Nov

29

Family, Work and the Work Family

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The ground we stand on feels so shaky and unsure these days.  Some call us to return to the past.  Others push to a new future.  In a way, I think they’re both right.

Jen, Jack and I had the privilege and pleasure of sharing a Shabbos dinner with our Orthodox Jewish friends, the Torgows.  Talk about looking back.  In their ancient tradition, Shabbos or Shabbat (or the Sabbath, to Christians) is a centuries-old ritual, and they live it in just that way.  For 24 hours beginning on sundown Friday, there’s no cars, cell phones, TV, VCRs, X-Box, PDAs, you get it.  Instead, they remember G-d who did some awesome work before He rested on the seventh day.  And they savor – or kvell in – the gift of family.  The supper-service began with a beautiful prayer of tribute to the women of the family.  At another point the fathers stood and blessed each of their sons, with a Hebrew blessing the dads read while pressing their lips to their son’s heads.  Five baby-to-toddler grandchildren were passed about, or padded around, throughout the meal.  Jennifer and I reflected on our way home how this central experience of Shabbat in the Torgow family combines with the technology black-out to produce a highly counter-cultural experience: Their adult children tend to stay near home.  Three of the four adult Torgow children wheeled their children home that evening in strollers.  While many of us celebrated our Thanksgiving weekend as a once-a-year family gathering, bookended by snarling air and road traffic; these folks experience the family gathering every week.

In our worlds in which we’re too busy to eat together, technology invades every last minute, and “successful” families see their children cast to the winds, the Orthodox Jews have rituals that center them and build families of enviable closeness and support.

On the other end of the spectrum, great modern businesses also celebrate family. Some just invite family in.  You can bring your daughters and sons to work – even if once a year – or visit them in the onsite daycare facility to humanize the work place (Google and others allow the family members of the pet kingdom in, too).  Some great workplace democracies like Ann Arbor’s Menlo Innovations (see a bunch of such cool companies at www.worldblu.com) encourage young moms to have their babies right there in their open workplace, and some force their workers to go home after 8 hours and to leave work at work.  Great businesses also create “family” among co-workers.  They beckon us into a world where work can be profoundly meaningful – not just because of what we do but also because of how and with whom we do it.  We are blessed in my wife’s administration to have built a community of people dedicated to making Michigan a better place and making their co-workers better people.  We hope in another year we will find places of such deep purpose, shared values, and kinship.  And we should thank the awesome business people who go to bed at night – especially in this great recession – thinking not just about how they will feed their own families, but how they will keep people employed and able to support theirs.

As we return from a weekend – a Shabbat or a Thanksgiving – we ought to fight the urge to depersonalize our work spaces and our fellow workers.  Whether you’re going back to centuries-old established traditions, or building new ones for a new culture, don’t lose sight of the great people about you and of the power of community,

As you lead with your best self,

Dan

Nov

22

Short RFL Long on Thanks

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We give Thanks that this is a short week!  And, so I’ll strive for a 40% shorter RFL J

On the Everyday Leadership Radio Show I’ll spend both hours with four of the teacher/researchers of the University of Michigan’s Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship.  This group does fascinating work – all from the perspective that’s positive-rather-than-pathological.  They look at what works, at the “positive deviance” of high-achieving groups, at the productivity of high-energy organizations, and even at the positive power that flows from loss.  These guys are Michigan’s best kept secret when it comes to leadership and work.  They always uplift, inspire, and often surprise me with their research.  If you don’t listen in live on Saturday, then Google the podcast later; they’ll get you geeked.

I want to publicly thank Kim Cameron of the Center for POS for his work on writing a daily thanks journal.  Consider buying one for yourself or somebody else during these holidays.  Kim has written about the research-proven power of ending your day by writing thanks.  I attest to a much-improved attitude since I began doing it last year.

Lastly, on my website I’ve pulled together 11 really fun songs of thanks.  They range from Country to Gospel to Reggae to Indian to old Bing Crosby himself!  Might be a fun CD or podcast to build, especially if you’ve got a long drive or travel time this week. In both music and lyrics, they give thanks and uplift.

Give a lot of thanks this week, as you

Lead with your best self!

Dan

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Nov

15

My Mom the Deviant – Leads in This Brutal Recession

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A cousin of mine with five kids under seven has been without a job since May.  My mom sprang into action last night, making calls, bundling checks from each of her seven kids.

I think the scholars I admire at the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan would call Mom a great example of “positive deviance!”

This recession sucks.  There’s enough sadness, anger, and fear to point about a million fingers.  But it also affords a lot of chances for humanity to emerge, too, and for positive deviance. Is there a wise tradition that denies this?

  • Zen says all of life is suffering.  And ego makes it so, or at least prolongs it.  Suffering can lead us to true presence for the first time.
  • Jesus says, “If a man would gain his life, he must lose it,” and “blessed are the poor in spirit.”
  • A Mormon scholar writes:  “It may well be that only those who undergo suffering can fully empathize with the suffering soul. Only those who go down into the depths of humility with a broken heart and a contrite spirit can fully understand the Master and the path he trod. Therefore, in times of suffering perhaps it is faith we need, rather than rational understanding. Perhaps our prayers should be for strength to bear up under the burden rather than to have the burden removed. (See Mosiah 24:13–15.) Perhaps the road we may have to tread through suffering leads ultimately to important discoveries of the soul.”*
  • A Muslim Fatwa speaks to suffering, offering multiple explanations, including that “Allah allows some people to suffer in order to test their patience and steadfastness.”  This explanation also offers a point other religions sometimes miss.  “Allah sometimes allows some people to suffer to test others, how they react to them. When you see a person who is sick, poor and needy, then you are tested by Allah. Allah is there with that suffering person to test your charity and your faith.”  (emphasis added)
  • Job offers an amazing example of faith in challenge (as well as plenty of examples of how to be a rotten friend)

Kouzes and Posner say it in leadership jargon:  “only challenge produces the opportunity for greatness.”  I’ve been thinking that only challenge produces the opportunity for authenticity.  If you don’t bump against something big, don’t get your edges shaved off, don’t test yourself, how will you know who you are, what you’re really made of?  And if you’re not challenged by others’ suffering, who are you really?

We’re not just solitary soldiers.  Part of what we’re made of is the family and community that surrounds and defines us.  So, amidst the anger, impatience, and fear, I lift up my cousin in struggle and my Mom’s positive deviance.  Mom shows a wonderful example of how challenge offers an opportunity for compassion and action…

To lead with your best self

*Arthur Bassett, “What the Scriptures Saying about Suffering?” found at http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=319fdc9c3753c010VgnVCM100000
4d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD on November 15, 2009.

** Mufti Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, Why Does Allah Allow Suffering and Evil in the World? Found at:  http://en.allexperts.com/q/Islam-947/Islam-Explain-Suffering.htm accessed on November 15, 2009.

Nov

8

The Human Freedom to Plot a Path to Somewhere Great

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It has often struck me that one of the major ways we differ from other animals is our ability to see a longer term vision and plot a course to get there.  Unlike squirrels or dogs we do much more than react on-the-spot.  As artists, we can envision a finished painting, song, or book, and then it can unfold.  Like good chess players, we can anticipate, see opposition and plan accordingly. And when we set such goals and lay out plans, amazing things happen.  It has been the mysterious norm in my experience that if I begin with a good endpoint in mind, e.g., to be on the radio, finish a book or a marathon, or raise self-sufficient and contributing adults, all kinds of crazy things start to fall into place to help me achieve it. Things happen I could not even have imagined . . . but with a vision comes a new openness to possibilities.  The vision of the end is absolutely key, the planning is vital, and yet there’s that something else that happens when we listen to our deepest purpose.  It’s as if the world wants us to manifest that.

 Julia Cameron described this in The Artist’s Way: “the universe falls in with worthy plans and most especially with festive and expansive ones.  I have seldom conceived a delicious plan without being given the means to accomplish it.  Understand that the what must come before the how.  First, choose what you would do.  The how usually falls into place of itself.”

So, just decide on the “what,” the vision, the endpoint, right?  But here’s the kicker:  Humans find it mightily hard to exercise this incredible freedom to decide on and commit to an endpoint.  I have my suspicions why it’s so hard to fix on what Cameron describes as “worthy…festive and expansive…delicious” plans.  I think we’re afraid of change, afraid of selecting the “wrong” vision, or afraid we’ll go after what we really want only to find out that we can’t accomplish it.   So we don’t get our hopes up, resign ourselves to fate and hope good will come.  But what a waste!  Life, as we know it, comes around once.  Why not go for it???

A new year also only rolls around once, so I invite you to make 2010 a “10” in your life.  I am hosting two retreats at the beginning of January to offer people a chance to really pay attention to their own life and their dreams, and to set some worthy, exciting, important three to five year targets in place.  Then you’ll have a chance to plot that out, with targets for this year, and action steps down to what you’ll do in the next 2 weeks.  You’ll get incredible feedback and gain allies who can help you move forward.  I have offered five such retreats so far, and they have gotten rave reviews.  The Detroit retreat will be Thursday-Friday, January 7-8 at the Atheneum Hotel in Greektown; the early bird cost for the retreat is just under a thousand dollars.  The following Thursday-Saturday, January 14-16,  I’ll host a second retreat at the Avenue Inn on Saint Charles (the streetcar) Avenue in New Orleans.  This one will especially target leading in challenging times.  The early-bird cost for New Orleans is $1699.  Complete information is on the Retreat page on my website.

Think about a plan, maybe giving yourself this time with me and some great colleagues to help you step back, think big and

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Nov

1

They Need to Fix It. They – Who?

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Pop! Culture sometimes reveals everyday leadership better than any scholar. If you have ever wielded authority – as a boss, parent, owner, manager, principal, superintendent – and you have never viewed Oscar Rogers’ take on last year’s financial meltdown, then do yourself a 1-minute 59-second favor and watch this hilarious Saturday Night Live video before you go any further. (It won’t kill you to start Monday with a laugh.)

I don’t know about you, but I especially love the part at about 1:40 where straight man Seth Meyers asks Oscar to move beyond the “fix it” prescription to at least tell us who should “fix it.” The apoplectic Oscar blurts out “they” should – they broke it; they need to fix it. The video underlies the absurdity of the notion that Obama, Geithner, Bernanke or some other superhero can reverse the effects of literally millions of bad decisions by lenders, borrowers, speculators, regulators, and executives. If, and as, people build their savings, banks revalue and write off toxic assets, companies get leaner and healthier, and government plays a constructive role, we’ll get out of this mess. If there are any magic wands, they’re like rooftop solar panels or backyard wind spires: it’s gonna take a lot and it’s gonna take a while.

Jen and Jack and I saw “This Is It,” the movie about the making of Michael Jackson’s never-to-be-held-concert. Despite the movie’s unsurprising Michael-centric indulgences, the producers also revealed and celebrated the enormity of talent and teamwork among the dancers, technicians, musicians, choreographers and others who were building the show. Michael was a complicated, afflicted, unusual and controversial person. And he was inspirational and poetic. In the concert he planned to rally people around defending the environment, and in one short passage, he says it’s up to us to do it. He says so many people think “they will take care of it,” and then he stunningly asks in two words, “They, who?”

Oscar Rogers shows how we follow with our worst, fearful self, crying like children, “Fix it.” And Michael, like him or not, asks the everyday leader’s question, “They, who?”

They me, they you.

Lead with your best self,

Dan

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