Irrational Leadership

If you jump from an 80-story building for the first 79 floors you have the unmistakable feeling of flying. It’s the sudden stop at the end that always gets you. That’s a story shared by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in a recent column regarding our current financial crisis.

It wasn’t long ago that we faced (or you might have personally felt) the “Dot-Com” bubble burst. Today we are experiencing what many are calling the “mother of all bursting bubbles.” This is not as isolated of an event as what happened when the technology stocks were sent into a tailspin. Each day we hear little bubbles burst all around us. Even my retired handyman found his riches evaporate with a pop.

Irrational exuberance was the media buzz word coined by Alan Greenspan during the dot-com burst. Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, stepped down in 2006. He recently called the banking and housing chaos “a ‘once-in-a-century credit tsunami’ that led to a breakdown in how the free market system functions.”

He said “the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and left him in a state of shocked disbelief.” It was a stunning admission.

I share Greenspan’s affinity for the philosophy of Ayn Rand. One of my favorite books is The Fountainhead. But I think Greenspan became irrationally exuberant himself around self-correcting individuals/businesses until he was blinded by his tunnel vision.

What went wrong from my perspective can be summed up in two words, irrational leadership. We lost connection to the basics. Like pulling a plug from the wall, we were somehow disconnected to the light of integrity. We were falling, but in our “un-self-corrected” self-created darkness, we thought we were flying.

Upon researching our costly calamity, it’s clearly evident that our financial crisis is far more complicated than first appearances. There is plenty of blame to go around. Like ghosts, solutions seem to appear and disappear in the shadows of the night.

It now seems overly obvious that many of our financial houses should not have been awarding home loans to people they knew could not pay and people who knew they could not pay should not have been able to request the loans. My exuberant hindsight.

The situation allows me to imagine a great plot twist for one of my other favorite books, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Tom Joad just moseys in from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in his near broken down jalopy and pulls up to the drive through window at the corner bank, orders his loan and signs his mortgage documents. Funny, but pure fast-food insanity.

Now, unfortunately, many Tom Joad’s in our world may be forced from their abodes while money transfers from our government coffers to more silk pockets seemingly without the due diligence such transactions should muster. More irrational leadership?

In my book, The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable, Abby Bancroft, one of the key characters, shares her thoughts as she closes her keynote address:

And finally, your leadership action should include ending the abusive use of power to exploit others. It’s time to take back your life. And urge others to take back theirs. It’s time to make one choice…leadership. It’s time to join an integrity revolution, the personal revolt against those who would make us decide between our integrity and our mortgage. Never fear the challenge, ladies and gentlemen, never back away. When we finally understand what really matters to us, that’s when we show up as a beacon for others, speak up to inequities and insults, step up to challenge the mundane or mediocre, and serve others with a sense of gratitude without being subservient. Most importantly, it is in this valiant effort that we create our own life legacy. Our masterpiece. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s about one choice. It’s about time. Thank you.”
It’s time for all of us to Show Up and close the gap between our beliefs and our behaviors. Remember, belief can move mountains. Fear and doubt create them. It’s time to Speak Up, discover our true voice, and help others find theirs. It’s time to create a positive script of the future and invite others to join with us. It’s time to Step Up and question everything, especially systems, policies and procedures. It’s time to urge others to see obstacles as opportunities. It’s time to Serve Up and create a diversified cast of talented leaders. It’s time to honor their individuality while we collaborate and coach them as they create their masterpiece.

It’s time to commit. Without commitment, nothing changes. Not you, not them, nothing.

Is irrational leadership alive and well in your workplace? Is it time for an integrity revolution? Share your stories. Let me know how I can help.

Play It Forward

With our newly minted president taking his seat of power in January, what’s the best way for him to bring us all together? Could it be music?

Reader Michael Desrys, contract manager with the California Department of Transportation, lightened my day a few weeks ago. He alerted me to a Bill Moyers television show that I had missed that introduced (at least to me), Mark Johnson, who is the co-director of a remarkable documentary about the simple but transformative power of music: Playing For Change: Peace through Music.

As Moyers shared, “The film brings together musicians from around the world - from blues singers in a waterlogged New Orleans, to chamber groups in Moscow and a South African choir - they celebrate songs familiar and new, to touch something common in each of us.”

I loved it. Not only do I want the music for my library, the overall concept is brilliant. Johnson videotapes each musician separately in their own city, town, village, or wherever they might be. More magic happens in the edit booth.

As Johnson tells Moyers, the idea came to him about ten years ago in New York City. “I was in a subway station on my way to work. You know, every day in the subway, people are just running around like crazy to get wherever they have to go.

“But this particular day, I was in the subway and I heard these two monks playing music. And they were painted head to toe, all in white, wearing robes. And one of them was playing a nylon guitar and the other one was singing in a language that I didn't understand and I imagine most people didn't understand.

“You know, there were about 200 people who just stopped. They didn't get on the train and started watching this music. And I looked around and I saw people with tears in their eyes.”

It was the collection of people with jaws dropped to the ground that was his inspiration. He realized that it was the music that brought them together.

“So it really inspired me. And it occurred to me that when there's no separation between music and people, when music is just happening and people can walk by and it can affect them, that this is an opportunity for us to really find a way to bring people together.”

Since this creation took ten years to create, did he ever think of just giving up?

Johnson told Moyers, “you know, I remember, as I started this project, it started to build more and more importance. And I remember at some point or another, realizing that we were going to represent the eyes on the faces of the kids on this planet.

“And that that was going to be our motivation. So there was no chance we were going to stop. Because the truth is, they need us to inspire each other and to create a better world. I mean, there's so many problems now with the economy and with war and a lot of depression. But at the end of the day, there's also so much hope because I can assure you, all over the world, people are beautiful and they want to unite together.

“Well, I think that in order to really unite people, you know, we have to show that in our darkest situations and in the places with the most struggles in the world, that we can find a way of uplifting each other out of it.

“We all know the world is changing. And we get to decide if it's changing for the better or if it's changing for the worse. And so with music, it opens up these doors that ordinarily wouldn't be opened.”

“Did anybody ever say to you, ‘Mark, don't be naïve’,” Moyers asked.

“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But to me, naïve is thinking that there's any other choice. You know? The only choice we have is to come together. And to inspire each other because that's the way that we'll create a better world for us now and for the kids tomorrow. “And the other truth is, I mean, you know, a lot of people are living in a world of fear. But we don't even know how long we're going to be in this world. So there's really no reason to fear anything. The most important thing is while we're here, let's make a difference together. That's what Playing for Change is trying to represent.”

We’ve all heard the phrase “music makes the world go round”. If that’s so, we need to turn up the volume. I urge you to check out Playing For Change and do what Michael did for me. Play it forward.

What I'm Reading

Sometimes a book comes along that does more than the author(s) intended. I see that with The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable. People have shared the strangest things they gleaned from my book that were never front of mind for me while writing it. I love when that happens.

With that in mind, I have recently been trying to figure out how to merge or deal with all of the social networking opportunities that one needs to do to keep getting the word out about my book and services. How do you prioritize between Facebook, Plaxo, Linked In, and the plethora of others. How can one person keep up? It’s almost a full-time job to update so many sites and keep track of your “friends.”

Don’t get me wrong, I want to stay in touch with everyone and the Internet is really a blessing. But, with my cry for help along came a suggestion from colleague Jim Kouzes. “You really need to read ‘Groundswell’ he told me. There are some great ideas within the covers.

He was right.

Groundswell is an easy read. The authors, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, begin by explaining what the groundswell is and why you need to deal with it now. They call the trend a “spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, take charge and get what they need.”

Li and Bernoff help you clear away the clutter so you can dive into this phenomenon with intelligence. They share consumer data, real client stories and focus on measurable business successes.

They share how the groundswell can threaten companies and brands as customers use each other for information. In another chapter they teach you how to evaluate new technologies as they come along.

Li and Bernoff don’t stop there. They provide strategies for tapping the groundswell and explain how focusing too much on the technology can be a huge mistake. Moreover, they conclude the book with a summary forecast which is very helpful in taking advantage of this trend over the next several years.

But what I found interesting (and maybe it’s just me, the leadership geek) is the similarity between their advice about the so-called groundswell and the leadership message from The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership™ from Kouzes and Posner.

In their words, they suggest coming to the process with an authentic point of view (Model the Way). If you are not real with your relationships (customers/employees) it will be glaring and the results will not be what you desire.

The vision you bring to your interaction with customers/employees (relationships) should be compelling (Inspire a Shared Vision). Every message should underscore the relationship and invite people to participate with you, not just purchase from or work for you.

Innovation (Challenge the Process) is key if you want to take advantage of this groundswell phenomenon. You must be constantly improving your message/product so your customers (external/internal) want to return and stay involved (Enable Others to Act).

And last, if you want people to stay connected to you, you must touch them at the heart level (Encourage the Heart). Your customers must understand at the deepest level that you appreciate them.

No matter the reason, if you are involved in growing your business in today’s marketplace (and who shouldn’t be), you should pick up a copy of Groundswell. Like The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable, it’s worth the effort.

Gratefulness

Although her name escapes me as I write this, many years ago, while attending a San Jose Rotary meeting, I had the opportunity to hear a great speech about not giving up when times are tough from a young lady who knew what she was talking about. She was born with no arms and no legs. It’s a condition that evidently the medical world still has no idea of the cause.

She shared personal stories of failure and success in her life and told all of us that she was thankful for her life regardless of the problems she encountered. I recall that she also announced she was getting married in the next month or so as well.

No one left that meeting without a new zest and appreciation for life.

I was reminded of her when a friend sent me a video of Nick Vujicic who also was born with no limbs and travels the world to share how he changed from a man with no limbs to a man with no limits. He is the male version of our Rotary speaker. Isn’t it interesting that we can find ourselves from time-to-time wallowing in our little troubles or carving the turkey on Thanksgiving Day without much of a thought?

Consumed with our worries we forget how blessed we are until we are stirred by someone like Nick. I’m sure he would love to have limbs like the rest of us, but he is determined to live his life with purpose. And that he does. His story is plastered all over the Internet. Watch him.

What are you thankful for this year? I would love to hear and share your stories. Take a moment and send me note. I would be very “grateful.”