I am a big fan of gratitude. To be grateful is perhaps my favorite feeling: when I experience gratitude, it opens me up to taking in beauty and love in a unique and complete way.
Here's a great quote about gratitude:
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~G.K. Chesterton
Today I celebrate everything for which I'm thankful. Life, health, and a brain that serves me well. My children, who are two of the most loving, deep, funny, true people I know – and who I adore without measure. My work, which challenges, stretches and intrigues me every single day. My business partner Jeff, who is like a brother to me, and who I trust 100% to have my back at all times. My actual siblings (including Ms. Kreamer), who grow more dear to me with every passing year. My Proteus colleagues, who are fun, smart and passionate about doing good work. My dear friends (you know who you are) who have seen me through the past two years, and who have taught me why it's wonderful to have strong, loving women in my life.
And finally, most particularly, I am profoundly grateful for my dearest Patrick, who is a daily joy to me; I thank the universe every day for his presence in my life.
What about you? What are you most thankful for today?
EXCLUSIVE: Smallest U.S. businesses borrowing again: PayNet | Small Business | Reuters.
Here’s a great little article. The main point: that very small businesses (those with less than $100,000 in outstanding debt) began borrowing again, cautiously, to invest in their businesses last spring, and have continued to do so ever since.
It goes on to note that “In past downturns, microbusinesses have led their larger counterparts in and out of the slumps.”
So this seems like a good sign – kind of like the first crocuses in spring.
I’ve been thinking about leaders lately, and how important good leaders are going to be over the next couple of years. As we start to come out of this recession, and to right our ship of state on a variety of levels, I’m noticing more than ever before how important it is for organizations to have strong and flexible leaders. I watch as those organizations whose leaders are too inflexible, too cautious, too short-sighted or too fear-based continue to founder, while those whose leaders are far-sighted, passionate, courageous, wise, generous and trustworthy seem to be finding their way much more quickly and easily.
And it just so happens that we at Proteus have and use a leadership model based on those six qualities, so it’s reinforcing our sense that these truly are the essential characteristics of good and effective leaders. We evolved our model based on “leader stories” from all over the world, going on the premise that folk and fairy tales tend to carry the “DNA” of our cultural expectations about what good leadership looks and feels like. If you’re interested, here is a little more explanation about the six qualities as they show up in these leader stories:
In these stories, the young leader-to-be can see beyond his current situation to his ultimate goal (save his father, win the princess, kill the monster), and can express it clearly and in a compelling and inclusive way – especially those whose help he needs – even when others lose sight of it, believe it’s impossible, or ridicule him for trying. He is Far-sighted.
Moreover, the leader-in-training doesn’t just go through the motions. He is deeply committed to his quest. His every action is directed toward achieving it. Nothing dissuades him, even the inevitable setbacks and disappointments attendant on any quest. He may not be loud about it, but he is relentless. He is Passionate.
Throughout the story, he is confronted with difficult situations. He may be afraid and lonely; he may feel like running away, longing for the comfort and safety of home. He often faces situations that are particularly trying for him personally. But he doesn’t turn aside; he doesn’t (unlike his brothers or others who attempt the same journey) make the safe and easy choices. He doesn’t wimp out. He is Courageous.
He’s not a cardboard action hero, though. His brain is tested, and he must be able to learn from his mistakes. In many versions of the story, he doesn’t initially follow the advice given him, and his mistakes create complexity and danger. The next time a similar situation arises, he behaves differently and succeeds at his task. He doesn’t deny or whine or blame; he improves. Finally, he uses his powers of discrimination to think through difficult choices and arrive at the best and most moral solution. He is thoughtful, appropriately humble, clear-headed and curious. He is Wise.
Along the way, the future leader meets people or creatures in need, and he helps them or shares with them even though his own supplies are low; even if helping them takes him out of his way or slows him down. In some versions of the story, he actually has to seem to sacrifice his life for those he loves or to whom he owes his loyalty (this always turns out OK in the end). And later on, when he is king, his people are prosperous and happy because he rules with an open hand — the leader is not stingy, miserly or selfish. He is Generous.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, his word is his bond. If he tells his dying father that he will find the magic potion to cure him, you know that he will. If he tells the princess that he will come back to marry her, she can send out the invitations. The hero does not equivocate or exaggerate. He is Trustworthy.
My next book (which I’m writing as we speak) is focused on this model and how to apply it in your own lifeas a leader – including how to build each of these characteristics in yourself and others. I’d love to hear ay feedback from you about what you’d like to see in the book and how I can make it most useful and interesting for my readers.
Many thanks in anticipation…
Office-Politics.
My extremely prolific and smart friend Franke James, of Dear Office-Politics and Bothered by My Green Conscience fame, has just done me the honor of writing a wonderful review of Being Strategic on office-politics.com.
As usual, she is both very kind and very clear – I love what she says about the book. She notes that the core of the book for her is the understanding that being strategic is a life skill, an understanding I hope for everyone who reads the book.
Esepcially now, as we all work to create sustainable post-recession careers and businesses, my wish for everyone is the ability and will to consistently focus on those core directional choices that will best move them toward their hoped-for future.
Thank you, Franke!
A few weeks ago, I posted a dialogue my brother Kurt and I had about this "reset" time in our nation's history. A number of people said they enjoyed it, but thought it was too long for a single post. So I've split it in half: here's the second part.
Continued from October 12…
KA: You say, “In my experience, it’s even better if you have a whole senior team who come to that vision together (often with the visionary leader as catalyst).” Well, sure — but my hands-on experience (in magazines, TV, the web and radio) is all startups, so it starts with the founder(s) who need(s) to possess and then instill the missionary vision in the team.
As for the Times, I meant: an irreplaceably excellent product that must struggle and reinvent to survive but isn't one (like the nightly network news in this day and age) that IMHO has become obsolete. The managers of most newspapers now, however, are simply presiding over their decline and fall.
EA: OK, so let’s get specific. How could the managers of excellent newspapers like the Times NOT simply preside over the dissolution of their businesses? I’m not asking you what they should morph into, but how you think they should go about re-inventing themselves – what’s the process? In other words, how do they get out of their own way and shift the momentum from decline-and- fall to renewal?
(And I do agree with you about start-ups, by the way. One or a couple of people need to have a great idea about which they’re passionate – and then to gather around them other people who catch that fever and are willing and able to translate it into reality.)
KA: The difficulty for newspapers, or "old media" generally — or for that matter any enterprise that finds the technological and financial underpinnings of its venerable existing business dissolving — is that they didn't really believe in the total analog-to-digital phase change for a long time. The denial was chronic and understandable. They had lucrative monopolies or quasi monopolies for a century or more, deeply entrenched editorial protocols and business models that worked, and a very high opinion of themselves that reached a kind of apogee in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam last third of the 20th century.
Then, 15 years ago, came the web, which very very few of them took very seriously, even as its transformative inflection-point power became the elephant in their room. Even as recently as five years ago, as newpaper circulation declined and they gave away their content for free to readers online, most of them weren't really scared or scrambling — because the market was telling them not to worry too much. But newspapers' dire position was obvious: at a symposium five years ago at the NYU journalism school I caused a small ruckus by saying that "newspapers are fucked." Back then the New York Times company's share price was $40, and now it's $8. And 95% of newspapers, because they aren't excellent and don't have a global brand, are in even worse shape. Newspapers should have started focusing hard (and still should, if they have a prayer) on what they can do well and uniquely, really forced themselves to understand and embrace digital opportunities deeply, proactively downsized and reorganized their staffs, generated online ”circulation” revenue, and so on. Hindsight is 20-20, sure, but the extent of the dithering and denial over the last decade is hard to defend
So what I'm saying is that it's very difficult for the proverbial frogs in the slowly heating pot of water to realize they're about to get boiled, and by they do they're so panicked it's almost impossible to think clearly about how to hop out of the pot. Or, to use a different metaphor, it's very hard for a complacent, business-as-usual government army to reconfigure itself as a nimble special-ops force. Because the Times has the luxury of betting that they will survive, they have responded, finally, pretty smartly, by becoming a very good web-based entity — and even more, by starting to think of itself as something like a perpetual startup, perpetually in danger. If an existing company in this reset age has a chance to survive, let alone thrive, I think its leaders and staff need to think of themselves more as scrappy guerillas in perpetual startup mode. And for many or most existing companies in many industries, that won't really be possible; the legacy mindsets and current dread are too dispiriting and hobbling. Which is why this is a great moment for actual startups.
EA: I completely agree that’s what’s needed. It’s the “beginner’s mind” you talk about in Reset. I very often offer the Michelangelo quote, “I’m still learning” as a mindset to emulate. Just today I was talking to some clients about questioning their business-as-usual assumptions. They kept saying “we have to do this in order to…” and I kept saying, “do you?”
And yes, the ‘legacy mindsets and current dread’ are huge impediments. Back to our earlier topic, though, I think vision, when connected to strategy, is a powerful antidote to that past-gravity mindset. If you create a possible future that’s more compelling than fear and inertia, and a practical path to get there, people quite often wake up and start moving in a right direction.
The good news is, even in a really big company, all it takes is one strong, clear, positive visionary at the top, who has the smarts and clout to surround him/herself with a team of like-minded and highly competent individuals.
KA: Those leaders who can "create a possible future that’s more compelling than fear and inertia, and a practical path to get there" are, of course, rare, but yes, it can be the whole ball game — for families and countries as well as organizations.
I am a big fan of gratitude. To be grateful is perhaps my favorite feeling: when I experience gratitude, it opens me up to taking in beauty and love in a unique and complete way. 