To not be cowards

# Chapter 257

Fatigue makes cowards of us all. - Masterminds

And angry cowards as often is the case. We can’t be the strong capable energetic people our worlds need us to be if we aren’t taking care of ourselves. Self-care first and foremost is a physical thing. These bodies are the one’s we experience life with for good or ill and how we care for them usually pays us back in spades. And if we don’t take care of them, they will once again pay us back in spades. Moreover I don’t agree with the thinking that you and I can start taking care of these bodies when they get old and feeble, most of the damage we do is cumulative and my stretch marks and skin cancers and sore joints prove that. Many of the challenges I face today at 60 years old, are payments on the decisions I made in my 30’s.

You also have to self-care for your mind. I stopped watching television, and more specifically the news services, in 2007. That was to protect my mind. Instead I carefully feed it challenging and difficult concepts to stretch and expand my capabilities and possibilities. Watching television in most any form will not help you accomplish this. Read well. Read widely! There is not a single TV in our home. Take care of your mind!

You also have to care for your soul. Your body and mind are useless to help others if your character and grace are absent. You have to find a path to dig deep and discover what God has intended for you. To find those reserves of compassion and courage and generosity and kindness in your walk with God is about the only way I have seen that this happens in humans. Take care of you so that you can be a powerful force of good in the universe. Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Sacrifice

# Chapter 256

As an entrepreneur, you must be willing to sacrifice for your people. - Masterminds

As an anybody you must be willing to sacrifice for your people. Not just as an entrepreneurs. If they are your people, your tribe, your compatriots then you are in the sacrificial lamb spot, as are all of them. I mean, you expect them to sacrifice for you, right? There is so much more each one of them could be I am sure, but that likely applies to you and me as well. We can be and do . . . more? Sure we can.

So the point I am making here is that the sacrifice goes both ways and that is as it should be. This is where devotion and loyalty are built and can be to everyone’s advantage. This is how legacies are started and companies are built and heirlooms are created. This is not just business, this is family and relationships and networks and the people that matter in our lives. So why is your sacrificing point even in question? Of course you are going to do this and do it enthusiastically.

Except people don’t. And I am not certain why they don’t, just it is clear from the Great Resignation that people don’t feel that their employers are sacrificing anything for them. They don’t feel like their basic needs are even being met, or that they are being valued in an appropriate manner, and yes, I am aware that the employees in question could all be wrong in their assumptions. But it is better if we are asking ourselves what role should I be playing here and am I completing my responsibilities and more here.

Grateful

# Chapter 255

We drink from wells we did not dig – we are warmed by fires we did not build. - Masterminds

This is true of everyone. And this is a statement of gratefulness. We all need more of that gratefulness. It is in far too short of supply! There are times in each of our days when it is especially difficult to be grateful and I am no exception to that. Like right now …but grateful we will try to be.

Currently we are keeping our youngest granddaughter three days a week and she is wonderful and brings so much joy to our lives. But she is a great reminder of this concept. She is being cared for and consuming resources and taking time and energy and she gives nothing back in return at this point in her life except joy. Now that is some exceptional joy, but still, babies only cost money, they don’t bring any in. And this was true of each and every person on the planet.

Moreover we often receive help that we haven’t earned early in our careers from mentors and teachers and coaches - and the concept above confirms and affirms that we all indebted to someone and occasionally many someones. We have what we need to survive without bringing material value to the mix. We have what is necessary to get started without the knowledge or the resources to contribute. The reality is that our dependence on one another is far higher than we think or feel. Today as usual Emma is warmed by the heater in my house, she drinks the water from my well, and one day she may do the same for me.

The price you are willing to pay

# Chapter 254

What am I dissatisfied about now? - Masterminds

What precise change are you going to bring about in the world? What is driving you crazy? What is wrong? What needs to be changed? What are you dissatisfied about now? Now as in today, because that is where action takes place, not in the occasion outrage at an injustice or gross wrongdoing, but what right now are you dissatisfied about? Said another way, what are you going to do to change this situation right now? Most people will never take any form of action unless the sense of dissatisfaction is regular and sustained. Furthermore, the sin against your nature has to be significant enough to hurt enough that action is demanded, an imperative. This is where you are motivated to be the change you want to see in the world.

This is the point where you decide what price you are willing and able to pay to see this change happen. This is point where dissatisfaction morphs into action or reaction. It is the tip of the iceberg, it is the beginning of change that is coming. This is the start of the path you will be walking 10 years from now. This is why I left my previous org. This is why I created my own NGO. This is why I changed fields of work. This is why I have the made the investments that I have made. This is why I have chosen the friends and networks I capitalize on around the world. These are the causes I fight for. These are the matters I am passion about. These are the changes I am determined to see happen. What are yours?

We want to work and to matter

# Chapter 253

When dissatisfaction + vision is greater than the resistance – people will change. - Masterminds

Let us continue with yesterday’s points. People in the modern world will only put up with so much crap and then they are going to bail. And that threshold continues to drop! In my 40 plus years in the world force, I have seen it drop tremendously. What we put up with decades ago, would not be tolerated for a moment in most work environments today. Of course, overseas this has not change nearly as much in many of the sweatshops I have seen in Eastern Europe and in South Asia. But even there, there is small incremental change. As society and personal wealth increase the standard of living, what one can expect and what one will tolerate are in flux.

It is interesting here in the USA, that the favorite saying in the work discussion is that people don’t want to work. I see little evidence for that. What people don’t want is toxic bad working places. Most people want to work and make a contribution and do something productive. Accomplishing something that matters is critical to most people. Its why we strive and sweat and work hard, to become something more than we are today, or that our parents were. Why would you think that we don’t want to work?? But most will continue to search for work that is both meaningful and that brings satisfaction. It doesn’t take much vision to create a mental picture that is preferable to a deplorable situation. As leaders its our responsibility to shape an environment where people thrive and want to be and work. Get to it!

Change is coming!

# Chapter 252

Change = dissatisfaction + vision + how we will do this. - Masterminds

Discontent with how things are, plus a vision of how they might be, plus a plan to get there, is always going to result in some form of change. You can bank on it. Less certain change happens all the time as well, with such an incredibly high number of people considering a job change, they just haven’t figured out the plan of how to get there yet. This is less certain change, because I thought about leaving my previous org for over a decade, and the vision of what could be and the plan of how to get there were always just out of my grasp. But then one day I received an ultimatum from the org and the discontent level overrode all other considerations, and I resigned. The vision and plan crystalized out of necessity. This is less certain change, because in situations like mine, often the org will make a counteroffer somewhere down the road, like mine did several times. And other times, the employee goes back to the org and asks for a position again. But change is coming! Get ready.

I haven’t read any solid statistics about this, so I don’t know how these changes generally work out for people. I am thrilled with my change, and I plan to work this all the way through until retirement. That means I have only worked for two orgs my entire post-collegiate life. I think more people though are like my daughter who has been changing jobs within her field every 12-18 months. Sometimes she gets headhunted, other times she just can’t live with the toxicity any longer and so she gets another job. But she is coming to find that most orgs have toxicity and it takes 12-18 months for it to fully come to the surface and ruin the vision you had for this place. I look for this daughter to change fields entirely because of this. Change is coming. Get ready.

Character development denied

# Chapter 251

Challenge creates character. - Masterminds

This proves my point from yesterday. That “treating” folks as they may become in the future is only viable if that treating is inspiring challenging and proving focused. I have often reflected that this is why I have so little character. My parents were of that generation that were determined that I never felt the consequences of my actions, nor encountered any real hardships. So my childhood is on them. My adulthood is on me. It took me a really long time to allow any challenges into my life and thus it took way way too long for any character at all to develop in me. At the sweet old age of 60, I now probably have the character of a normal 25 year old. That is so sad, but as bad as it is, I have friends who are older than me and yet further behind!! Like I said, it was a generational thing at the very least.

You need physical challenges, emotional challenges, and mental challenges. And if you are working in the church space, then you also need to add spiritual challenges. These challenges and disciplines and difficulties, create and build whatever character you may have. I now know that I can do far more physically than I ever dreamed possible when a teenager. I now know that it takes two people to have a conflict and that I don’t have to be one of them. I now have a framework for solving deep problems that the world is facing. And I intentionally got out of the church space. All of these are character statements.

The future you

# Chapter 250

Treat people as you believe they can be – not as they are. - Masterminds

If this means interact with people as you believe that they can and will become, then I get it. If it means responding to people as if they were their future nice amazing generous self, when in reality they are being an ass, I don’t get it. Having said that, treating people with optimism and generosity is generally a good thing. But no one is planning to interact with you on the basis of your future potential. Neither you nor this potential future merit that, and honestly this one smells like pixie dust and smoke to me. It sounds like a nice and politically correct thing to say. Unless you are part of the anti-meritocracy cohort, and this entrepreneur group is generally NOT since this is the school of hard work and diligence, then this premise for today’s chapter is disingenuous and false.

It can only be true in my world, if by “treat” we mean inspire, encourage, cheer, challenge, provoke and dare them to reach their potential. Any other “treat”ment is a disservice to your business or company and the other people who work there. Treating lazy uninspired disengaged slugs, as if they were first class producers, top salespeople, and the future CEO is a disservice to all. I would argue that treating these people as what you think their future may be, is in fact harming these current version of these people the most! They can’t possibly become the people you hope they will, unless they go through the experiences of being the people they are today.

What we have to give

# Chapter 249

You have so much to give to the world – you better start now. - Masterminds

Isn’t it the truth! Don’t wait another second! Pull that trigger now!! All you have is today! This moment! Get to it! And so on and so forth, but you aren’t feeling it? So I don’t know how to approach this . . . I guess you could say it feels unreasonable to expect that you have so much to give to the world, but you have been locked in your zip code so long you have forgotten, or never learned, that you can fly, that you can soar and that you are powerful and changing the world is what you were made to do. In fact you have such a large amount to give and to change, that you really need to start right away! First of all the world needs what you have immediately and second, you have so much to give that it will take the rest of your life to do it properly.

Or if you still aren’t feeling it, I guess you could say that you are feeling inadequate to tackle these humongous challenges and needs, but haven’t you made it this far? That was a lot more difficult than most people realize! Perhaps you have partially retired and wow, I am here to tell you that you are at the perfect place in life to step up and change the world - all that experience and wisdom! Or you are ready to change more than the world, you are ready to change careers? There is a place for you! You are just finishing school? Well that was tougher than anyone knows and now you are ready to start learning and contributing! We have a place for you! The only person this doesn’t apply to is the person who doesn’t care - you can stay home and binge watch YouTube, we don’t need you.

/“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” ~ Sigmund Freud/

The end at the beginning

# Chapter 248

When you start a project, ask this question: what does it look like when it’s done? - Masterminds

In my particular section of the non-profit and International Worker segment of the world, this question has never been asked and should be asked every single time! It has never been asked and I am not sure why, because lots of smart people are working in these areas. Perhaps it is enthusiasm overload, but I don’t think so really. Perhaps it is office management policies but I don’t think so. Perhaps it is the lack of smart, well trained people on the task, but I don’t think so. It seems to me that the real reasons this question is never asked are two-fold: because of the urgency of the situation, or because of intent to never end, at the beginning.

Many of the NGO’s I work with are at least partially working with and around disaster relief. Disaster relief requires a very quick response, and sitting down over coffee and planning for the what the end looks like is just not easily done. I give you that. But I would argue that these NGO’s can and should (and some have) have guidelines and principles in place, so that they will know when a project is done. However since disasters are also their primary fund-raising system, the end of the disaster is not sought after very eagerly. The International Worker has the same problem, his or her’s project generates all the funds, so why would I want it to be done?

This question/suggestion though, is posed by our entrepreneur group in the light of business. I would argue that no project planning is complete until someone can and will describe what it looks like when it is done, and not just in business, but in the NGO and IW fields as well. In business you aren’t using OPiuM (other people’s money) so you can’t let projects run on and on until infinity. They are costing you money and resources .

Focus is hard work too

# Chapter 247

Remove distractions – focus on the work – how do you spend your time? - Masterminds

I think few people understand how truly distracted we are and how fractured our focus has become. It is even getting more difficult to have conversations with people because they are so distracted they can’t complete their sentences and they segue constantly into rabbit holes and in other directions. All the while I try to be patient as I wait for the question. Often there is the uncomfortable pregnant silent moment when the person rambling along finally takes a breath. As they wait for you to answer the question they think they asked you, which they never did, distractions are so high and focus so broken that even basic conversation proves almost impossible.

Removing distractions is not just a physical activity, it is also a mental discipline and decision. The noisy dog barking outside is one distraction we are all in favor of removing. But Facebook email and instagram are distractions most are addicted to and they aren’t going anywhere easily. And then there is the second phenomena that I am observing with my clients, is that if they are successful in removing most of their distractions, they no longer know how to focus! They can’t focus!! They actually appear to be incapable of keeping their butts in their seat and getting the work done!

How do you spend your time? Well 80% of us are distracted. 19% of us are fighting distractions and removing them as we can and figure out how to do so, but we may discover that it doesn’t really help because we no longer seem to have the ability to focus. And 1% of us are wondering what this conversation is about because we have been focusing on our work. /“The successful man is the average man, focused.” ~ Anonymous/

Paying attention to your business is more difficult than you think

# Chapter 246

Pay attention to your business. - Masterminds

Well duh? Or is it? If you are like me, and like many other’s, we are in business because this what we want to do. Like I have a Leadership and Development NGO because I want to do Leadership and Development, not because I want to run a business. Do you see the problem? Even though I work full time at Leadership and Development, I spend far too little of my time and energy and focus ON the business. In fact as I sit and start calculating this week’s work that I am planning, I see once again that I have ignored the Business and am spending all my time consulting and training. This will not work to our advantage and we have to change it or both the business and the work will suffer. This process this morning has already changed my day significantly.

I wonder how to make that happen each day? For both of us? These Nutella inspired and coffee-fueled mini-chapters each day are pointless unless they help us do the right thing. These simple questions pondered, are far more paying attention to my business, than merely working in my business. So perhaps we need to ask a series of pointed question each day before we commit to a set of actions? While I have all the key legal requirements for the business already set on my calendar, perhaps I should think through the key advancement and progress steps that could be taken for the business and put them on the calandar as well? As you can see (well perhaps you can’t) I am typing more and more slowly as my attention is turning to my business and all the ways that I haven’t been paying attention and I want to get upstairs to my office and rectify that immediately. Pay attention to your business! Its too easy to get distracted.

Intentions

# Chapter 245

Create very clear intentions for yourself and your people. - Masterminds

This is a wonderful idea and may each of us do this and do this well. First of all create very clear intentions for yourself. Get yourself lined up and in gear. This is your aim, your goal, your resolution, your purpose, your objective, your target and your greatest wish and desire. This is what you exist for, what you were made for and what you want to leave this world having accomplished. Don’t be vague or fuzzy here, this is the place to be very very specific and concise and precise and to have an abundantly clear understanding of what you want and where you are going. This is what it means to create very clear intentions for yourself. Know what and where you are about and what it will look like when done.

If you are the boss and if your people require instructions then please, by all means, do the same for them - provide them with the clearest goals and objectives possible. Then you will be pleased with the results. They may be pleased with the process. If I work for you, then the clearer you can be about where we are going and what I contribute to that process or goal, the better. Provide me with the tools that I need to succeed. My success is your success. However . . .

However, this could easily become a prescription for micromanagement, and we really don’t want to go there. Nothing will deincentivize your team faster than micromanagement. In other words this could be come highly centralized around the one providing the clear intentions because of the insecurity of this person, or highly decentralized because the one providing the clear intentions is letting his people run with it. My experience overwhelmingly points to the decentralized model as superior. You decide.

What has to come first

# Chapter 244

Personal growth first – then professional. - Masterminds

This is a demanding idea. One I really like and as I sit here thinking about it, I realize how difficult it is to actualize. That is probably why we see it done so infrequently. And personal growth can feel icky depending on how personal we are thinking. There are at least two different pieces to personal growth, and the first one is just as important as the second one, though we often discard the first one entirely. The first piece to personal growth is to make space for it. Your working mothers especially need this, the child care to have time for personal development, the costs covered for personal development, the accountability to make sure it is done well. Making space in people’s lives is critical. Watching my own kids and their careers and their child care needs alone is pretty overwhelming, and consequently they end up living at my house! The second piece to personal development is to provide actual personal development material or coaches to actually do it! If you can make this happen, then your people may well soar. Unfortunately I can count on one hand how many times I have seen this addressed at all. And the few times I have seen it attempted, they made no accommodations for the parents of small children to have the margin or space for the development to occur. (Hint here: if you really want to make a huge difference, make this a part of regular working hours instead of outside regular working hours!)

The professional development piece is way more straight forward, you know what needs to happen and all you have to do is incentivize it.

Growing people

# Chapter 243

If your employees grow – your business will grow. - Masterminds

This is so very very different than the thinking about employment and engagement was, back in the 60’s and 70’s when I was growing up. Back then you were just happy to have any kind of job, and to receive any kind of paycheck. Now we have an entirely different world of employment and there are far more jobs than people to fill them, and we make different widgets now than we did back in the 1960’s. And we view employees differently now than we did in the 1960’s. I get the 60’s and I get now.

The problem here is that when my business owner clients develop their employees they invariably bail and go to work at a competitors shop. That deincentivizes my clients pretty throughly to not spend much time or money growing their employees. Having said that I have been running experiments with my NGO and the people we hire and allowing them the freedom to grow and spread their wings, and the more they succeed at this, the more the business grows. So I am seeing both sides of this play out and I think I get it. My employees come fairly complete. They might be able to get some advanced training and another advanced degree, but they come well educated and well experienced. Whereas my clients and their employees are usually at the front end of the development cycle. They are hiring kids right out of school, where I am hiring accomplished professionals in their 40’s.

Wherever you are on this scale, you have to look at all the issues and everyone’s situation has unique factors.

Who wants to stay?

# Chapter 242

Train your people so that they can leave – treat them so well they want to stay. - Masterminds

This works in business and in most any other organization as well. There is competition for great talent in every area, in the non-profit world, in the church world, in education, in Government, in the arts, you name it. But training is in short supply all across the board in my limited experience. Training seems to be the minimum required to have people barely do their jobs. The real training I received was taken at my own initiative and often at my own expense. In fact when I received my doctorate, my org wasn’t even interested. Not interested in using it, utilizing it, leveraging it, and certainly not interesting in learning from the study that took four years and covered six countries and directly related to the work they were doing!! Training me to the point that I could leave? Well that is what happened, but again the training was on me, after the basic requirements were met. I will say this for them though, if they decided you needed a piece of training, they put the parts into play so that you could get the training. Only it happen far too rarely.

But at the end of the day, it is not the training if like us you were given the freedom to pursue your own training, its the second part of the equation - treat them so well they want to stay. This is the mechanism that orgs fail at over and over. No matter how much training we get or don’t, in the end, we will leave because they don’t treat us well, or don’t value you, or don’t pay enough for the demands of the job, or the command structure is not user friendly. So much room for improvement on these two fronts!

Ultimate success

# Chapter 241

Lead people to success. Don’t try to drive them to success. - Masterminds

Leading people is always preferable to driving them, but I think both are difficult and challenging. Leading is the more difficult but far more fruitful as well. When you can inspire people to reach higher and further than they have ever before, the harvest that comes from that success is a really big deal. When this occurred to me as a youngster in my 20’s, it was intoxicating! When a series of success happens like this, it is transformative, and it takes on a life of its own. I no longer needed the leader helping me succeed, I became the leader! And that is the ultimate success because I have spent the remainder of my life creating more leaders and helping them move forward.

Driving people toward success is painful. First of all there isn’t any mental room for the person to give input into what they think would be considered success. Driving people toward success in my experience always includes a destination predetermined by someone else. That is acceptable if there is room for my input, but as I said, in my experience there isn’t. Driving people toward success is selfish, its all about the person doing the driving, not at all about the person being aimed toward “success”. And this is understanding that if you are being paid for a set of outcomes, then you have to produce those outcomes, no question. But if you would lead me toward success rather than driving me forward, who is to say that we won’t produce twice or three times as much as we would otherwise?? I have seen it happen and I have experienced it a number of times myself. Driving always loses out to leading.

A reflection of leadership

# Chapter 240

Culture reflects leadership. - Masterminds

As I am sitting here thinking about this, I am torn between agreeing with it and to what extent. Said another way, despots and dictators have as much influence as do saviors and inspirational figures. They can lead and the culture will reflect some/most of that leadership. Brenda and I were reading Russian newspapers last night and it was enlightening to see that the Press there is portraying the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a stratagem to save Ukrainians from themselves. We think of this a pure political propaganda. The media report in Russia can’t bear the weight of factual scrutiny. Yet the same thing happens here in the USA when Fox News reports or implies that the last presidential election was stolen, it can’t bear the weight of factual scrutiny. The facts don’t agree with the media report. These kinds of cultural propaganda that can be found everywhere, ignoring the facts, reinterpreting what the ignored facts really mean, creating a narrative that lives only in a bubble and deeply appeals to the political or religious or social desires of a segment of the population, are actually mirrors showing what a culture we have. Our limitations here are a reflection of us.

And so where does leadership fit into this social construct we call culture? Regardless of whether we are discussing politics, religion, economics, guns, social norms, work environments, education, pick your field of study, but leadership inspires or discourages, enables or restricts, provides freedom or produces fear, gives hope or despair, is the mechanism for justice and legislation as well as execution of these matters (at the political level). Leadership can lead to a better culture or it can reflect what culture is in place. You have some decisions today.

Your compelling why

# Chapter 239

Purpose drives motivation. - Masterminds

Here we continue the cult of why. Your why, simply makes all the difference. In fact, if you don’t have a clear purpose, a solid why for what you think you aim to do, then motivation is going to be a problem. Motivational challenges lead to all kinds of sad outcomes. Think about high school. Clearly most kids going to high school have a motivational challenge. They can’t see the purpose for most of what they are required to study. There are hazy tenuous lines between American History class and getting a job or finding a career or talking to the girl you want to ask out. There is no clear cut correlation, no motivation to dig in deep into American History nor any other kind of history. In fact one of the strange things I remember from high school is the disdain that we had for anything that did not have immediacy about it. In our small small world of high school understanding, if we couldn’t see the immediate benefit of study a subject, then it was essentially dismissed as irrelevant to our lives. Thankfully I grew out of that, primarily by obtaining a better set of friends, but that is a post for another day.

But I think this high school understanding of immediacy still drives far too much of our culture here in the USA. Those that stand out, those who succeed large, those who become far more than their high school version of themselves, develop a compelling why, they have purpose that provides fuel to meet all the hardships of life, they find motivation easily because of this purpose, this why. Know your why.

What do you feel strongly about?

# Chapter 238

Strong reasons = strong action. - Masterminds

When you know your why, pretty much everything is possible. I would even go as far as to say the stronger your reasons the stronger your actions. As I was sitting in church yesterday listening the narrative that we tell ourselves, it was pretty weak. Elegant, but not strong enough to change our course of actions from gun-loving, science-hating, political extremism. When all we are basically called to do is love God and love our neighbor. We don’t get either accomplished, because our strong reasons come from our cultural and political narratives and not our religious narrative.

This is easy to discern if you turn our equation-of-the-day around and look at our strong actions in order to see which strong reasons are driving them. We are far more swayed by being “American” and our political party, than we are any bible or teaching about loving anyone. And of course if you don’t claim to be a highly religious person this sounds normal to you. But I am a highly religious person and most of the people I hang out with are supposedly highly religious people and yet they aren’t. This is very disappointing to me.

However, in the work space, in the non-profit space, in the leadership and development space, this equation has high congruency. Look for people who have strong feelings and stronger thoughts about the goals you are accomplishing and you will find people who act strongly to see them accomplished.