CELEBRATE ALL OF IT

Holidays and personal celebration can create conundrums for leaders in organization. What belongs in the workplace?  What doesn't? What can be celebrated? What can't? It actually is a kind of all or nothing situation.

I vote all. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, The Songkran Water Festival in Thailand, Diwali Hindu Festival of Lights.  Bring on the food, the traditions and let people see one another's cultural background.

We need the richness, Diversity is messy. We are desperate for more than one way of thinking, being, celebrating, creating, selling, innovating, marketing, managing, leading to name a few areas that could benefit.

Don't tame down Christmas so that it doesn't offend anyone. Turn up all the other important cultural and religious celebration. Make all the equally loud and interesting and educating.

It is essential that we allow differences, respect differences and use differences to create organizations that work and flourish financially and as good places to work. Don't do cosmetic shallow efforts to look inclusive. BE it with all the pain in the rear it entails.
It is the laboratory for your future, both products and people. In science and in the workplace, rich differentiation and development is what keeps things evolving

MORE BETTER SLOWER

I just posted on my personal blog (www.truthburps.blogspot.com) about how literally, physically slowing down boosted my productivity and my satisfaction during a busy, frantic holiday season.

You do know that speed and the hysterical "more, better, faster" mantra is a contagious dis-ease in your company, don't you?  There is a principle in systems theory that what goes on at the largest or top level of a system is mirrored at the smaller or bottom level.  "What is within surrounds you." 

Two business books solidified my thinking. One is WHIPLASH: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe. The Other is: FOCUS: The Hidden Driver of Excellence.

Slower or slow just may be an important quality for your organization.

Slow:

—opens up space to see more clearly

—allows depth of thinking for new ideas

—takes your brain out of "fight or flight" thinking

—creates real engagement--not the assessment kind

—let's you course correct more as you head toward the result

—develops intrinsic satisfaction in the work

I would love to hear from you on Linkedin or here

Speed needs to be regulated in your business

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future 

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence

May 5, 2015

by Daniel Goleman  

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

Dec 6, 2016

by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe

I WONDER ABOUT BOREDOM

The definition of boredom is "the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest"!

How could a top leader be weary and restless through lack of interest?
Let me count the ways:

—Not having enough intrinsic interest in the business you lead

—Being numbed out by rote meetings with no real engagement

—Working with a team that is exhausted through pushing hard and creating very little movement 

—Thinking that work should be boring

—Having a calendar that is your dictator of time

—Not laughing enough with colleagues when you and they make ridiculous mistakes

—Not having a team that challenges you with their energy and ideas

—Becoming too narrow a person with no outside interests

—Thinking working hard is the only road to success, instead of just one

—Feeling tethered to an impossible task

One of the worst combinations is being bored while being incredibly challenged.
I've seen it derail top leaders. 

YOUR MOST BORING TASK

This is your most important and boring (only to you) task---taking the message that you have crafted to guide your company and talking about it incessantly with no change in language or nuance.

This is your most important and boring (only to you) task--taking the message that you have crafted to guide your company and talking about it incessantly with no change in language or nuance.

See what I mean? 

Of course you've done the excruciating job of creating the message. It must be 
THE lever that takes your company forward. It has to be right. It has to be strong. It has to be capable of guiding everyday decisions of people in the company. It must be believable and create optimism and the possibility of success. It must guide today and tomorrow.

And your mind may be elsewhere--five years ahead thinking of what the next message must be, wondering if you have to let go one of your top leaders, bored with the repetition of the message, even questioning it privately.

BUT this is your most important and boring task--taking the message that you have crafted to guide your company and talking about it incessantly with no change in language or nuance.

CONGRATULATIONS

The aftermath of the US election has created lots of "ain't it awful" discussions.
I've also had quite a few about school culture and leadership.
And about religions with dwindling membership because they don't ring true in action.

So, Congratulations. I see organizations being much more conscious of the culture they want to create, much more demanding of the need for the skills of emotional intelligence, much focused and intentional about purposed, and
more committed to zero tolerance of harassment of all kinds.

Go figure. The most maligned of institutions (corporations) turn out to be the most enlightened. Maybe because self-interest trumps stubbornness.
So--congratulations. And I mean it. No snide remark going to be made.

OFF THE GRID IN RANGELEY MAINE

Will be back next week.
No signal feels like free fall at first.
I need to be connected to everything and everyone.
Then a freedom sets in.
CEO's make sure you have free fall time.
Makes for better judgment, not to mention health

FOR MY NORTH AMERICAN LEADERS

Vote Please

Democracy is a relatively new bold and brave social experiment.
It was designed on the principles of tolerance and balance of power.
We forget that it is fragile
Support it. 

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