Warning Bells

This morning I was reading more about the big losses at JPMorgan Chase. By most accounts, warning bells had been going off about the danger the bank was facing with its trading activities in London. Executives were tranquilized by their optimism. This type of emotional illusion is often present at the downfall of leaders.

This myopia, however, isn’t the exclusive purview of organizational leaders. We all get caught up in it from time to time. There was a groundswell of optimism in the U.S. about the continuous rise of housing prices. While there were some on the edges, who warned of the fallacy of this belief, many bet their 401k accounts or acquired greater debt than was prudent under the spell of this infectious optimism.

Warming bells go off and we don’t heed them. We believe they are not meant for us. Our intuition is often screaming “NO” and we override the warning with tranquilizing stories that are logical. It is the flaw of logical thinking that blinds us. There is no logic that can understand the complexity of the world. We can’t yet explain how a plant knows to grow roots and leaves and flowers. How then can we logically explain an economic system that is as much hidden as it is visible?

If we reorient our guidance system and allow intuition to be the centerpiece, we will rarely experience surprises. I’m not advocating ignoring the logical mind. I suggest we use it in a different way. Instead of having it be the captain of our boat, give it a new job. This job is to gather information that helps us better understand what our intuition is showing us. This broadened understanding helps us act with greater confidence and feel more peaceful.

I’m trusting intuition more and more. I see life-long patterns that orient me to not trust it. Every time I have ignored intuition lately, I look back and realize it showed me the truth of a situation and my mind’s confidence was not well placed. The journey continues.

Introspection and Leadership

In·tro·spec·tion – the act of looking within oneself. When I talk with leaders, they all agree they should take more time for introspection. When I ask them, “How would you do that?” They generally don’t have a clue.

Introspection needs a “pump primer”. I don’t simply sit in a chair and say to myself, “Well, what do I see?” Introspection is catalyzed by fully participating in activities that take me out of traditional conversations and into ones that touch my spirit. Some people read. Joseph Badaracco, a professor at the Harvard Business School, talks about the power of reading fiction for introspection in his book, Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature.

For others, it might be painting or horseback riding or carpentry. It’s about throwing oneself completely into this activity so that all the threads to the operational world are quieted and the act of introspection arises. Great leaders know the importance of this practice and they value it as much as a meeting with their most important constituents.

My personal practice for introspection is reading and writing poetry. When I lose myself into the feeling that comes from being with a poem, a mirror arises and I see myself in ways that were not possible before. A recent poem that touched my soul follows this post.

I encourage you to find your place to lose yourself. While I talk about leaders in this blog, I really mean you, for each of us is a leader in some way.

Until later,

Thomas

What Can I Say

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.

~ Mary Oliver ~

A New Way to Support Each Other…

I’m a long-time entrepreneur.  In the past, I secured money for business ideas in traditional ways, either from friends and family or professional investors. While funding wasn’t easy, it was still possible, if you had a good-enough idea and were able to instill confidence in the investors.

Today, it’s very different, especially after 2008. Small business startups (particularly for women) are having difficulty in finding funding even for the best of idea. I find this odd, particularly since small businesses are the job engine for the U.S. economy. To make matters worse, commercial banks, for the most part, have decided they are not interested in small business at all.

In doing research for my radio program, I found an emerging environment that is helping thousands of people get the support they need that doesn’t require government subsidies or loans. Building upon the social networks and the Internet, people like you and I are making donations or loans and providing equity to help worthy business ideas get off the ground.

This new environment is called crowdfunding. I talked with experts on the evolution of this phenomena and entrepreneurs, who are providing funding portals and programs that help connect donors and investors with those who need funding. You can listen to these conversations by clicking on Business Matters Radio.

I also took a look at the potential impact of the Jobs Act of 2012, which was recently signed by the President. For the first time, it opens the potential funding to small business from people who are not “accredited investors”. We may be seeing the dawning of a new financial system that can truly democratize business financing.

Until tomorrow,

Thomas

What is your Greatness?

 Simple question, “What are you great at?” Some can sing and others are great with relationships. Solving complex math problems is easy for another, while growing plants is someone else’s sweet spot. We are each endowed with “gifts” that are ours to polish.

It took me some time to understand what my gifts are. For starters, I was quickly relegated into thinking about my life in terms of roles. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was a question asked often by well-meaning relatives and adults. Usually they brought a set of approved of answers with the question. The problem is, this was the wrong question to ask.

I was on a track that was guided by others early on. By junior high, I was sure I wanted to be an electronics engineer. It was an improved version of my dad. Coming out of high school, I switched to being a business person. I wanted to be someone who managed and led people. This orientation was amplified in college.

So off I went on my life’s journey with my programming loaded. I had success and failure along the way. This was measured by the financial outcome of the businesses I started or managed. Deep inside, I felt a rumbling that this was the wrong way to think about myself. Yet, it persisted for many years.

As I slid into my 50s, my restlessness was pretty intense. I was reasonably good at the business game, and still, something felt off. I didn’t feel particularly energized by each win or loss. This unrest reached a crescendo a few years later. With the assistance of some wonderful teachers, I began to ask of myself the questions that the adults of my childhood didn’t know to ask.

I wondered what my purpose was. What was calling me to service? I also began to unearth what I loved to do. Most of my revelations were what I already knew. I held it in a new light. I realized that these things I did well, like understanding others concerns, seeing the truth of a situation, and clearly communicating were not fully developed.

Gifts are like precious stones, they are valuable in the raw form. Their real value though, can be more readily seen when they are polished and their facets are revealed. For the past ten years, I’ve been working on polishing my gifts and finding that they become great when I do.

Recently, I embraced writing as a gift and I have been exploring the craft of writing. It is exhilarating mostly and frustrating at times. Walking this track is honing my understanding of deepening a gift through recognizing the craft that surrounds it.

I am finding my greatness. It’s different than I thought and not about being better than anyone else. It’s polishing those stones and appreciating their facets.

Thomas

What do you do when you get lost?

It seems to happen every day. I have the feeling of being lost. Uncertainty creeps in, and I lose touch with my inner rudder. Sometimes, it shows up as confusion and at other times, I feel overwhelmed. I may feel physically tired or emotionally grumpy. My “tells” let me know that I’m teetering on the brink of going off in to the weeds.

From my work, I know many experience this. They are unaware, and only after being lost for a while, do they realize that something’s out of sync. Then their own inner programing kicks in and they either feel upset or paralyzed, or get into gear to get back into their center.

There is a simple way to get back in the game, so to speak. When I remember, then I follow this practice, and the wheels starting turning again and the inner humming of contentment returns.

“What is this simple practice?”, you ask.

1. The first step is to recognize that something’s off. I mentioned my own signs. You know what yours are because you experience them often. Every hour, check in and ask, “How is my body?”. If the response is, “Everything’s great.” and that feels right, then all systems are go. If on the other hand, you either don’t feel any response to the question, or you feel that something’s off, it’s critical that you stop whatever you are doing and go to step 2.

1. Now that you know something’s amiss, you can begin to listen to the inner voice. We all know this voice that tells us something’s wrong like “you’re not good enough” or “that person doesn’t like you” or “wow, did you screw up”.

I call this the voice of distraction. Listen to it, without allowing yourself to be carried away by its message. This requires your full attention. If you deny the voice, then it just waits for another opportunity to show up and usually much louder. Allow the voice to have its say, without reacting to what’s said (this is the tricky part – for we are programed to either agree with or resist the voice), then something truly amazing takes place.  Whatever was distracting you falls away. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it really works.

Now reconnect with what your intention for the day was. If that still feels like your right course, get back on track. Sometimes, you realize that it’s time to move on to something else. So do that.

Three simple steps and you can recover so much lost time and really lower your frustration. The key is to keep checking in with your body and then remember to follow the steps.

Let me know how this helps you.

Thomas

Clearing away confusion about being a member of a community.

I find my involvement in communities to be confusing. I show up with different concerns and expectations than others. I’m not sure what I can reveal and what I have to protect. I’m afraid to give my all, in case things don’t work out and I have all my eggs in one basket.

These concerns are at the core of why great communities are challenging to create and even more challenging to grow. Yet, communities are at the core of our humanity. For millennia, we needed communities in the form of tribal villages to survive. There were animals that wanted to eat us, and later other tribes that wanted to conquer us. As we evolved, we found communities to be a vital structure for agriculture and cultural development.

Most of the U.S. population lives in cities that bring out the challenges of living together in communities with modern concerns. There is an even greater lack of clarity about what it is to be a member of a community as many of us participate in them online.

Rather than let my uncertainty paralyze me, I sought help. Last year, as part of the Inside Out Radio program, I invited three guests who are leaders in developing successful communities.

My first interview, which is provided below was with Margaret Wheatley. I first encountered Meg when I read her book, A Simpler Way, where I received insights into seeing organizations as evolving systems. Since then, I have read each of her five additional books with great interest and gratitude.

Meg is the founder of the The Berkana Institute, a global charitable foundation. Berkana works in partnership with a rich diversity of people around the world who strengthen their communities by working with the wisdom and wealth already present in their people, traditions and environment.

I hope you find this conversation valuable. If you do, drop me a note.

Download MP3

Moving On

Today’s reflection is a poem I wrote about ten years ago about moving on when a chapter of life is completed.

Moving On

The dust swirled around the
town square like the last smoke
of the big fire of ‘94.

Gathered around the outreaching
oak tree were the citizens, who
made up the town’s elite.

Where has he gone, they asked
in a gentle cadence, like the blues
he used to sing.

Haven’t seen him since the last
party he gave, was the only
verse the mayor could add.

As if god had reached his hand
into the town and extracted one
of their own, Wilson had vanished.

Some said that he just got kidnapped,
and a ransom note would be forthcoming
on the next inbound train.

Others were sure that he had found a
new love, and left in embarrassment over
the town’s lack of appeal.

Someone said they saw him in the
city having lunch with suspicious
men, who may have done him harm.

All in all, they did not know where
he was. His life just ended in this town.
No goodbyes. No message.

Perhaps he had learned about moving
On. When the fat lady dies the opera
is really over and so the curtain closes.

Don’t Believe What They Tell You!

You may know we were facing the need to move off the farm. It was being sold and we needed to find a home that felt good to all of us. We were down to the wire, and then good fortune presented us a great place. On this property are both a very clear, free-running stream and a spring-fed pond. The owner recently told me that in the past he had stocked the pond with several breeds of fish, but the birds and other wildlife had wiped them out.

Believable story. I accepted what he said and didn’t think anything about it. In the middle of last week, our 13-year old came in and said he saw big fish swimming in the pond. I was skeptical. After all, the owner said there were no fish.

A few days later, he finally coaxed me to walk around the pond with him. Sure enough, there were a reasonable number of sizable trout swimming around. I began to wonder how often I accept something as true because someone, whom I trust, tells me it’s so. Whether it’s a government official, a teacher, a parent, a friend or, in this case, the owner of this property.

The power of belief is far greater than I realize. I acquire so many beliefs through the simple process of accepting what someone else says as truth. In fact, this process is so automatic that I’m often unaware I have registered another “truth” into my world.

The consequence of this process is a largely unexamined worldview. Most of what I believe about the world around me and the people in it comes from what other people say. If I hold the person offering their opinion in high esteem, then I hold onto this belief for dear life.

I don’t have to look far to see the impact of holding onto beliefs. In the world of science, physicists began to realize that Newtonian physics didn’t accurately explain some of their observations. These scientists were not bound by their previous beliefs, and began to look for new understandings that made sense of what they saw. When they published their findings, many of their peers scoffed at them and said what they found was impossible.

We know the outcome of this story. Over time, the worldview of physicists changed and now the rules of quantum physics are an accepted roadmap. This phenomenon is true in every aspect of life. We hold so many beliefs to be true and fight to keep them intact. We refuse to look at the world beyond these beliefs.

There seems to be a profoundly simple reason that we are locked into this structure. More that anything, we want certainty in our lives. We want to know why things are the way they are. We want to know what to expect from each interaction. We want to know that the next moment will be a continuum of the last moment.

This drive for certainty often produces that which we most fear – uncertainty. How often are we surprised or disappointed? A simple example is the tenuous situation many baby boomers are finding when they consider their financial future. They believed the stories that they should put aside money for their retirement. They trusted the stories of money managers and believed that they would have a secure retirement. Many are finding the long-awaited retirement is not possible and they continue working.

The process of unwinding our reliance on beliefs can be unsettling. We hold on to this need so strongly that we miss out on the real world that is hidden before our eyes.

Today, I begin the process of writing regularly on Thursdays about the road to letting go of the limitations acquired from beliefs, and experiencing a life that is truly beyond belief.  This process is a bit like planting seeds. As you read something, it may take a bit of time to germinate. That’s good. By allowing your own timing for learning to be your guide, you can reap the full benefit of what’s offered.

Until later,

Thomas

Poetry in Business

Since my original interview with poet David Whyte, I have brought this conversation back for renewed listening at least once a year. David is a most unusual man. He was trained as a marine zoologist and found his heart in the words that flow from his soul.

Why David is unusual is that he brings the muse of poetry to awaken corporate leaders to their inner courage and creativity. He offers this rich context to the inner sanctums of organizations large and small and, as a teacher, to places of business learning including Oxford.

I know you will find a pleasant knock of the door of “aha” moments should you listen to this 2008 interview.

Listen to this conversation | Download MP3

Conversation with Richard Heinberg on the End of Growth as We Know It!

We are the most successful large animal species in the history of the planet. Our success is evident in our global population growth from a billion in 1804 to 7 billion today that has been fueled by the impact of the industrial revolution..

We have been successful in supporting this growth through innovation. Starting with our harnessing the use of fire, we have continuously developed new ways to expand our use of the planet’s resources, and our ability to lead more and more comfortable lives.

These innovations have always come at a cost. For instance, when we look at Mayan civilization, we find that their advancement as a culture was founded on their ability to grow their agricultural base. At some point, their population outstripped the available resources and the civilization quickly disappeared.

Are we at a similar moment that will be experienced on a global scale? One of the people who has been exploring this question is Richard Heinberg. Richard has been studying the human impact on the planet, particularly our use of fossil fuels, for decades.

His latest book is The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, where he makes a compelling argument that the global economy has reached a fateful turning point. Richard proposes that we can continue to thrive if we maximize happiness rather than the pursuit of growth at any cost.

Whether you believe Richard’s perspective or not, you will find this interview to be compelling and to leave you with food for thought.

Until tomorrow,

Thomas

Listen to this conversation | Download MP3