisbee playing

No swimming

No picnics or food consumption

No bicycles on boardwalk

No animals permitted

Enjoy the beach – it is here for your enjoyment

I remember reading this and laughing at the irony.  However, after I laughed, I noticed that the beach was also pretty much empty.  The intention by the owner had stifled any opportunity for most people to find fulfillment and therefore they stayed away regardless of what the owners thought the beach could provide for people.  People went elsewhere where their passions around beach usage could be explored and enjoyed.

The other day I was re-reading Donald R. Keough’s “The 10 Commandments for Business Failure” and I wasn’t laughing.   As I was reading this, I was thinking about a number of groups, business units and volunteer groups, that were unable to gain traction and momentum and they were on my mind as I read the book.

For those who haven’t read this great book, the 11 commandments (yes, there are 11) that Keough believes are embraced by people intent on snatching failure from the jaws of victory are as follows:

1. Quit taking risks

2. Be inflexible

3. Isolate yourself

4. Assume infallibility

5. Play the game close to the foul line – blur moral/ethical lines

6. Don’t take time to think

7. Put all your faith in experts and outside consultants

8. Love your bureaucracy

9. Send mixed messages

10. Be afraid of the future

11. Lose your passion for work, for life

For the sake of my thoughts today, I’m going to rename number 11 to read:

11. Lose your passion - or allow someone to take it from you

After re-reading this book and digesting its wisdom yet again, I stumbled upon a short half-page article on the web by Dr. Tom Cocklereece where he focused on the 11th commandment and discussed ways that churches are choking the passion out of people to make a difference to their church.  His brief article really resonated with me.

Dr. Cocklereece posits that if you really want to fail, then lose your passion – lose your optimism that the impossible is not only possible but is probable if your passion is strong enough.

He goes on to discuss the great idea killers of our society today, including the perennial favorites “that’s good enough.”, “that’s not my job.”, “I don’t care.”, “I’m retiring soon anyway.” or the classic “we have never done it that way before.”.

Here is my favorite lately.

“Don’t rock the boat”.

It comes in many flavors but it translates into the same thing:

You represent change and change is something I fear, so I will do whatever it takes to prevent you from changing my world even if my world needs change.

OR

I would rather not change and continue to demonstrate minimal results than change and produce results.

OR

The suggestion of change represents a threat to my authority since people will discover that I am not the only source of ideas and therefore I will block your initiatives to enhance our results in order to protect my authority.

People resisting such change will discover reserves of energy that they (and you) never thought they had.  If only they had that much passion for creating more measurable, impactful results in the first place.

I think there are many times when one shouldn’t rock the boat.  For example, if a group is producing great results or results that are already meeting the expectations of the upstream or downstream people of that group, then the group should be left alone.

If the group doesn’t actually want to achieve anything, the fact that you see potential is irrelevant – they are happy and should be left alone.

If the group is outside your forte, area of influence or responsibility, then you should probably leave them alone.

If you couldn’t do any better yourself, then you should leave them alone.

However, if the group is not meeting the expectations of the mandate established for them or are violating ethical, moral or legal guidelines then they deserve to be rocked.

If you are a member of the group or a group upstream or downstream from that group and are impacted as a result of their apathy, indifference or incompetence, then the group deserves to be rocked.

If they are promoting a message or mission of “x” and are intentionally misrepresenting traction towards that mission, then they deserve to be rocked.

If they are in a mode of constantly blaming everyone and everything else for their inability to execute and some of the previous criteria apply, then they deserve to be rocked.

That’s not to say that we should be on a personal mission to be looking for people and groups who need to be shaken up.  Not only would that be be exhausting, in many situations we don’t have the right to interfere.

However, I am witnessing more and more people who are directly involved with groups plagued with apathy, indifference or incompetence, have an awareness of unethical, immoral or illegal activities within those groups or have a knowledge of significantly better ways of delivering results and yet are choosing to look the other way, even if they know that people upstream or downstream from that group are being adversely impacted.

Looking the other way would be bad enough if they looked away and forgot about it.

However, they are consumed by what they are witnessing and tell people privately about how such actions violate their psyche based on some personal standard.  Publically, they claim to have no issues or concerns. 

However, their passion for correcting things is just talk.  For some reason, their passion will not carry them towards taking action.

They do this to protect personal or business interests, appearances, reputation (fearing the “why did you allow this to go on so long” question), friendships, etc.

“I don’t want to rock the boat”, they say, all the while suggesting it is clearly important to them because they can’t stop talking about it or better – they are constantly imploring you to carry their fight for them.

My thought to them in return:

“Isn’t it better to rock the boat then watch it sink?”

Maybe rocking the boat will slosh the stagnant water out of the boat, enabling it to ride higher in the water.  Maybe some excess cargo that is weighing the boat down will get sloshed out as well.

It was expressed to me recently that I should tone down my passion for excellence and results so that I don’t offend others in a particular group.

What’s wrong with asking those people to pick up their passion for excellence and results so that I am not offended or so that the people directly affected by their actions are not disappointed or offended?

If they are offended that their track record for producing no result is being challenged, perhaps they deserve to be offended.

Don’t the users of their product or service deserve the best result possible?

Why do we accept a lackluster result as acceptable under the guise of not offending someone?

In a world of political correctness, we are often cautioned not to offend the person not producing or contributing because “everyone is doing the best they can”. 

However, sometimes we need to gently point those people in a different direction, where they can produce a better result than where they are.  They will probably be happier anyway once they are in a place where their contribution is more in line with their abilities.

As Donald Trump once said, we need to be careful that we don’t get caught up in a world where “we reward people just for showing up”.

In a world where our ethical, moral and legal guidelines are constantly being evaluated and many times being relaxed, we need to start demanding a higher standard, not accepting a lower one.

What’s wrong with asking the frequently avoided questions, to use a term I first heard my friend Steve Bannister use?

Let’s start asking more questions.

Questions about passion.

Questions about purpose.

Questions about measurable outcomes.

Questions about ethics, morals and legalities.

Questions about achieving results.

Questions about consistency between our stated intentions and our actual execution.

Let’s not ask the questions as in “you have the wrong answers and I have the right ones”.

Let’s ask them from the standpoint of “if we ask the questions together and challenge each other towards a higher standard then we will produce a better result and we will all learn from the process”.

Let’s not be afraid to ask questions.  When asked from the standpoint of maximizing results in a respectful, collaborative and knowledge-sharing way, there is nothing wrong with asking them and in fact, we should ask them.

We are not trying to figure out who is right or wrong or who is smarter.

We are trying to figure out how to produce the best result possible.

Let’s not lower our expectations to the lowest common denominator.

Let’s raise them to the highest common denominator.

Let’s raise them to the best result possible based on our collective talents and not limit them based on the talents of the weakest link.

The consumers of our products and services deserve and demand it.

The members of these groups and organizations deserve it.

The people who invest their time, talent and treasure deserve it.

We deserve it.

The Earth deserves it.

Our children deserve it.

This is not a license to bully others as some people who resist change or protect apathy like to do.  It’s a license to collaborate and seek the best result possible.

It’s a license to live to your greatest potential, love yourself and others, learn (and share knowledge) and to leave a legacy.

If you are not making progress, move on – there is someone else out there desperate for your passion.  The folks you leave behind perhaps need to learn additional lessons before your respective passions can be in congruence.

Remember the law of the 4 SWs:

• some will
• some won’t
• so what
• someone’s waiting.

As Dr. Cocklereece closed his article:

If we truly value something we will do it—not just teach or talk about it.

Be passionate!

Your passion is simmering – what do you want to do with it and how badly do you want to achieve it?

Do you know the answer?

Good – what are you waiting for – get on with it.

The emperor is not wearing any clothes.  Someone is waiting for you to cry out.  Don’t worry – once you step up and call it, you will be surrounded by many people happy to step up and support you.

If your passion already has a home and is producing results, I thank you.  You are a role model from which we can all learn.

Whether your passion flows unrestrained or is still evolving, I thank you for it - we all benefit from it when the time is right for it to manifest.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

PS A day after I posted this, I came across a quote by Zig Ziglar that I thought embodied this post perfectly.

“Don’t be a wandering generality – become a meaningful specific”.

Live passionately and on purpose.

May your purpose be seized by your passion – don’t let anyone put your fire out.