Goals for the New Year? How About Your Legacy?

I’ve spent some time with my grandmother this week as she lies dying in hospital.  

My grandmother doesn’t react to many of the things that I say to her but she appears to enjoy hearing me read from Scripture. 

As she rests, I take out my journal and think about her life.  She brought 12 children into the world.  She lived in a small rural town that has seen it’s boom and bust cycle now settle into the steady decline so unfortunately common in remote, rural places.  She never had much but she made do with what she had. 

Now here she is – alone and in her final days.  She doesn’t have time to change anything even if she wanted to.  Everything she can create has been created. 

Her legacy lives on in her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

How is your legacy coming along?

Do you ever factor your legacy into your plans as you come up with your list of New Year’s resolutions and promises to yourself and others?

If you don’t, the odds of you achieving your resolutions have been proven to be staggeringly not in your favor.

So as you go through the typical year-end gyrations for what the New Year brings, ask yourself these questions:

1. How can I live a life with purpose?  Better yet, do I know what my purpose is?
2. Who can I love more and in an unconditional manner?  How can I welcome more love?
3. What can I learn in 2010 that will make me a better person?  Once I have learned it, who can I share it with?
4. What legacy am I leaving behind?  How will I be remembered?  Am I happy with this?

Our end-0f-days draws closer for each of us with each passing day. 

As you establish your resolutions, dreams and aspirations for 2010, keep the big picture of your life and your legacy in mind.

Your life, your gifts and your talents are too valuable to settle for anything less. 

I raise a toast to your legacy.  May it be everything you wish it to be and more.

I wish you all a blessed 2010 filled with abundance of life, love, learning and sharing.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

To read my detailed version of “Goals for the New Year?  How About Your Legacy?”, please click here.

A Christmas Tradition From My Family to Yours

Dear friends,

Some years ago when my oldest son was very young, we had pulled into a Toys R Us parking lot in New Jersey on Christmas Eve to buy our son even more "stuff".  After all we mused, for our son to have so much stuff that he rivaled Toys R Us in inventory still didn't seem enough.

Just before we stepped out of our vehicle, a story came on our National Public Radio station (WNYC in New York to be exact) and something about it caught my ear.

For the next 10 minutes, we sat in silence and listened to the story.  When the story was over, I started the truck and we drove out of the parking lot in silence. 

I had received an important message about Christmas when I needed to hear it. 

The teacher always appears when the student is ready and our Christmases have never been the same since.

Of the many traditions we have in our family at Christmas, there are two that we find important.

1. We always listen to this story at least once.

2. We always share it at least once.

The story we listened to can be found here - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5028755.  Click on the "LISTEN" link right under the title "John Henry Faulk's Christmas Story".

Besides my family and life itself, I consider myself blessed to have so many incredible friends.

With that, I thank YOU for what you do - for the light and love you bring to so many.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Happy EID or Merry Yule.  However you celebrate these days, cherish them.  In an uncertain world, these days are still an incredible gift for all of us.

In service and servanthood, love and gratitude.

Harry

The Value of Results - Do We Care Anymore?

I was recently speaking to someone who has a position of influence within the Canadian Government and he was going on and on about how great Canada's influence is in the world.

“After all”, he said, “Canada was a driving force behind the land mine treaty of the 90s and the Kyoto Accord and we both know how fantastic both of those initiatives were”.

I reminded him that the players who own 97%+ of the landmines in the world never ratified the landmine deal and even Canada has never lived up to the measures outlined in the Kyoto Accord.

"It doesn't matter", he said proudly, "It's the principle behind it that counts.".

Is that true?  Do we really believe that results don't matter and that life has become filled with the mantra of "good intentions are good enough"?

As I look back over my professional career, I see some glaring examples that support this theory and so I am reaching out to the readers today to prove me wrong.

I want to be proven wrong for if this is an accurate assessment of where the world is going, then we have greater challenges before us that make our current challenges look pretty tame in comparison.

It seems in a world focused on hype and appearance, that it is possibly better to create images of unlimited potential, secure the funding to deliver it, not deliver it (or deliver a small subset of it), disguise the result and then celebrate it as exceeding our expectations.

Maybe that's ok when it comes to the small stuff in life - the important projects that don't really matter.

Of course for those projects, if they don't really matter, why are we wasting our time on them in the first place?

But if we do it on larger scale projects where health, safety, or fiscal, social or ecological responsibility are on the line, then we need to take a closer look at who is delivering one thing while describing the result as something else.  Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch comes to mind.  Click here if you want to see it (warning - there are some delicate words in it).

After all, If we accept a description of a result that is not accurate, it is not the fault of the person delivering the inaccurate message. 

It is ours.  They only gave us what we wanted to hear and not what we needed to hear.

Shame on us.

I understand all the reasons people give as to why this phenomena happens.

That’s all well and good.

However, let’s forget about the reasons and look at the results.

Results still matter …. I hope.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

To see my detailed musing on “The Value of Results – Do We Care Anymore”, please click here.

Overcoming Einstein’s Law of Insanity – A Review of “Drive” by Daniel Pink

We have all heard variations of Einstein’s Law of Insanity – to expect a different result from doing the same thing over and over.

Unfortunate confirmation of the pervasiveness of this law is all around us in the form of people and organizations who keep making the same mistakes over and over, constantly repeating failure or diminished results without appearing to learn from previous efforts.

While such behavior can be fatal and at the very least, demotivating and demoralizing, we continue to do it anyway.

Why?

Creatures of Habit – Breaking the Habit Before it Breaks Us

Being creatures of habit, we often will not follow a different path unless we are forced to or we are offered a significant motivation to change.  Surprisingly, fear of failure for many people is not sufficient motivation, since they believe that they will always save themselves right before things collapse completely.

How do we change our motivation model and therefore our results?

If you are a leader, owner or advisor to companies who suffer from the results of Einstein’s Law of Insanity, then you need to apply a cranial defibrillator to the head of the leadership team (or perhaps have someone apply it to you).

Daniel Pink’s latest book, “Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” is such a cranial defibrillator.

I found Mr. Pink’s book to be a blast (not just a breath) of fresh air.

Using a writing style that is engaging, informative and enjoyable, Mr. Pink takes the last 50 years of research in diagnosing and improving motivational behaviors and presents it to the reader in such a way that the reader says “Duh … of course”.

Now That We Know What Motivates and Demotivates

Having come to such obvious conclusions, then the reader is forced to ask themselves these questions.

Why am I not doing this? 

Why is my organization not doing this? 

How can we change how we motivate ourselves and others?

“Drive” explains what motivates and demotivates us personally and professionally. 

The author adeptly describes models commonly used today, including the carrot and stick model, which we use to motivate people but in fact, in most situations, are actually demotivating them instead.

Mr. Pink posits that it is important to understand intrinsic and extrinsic motivators before blindly applying such models.  Intrinsic motivators are the things that motivate us from within (based on our purpose, passion and sense of self-fulfillment) while extrinsic motivators are external factors that are offered in an attempt to motivate people or artificially guide results.

Implementing New Models

Many books in this genre tend to end discussions about motivation with fuzzy conclusions, leaving the reader hanging; wondering “ok, you’ve got me all excited but how do I move towards a better model?”.

Mr. Pink doesn’t disappoint.  The last part of his book contains a toolkit with practical strategies and ideas to enhance motivational improvement in a number of areas.  He offers guidance for individuals, organizations and parents for a variety of scenarios.

He closes his book with a wealth of guidance from experts who “get it”, the likes of Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, Gary Hamel and more.

Without a doubt, I rank this book as one of the top books in its space in terms of addressing how to motivate yourself and others.

The next time you or your organization needs a little ummph added to the team’s level of motivation, forget about people who sell you rah-rah corporate events or tell you that you just need to communicate more effectively. 

I blogged recently about how hundreds of us were once flown across the country so that we could literally play “pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey” at a corporate motivation-builder event.  I don’t know how you would react, but personally I was offended for my team and I to be treated like 5-years-olds at incredible expense and my client was incensed to hear that we were out of the office for a few days for a truly non-essential event.

Don’t fall into this trap and don’t allow your teams to be further demotivated.

Instead, pick up a copy of Daniel Pink’s book “Drive”, strap on your seatbelt and prepare to be whisked into a new paradigm – a paradigm where we finally embrace a true understanding of what motivates ourselves and others and shows how to use that information to create greater productivity and a sense of fulfillment – both personally and professionally.

It will one of the most refreshing and informative books you will have read for a while.

And it could change your life and the life of your company.

I choose transforming my knowledge, execution and sense of purpose over pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey any day of the week.

How about you?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed blog on “Overcoming Einstein’s Law of Insanity – A Review of “Drive” by Daniel Pink”, please click here.

Collaboration – Life Lessons From a Sandbox

Collaboration, teamwork, empowered teams ….

Buzzwords that we like to throw around, brag about, lay claim to and espouse as our personal mantra when telling others the “secret to our success”.

Collaboration was on my mind as I watched a group of kids playing in a sandbox and as I observed their behaviors, it occurred to me that it may be possible to predict tomorrow’s collaborators just by observing these young people.

The kids fell into a variety of different groups.

The “Results and Fun” Group

The kids who were focused on having fun and accomplishing the desired result.  They mattered to each other.  Ego wasn’t important.  They represented human creativity and collaboration at its best.

The “My Way is the Best Way” Group

They struggled with whose idea was best.  During the fighting, some would start to cry and leave the group.  Some left in anger.  Some left in boredom when they realized their contribution didn’t matter.

Some stayed anyway, contributed for a bit and then suddenly kicked the castle down because they never liked it anyway – their idea was much better.

The “My Way is the Only Way” Group of One

One kid was building castles by himself.  It didn’t take very long to figure out why.  Every time another kid showed up to help, the first kid would say “I want you to do this or that”.  When the new child would offer a new idea, it was promptly rejected.  Some kids were more stubborn than others in pressing their point of view but eventually, the stubbornness of the one kid was too much and the others left.

The “If I Wanted  Your Opinion I’d Give it to You” Group

One kid who struggled with his castle asked others who were successful for help and when they told him what he was doing wrong, he told them they were wrong.  The kid went back to his castle, got angry and stomped on it, walking away from it.  He was frustrated with failure, not realizing that he was the cause of it.

The “Teamwork in Name Only” Group

One group of interest built a decent little sand castle and the parents were called over to admire it.  One kid prattled on and on about “the best castle in the park that he built”.  I’m sure the hearts of the other kids sank as they listened to him – the potential for a collaborative spirit being torn out of them by one person seizing the rewards. 

The “Non-Creative Way is Safest” Group

This is the group who constantly turned down one kid’s creative contributions with responses like “if we do that, it will fall down anyway so we won’t do it”.  The new kid offered a few suggestions as to why that wouldn’t happen and then walked away to play on the swings.  The potential for a great castle died because the strongest personality in the group didn’t like the idea.

The “I Don’t Like Any Of Your Ways” Group

This group was the saddest group of all.  They in fact were not building anything in the sand.  However, they took delight in occasionally running through the sandbox, destroying everyone else’s work.

They had no intention of creating anything.  Maybe they felt they couldn’t.  I don’t know.  All I know is that they didn’t want anyone else to create anything either.

Looking In My Own Sandbox

The sandbox was in fact a microcosm of the world I have been a part of for a long time.

We have all seen failures that fall into one of these groups – the leader who would not share credit but preferred the glory, the leader who delegated all the blame, the bully who crushed creativity and contribution, the leader who only liked their own ideas and nobody else’s or the leader who seemed to exist to take the wind out of the sails of others, crushing their projects and dreams without offering a contribution of his / her own.

The people who failed missed the key ingredient that the first group I described knew all along.

The first group knew that we need each other.

That our collective ideas are stronger than single ideas.

That focusing on our result and not on our ego produces a better result.

That sharing the credit encourages us to continue to work together on new projects and assures us that others will stick around to help us with the next sand castle.

That embracing team creativity takes all of us further than if we chose to follow our own ideas only.

Maybe the next time a team is looking for a consultant to help them solve their collaboration problems, maybe we should pay a bunch of kids $1000 a day to allow us to sit and observe them.

They will not offer us “stuff” to please our ego or to tell us what we want to hear.  They will not offer advice influenced by their own life experiences which may be empowering or disempowering.

They will just be themselves and in doing so, place staggeringly profound lessons in front of us.

If we are open to those lessons, it may be the most authentic lessons we will ever learn, lessons that are placed in front of us with no ulterior motive.

Aren’t they the most profound lessons of all?

I wish you well with your own “sand castles”.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed blog “Collaboration – Life Lessons From a Sandbox”, please click here.

Fellowship

It is a cool, sunlit day and as I scan the faces of those in attendance at today’s Remembrance Day ceremony, my gaze falls upon one person in particular.

He is not standing with the throngs that have gathered to honor those who serve and who have served.  He is elderly, perhaps 80’s or 90’s in age and is in uniform.  The sun is behind him and casts him in shadow as he stands on a small hill overlooking the ceremony.

He stands alone.

As I listened to the prayers and speeches being made, I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking.

Was he thinking about the horrors he may have experienced?

Perhaps he was remembering the good times that also manifest in the midst of the nightmare of conflict.

It’s possible he was thinking about his comrades – his brothers-in-arms who went forward together and experienced times of mirth and moments of horror.

His comrades and many other men and women sacrificed much to preserve our freedom.  They are part of a fellowship that those of us who have never served will probably never understand or truly appreciate.

When the ceremony was over, I looked in his direction with intent to walk over to him.

He was gone.

Seeing this man and pondering what he might be thinking got me to thinking about fellowship in general and how much we cherish those whom we serve with.

We often take the concept of fellowship and camaraderie for granted.  We reach out to people once in a while with a cursory “how’s it going?” and often receive a perfunctory “fine”, “good” or something similar in return.  We often respond in the same manner when queried.

When I compare the depth of the fellowship that those who have served have compared to many of us in today’s society, it makes me realize what a gift their fellowship is.

They knew that they could always rely on their comrades.  Their comrades also knew that they could always rely on them in return – no matter what the cost.

How many of us can say this about the people within our circles of influence?

How many people can say this about us?

To those who have served, to those who serve, to the ones who have paid the supreme sacrifice and to all of their families, I say “thank you”.

We not only owe them an incredible debt of gratitude for the freedom they earned for us.

They also offer us incredibly powerful lessons in fellowship and camaraderie that would serve us well to understand and learn from.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed blog about “Fellowship”, please click here.

Legacy – Being Aware of our Impact

I was thinking about my friend Donna Butler today.

Donna is one of those people who always comes up in conversation whenever people of my graduating class get together.

Earlier this summer, I was reconnected with two friends from high school that I hadn’t seen in 28 years.

Within five minutes of each of our initial conversations, the inevitable question was asked by each of them:

Do you remember Donna?

Both guys went on to describe the impact that Donna had in their lives.

I know all about it – I think about her impact on me all the time.

If you will allow me a moment, I will tell you about Donna.

She was like any other typical kid in many ways.  She was smart.  She was cute.  She seemed up more than she was down.  She always had a kind word to say about someone.  She spoke of her brothers a lot.

Her life in many ways seemed to be quite normal.  She didn’t aspire to be in the limelight and her impact on others seemed to be typical for a kid her age.

Donna did have something that we didn’t have.  She had a heart that wasn’t healthy.  She died in 1983 at the age of 18 of a congenital heart defect.

While we were stunned and saddened at the time, such things occasionally happen and we moved on in life.

So I thought.

I thought I was the only one that thought about Donna a lot but it seems like a lot of people think about her on a fairly regular basis.

I was thinking about this today and wondering how one who lived such a seemingly ordinary life could have left such an impact on us.

Then it occurred to me.

Donna saw the best in people, regardless of who they were.

She worked hard, not because it brought her public acclaim, but because it seemed the right thing to do.

She spoke words of wisdom without trumpeting them or pushing them down your throat.

She wanted everyone to be happy and did her best to help everyone around her.

If someone spoke harshly to her, she didn’t return the act with venomous words.

She was always smiling.

She did all of this for only one reason – it seemed to be the natural thing to do.

In living a life of unselfish giving and doing it as naturally as you or I breathe, she left an incredible, powerful legacy on those who were lucky enough to have met her.

This got me to thinking about the legacy that we all leave behind.  Many times, we work so hard to leave a personal or professional legacy as we would want it defined – wanting to get the legacy just right.

Many times, the legacy that we leave will not result from the things that we tried to create willfully.

Our legacy will come from the things we do naturally, from the things we do when no one is looking, from the things we do when we are significantly challenged and from the things we do because they are simply the right things to do.

That’s what Donna did.  While many of us have gone on in life to create personal or professional success, the one that everyone remembers and talks about is Donna.

Thank you, Donna.  Twenty six years after you have left us, you are still teaching us.

Which brings me to this question:

How is your legacy doing?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

For my detailed version of “Legacy – Being Aware of our Impact”, please click here.

O Passion, Where Art Thou?

I’ve been feeling lately like I have been working double-shifts in the ER.

Many of the patients who have been admitted haven’t been in any type of accident.

They are suffering from what I will define as deficientia passio – passion deficiency syndrome.

As each patient is rolled in, a quick assessment is usually all that is required.  I grab the passion defibrillator, yell out CLEAR and zap them with the passion they need to make a difference in the world.

Ah, if it were only that easy.

A lot of wonderful people have come my way lately whose passion is either gone, never manifested in the first place or manifests in destructive ways instead of constructive ones.

The reasons are many, I’m sure.  We can can all psychoanalyze the many reasons – fear of this or that, bad life experiences, the stress of living in the 21st century, etc.

All I know is that when it comes to making a real difference in the lives of ourselves and others, when all things are equal;  opportunity, networks, intelligence, etc., there are two things that will separate those who can’t or won’t from those who do.

The ones who ultimately get it done exhibit ferocious amounts of passion but do so with an inner humility that allows the passion to be directed in a positive manner.

Whatever we do, we need to make sure our passion is engaged. 

Our passion changes our result from good to excellent.

It is contagious.  A strong passion brings other people into your circle to help  you achieve that which you are striving towards.  Lack of passion is equally contagious and can kill projects (and sometimes people).

When Life gets tough as it always does on occasion, passion (with other things) helps us to move forward.

A lot of people are afraid of passion.  I’ve been told that my passion is intimidating.

That’s fine – don’t waste your time trying to make them passionate.  You will burn yourself out and upset them at the same time.

Find others who are equally or more passionate.  This is not always easy.  However, when it comes to finding passionate people to engage, remember the law of the 4 SWs.

Some will

Some won’t

So what ….

Someone’s waiting.

St. Augustine wrote:

The fire you wish to enkindle in others must burn in yourself.

Find your purpose.  If you don’t know how to do that, send me an email.  I’ll help you find it. 

Why would I do that? 

Because the world needs your passion for success, excellence and contribution.  It needs you to share your talents, knowledge and strengths and to do so with as much enthusiasm as you can muster.  It needs you to light the fire of passion in others as well.

A world of apathy and indifference is a world that will ultimately collapse.  Read your history books – organizations and nations have fallen when leaders either didn’t have passion or their passion was misdirected.

As Earl Nightingale once said:

Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.

Be passionate.

Associate with passionate people.

Make a difference in your life and the lives of those around you.

Do it with the best of your ability.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to run.

Another patient has been rolled in and it looks like a really bad case of deficientia passio.

<<Ok … I need 10 ccs’ of purpose here, 20 cc’s of legacy definition and 30 cc’s of enthusiasm …. and get that passion defibrillator here … stat.  C’mon people, move it  – this person’s in trouble.>>

Yours in service and servanthood – passionately.

Harry

For other musings about passion, please check out:

A User’s Guide to Passionate People

Check Your Passion at the Door

For my detailed blog “O Passion, Where Art Thou”, please click here.

“The Catholic Vision For Leading Like Jesus” – A Book Review

 

“Each of us is not only called to be a leader, but we are all leaders by default – whether we like it or not.”

Thus opens one of the best books I have ever read on servant leadership and the most powerful book I have ever read on stewardship – the notion of contributing our time, talent and treasure to those who need it.

The author, Dr. Owen Phelps, is the Director of Yeshua Catholic International Leadership Institute.  He is a writer, college professor, master catechist and trainer – to say the least.  To see his impressive background, please go here.

This book was inspired by the book “Lead Like Jesus”, co-authored by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges.

First of all, Dr. Phelps explains that leadership is not about power or authority.  In fact, he explains this way:

Effective leadership is not about formal power or money.  It is about integrity.  Leadership begins in the heart.

The book goes on to address four powerful questions that many people find themselves pondering over.

The first three transcend people of all creeds, faiths and beliefs:

1. Whom do I influence in big or small ways?
2. How will I be remembered?  What is my legacy?
3. What is the source of influence with others and how can I exert this influence?

The fourth question is one that many Christians who are passionate about service within their faith ask:

1. How do I fit into Christ’s mission and message for the world?

Dr. Phelps answers these questions by introducing us to the concept of S3 leadership – the concept that we all act as Servant, Steward and Shepherd as we serve our fellow human beings.

Such a model is transformational in concept and implementation and changes the very fundamental of human interaction.

Dr. Phelps uses a quote from Scripture that summarizes the notion of S3 perfectly:

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

- 1 Peter 3:8 (NAB)

The workbook that is available for this book is the best guide to stewardship that I have seen in my many years of stewardship activities.  It’s flexible, insightful structure is an asset to beginning groups who need help with structure and execution and for advanced groups looking for fresh, new ideas to take their efforts to a higher level.

If you are an individual seeking to expand your stewardship activities or you represent a group looking to implement larger stewardship initiatives, this book and the accompanying workbook are a must-read.

If you are not faith-based or are Christian but not necessarily Roman Catholic but you seek to expand your leadership abilities and your ability to influence others, this book is also a must read for you.

Dr. Phelps closes his book with a quote from Scripture that I found to be powerful and made me stop and think before I closed the book:

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell.  Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

- 2 Corinthians 13:11 (NAB)

The book is available from your traditional book retailers and from the publishing company directly.  The publisher can also be found at www.osv.com.

I wish you well on your exploration of servant leadership and your quest to help others.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For the detailed blog of “The Catholic Vision for Leading Like Jesus" – A Book Review”, please click here.

Authenticity – Those Who Live By the Sword …

This week, the Roman Catholic Church has been rocked by another scandal with a member of its clergy.  Bishop Raymond Lahey of Atlantic Canada has been charged with importing and possessing child pornography.  Parishioners across Canada have been shocked, angered and saddened by this latest event in the saga of child abuse by a member of the cloth.

It is an unfortunate but poignant example of what happens when a leader chooses to be inauthentic, when s/he chooses to present a persona of themselves that doesn’t represent who they really are.

In the interests of due process, we cannot yet condemn Bishop Lahey.  He has not been found guilty despite the number and scope of the allegations against him.

However, it is notable that one man, with the mistakes that he may have made in his life, can rock an organization as large and as rich in history and tradition as the Roman Catholic Church.

When authenticity breaks down, it only takes one person to rock an entire organization and devastate other people for the rest of their lives.

Teach us from the pulpit to be honest, truthful and respectful.  Teach us to demand the highest standards from ourselves and others.

And then:

Honor us and embrace us by leading by example and ferreting out those within who struggle with their own inner demons.

Many of you who go to church or once attended church will remember this from Matthew 18:7-11 (NIV):

"Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

We are overdue for large organizations like the Church to cleanse themselves in the same way.

Otherwise, be honest with everyone and stop teaching everyone else to do this.

To not do so is to not be authentic as an organization committed to leading us morally, ethically and spiritually.

When one examines why many churches are losing parishioners, some suggest it is entirely based on a decline of faith in the 21st century.

I would posit that it is a lack of trust – a model of “do as I say and not as I do”.

Many people say it is wrong to ask questions of the Church.  I believe the faithful and others have every right to ask questions.  Any organization or leader grows stronger as a result of being challenged to learn and improve upon execution.

Trust is based on each of us being totally transparent and authentic with the other.

If dialog is ok ONLY if we don’t touch on the sensitive subjects, then we are not being totally transparent with each other.

If we can’t be transparent, there is no room for trust.

Without trust, each of us is an island unto ourselves.

Who wants to live that way?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

PS Here is an unfortunate example of a disconnect in authenticity.  Quoting Bishop Lahey from a couple of years ago:

“Sexual abuse, indeed any abuse, is wrong. It is a crime and it is a serious sin in the eyes of God. I want to assure you that for some time our diocese, like others throughout Canada, have been taking steps to protect children and youth,” Bishop Lahey told a news conference

As with many things, saying and doing are often difficult to reconcile.  We are all human, regardless of someone’s expectations to the contrary.

For my detailed blog on “Authenticity – Those Who Live By the Sword …”, please click here.

Entrepreneurs – A Long Distance Dedication

I have been blessed to have been an entrepreneur for many years and many of my dearest friends are entrepreneurs.

When we get together we laugh, swear and weep over the world that we live in, a world that can only be appreciated by a fellow entrepreneur.

As we used to joke years ago in the software company that I co founded in New York - “Some day we will look back on this day and nervously change the subject” – and then we would laugh.

Many people suggest you should be doing something else – “get a real job”, they say.

Sometimes they almost have you convinced that they are right.

And then you think – would I REALLY want to be doing anything else?

No way.  This is where you are meant to be.

This is how your passions come alive.  This is an expression and extension of you.

Of course, these things apply to the entrepreneur who eventually made their dream a success.

What about the ones that didn’t?

If you didn’t make your current dream a success, you didn’t fail.  You were merely offered an extraordinary set of life lessons.

The key lesson if you didn’t succeed the first time is:

Will  you get back up and try again?

Because in the end, that’s the real lesson of entrepreneurship.

Despite everything you will learn about networking, financing, execution, business plan writing, exit strategies, negotiation, IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, HR rules, real estate, contracts, pipelines, lead generation, deal closing, reports and everything else, the real question is:

How badly do you want your purpose and passion to be fulfilled?

If I were to write a long distance dedication to entrepreneurs for Kasey Kasem to read, here’s how it would go:

Harry writes:

Dear Kasey.

I am a chronic entrepreneur who is sending words of support to all other entrepreneurs.  For the great obstacles they will either step over, around, go under or learn that they need to be doing something else, the world of the entrepreneur is filled with the greatest rewards.

They create friendships that last a lifetime.  Friends like RL, CDT, MdC, JP, NN and others will live in my heart forever.

Being an entrepreneur allows your purpose and your passion to manifest – to provide an opportunity for you to have a lasting impact on others.  It helps define your legacy – that marker that says “I was here”.

Being an entrepreneur is rarely easy.  In fact, many times it will knock you to your knees.  But we get back up, learn from our challenges and move forward.

In the end, we always win.  Sometimes the victory is obvious.  Sometimes, the lessons are not obvious until much later.

So, Kasey, for fantastic entrepreneurs out there, people like MP, AG, BJ, KC, MB, RM, HJ, GP, MC and all the other people who dare allow their purpose and passion to fly, could  you please play “Don’t Stop Believin” by Journey?

Most sincerely,

Harry

Ok, Harry, here’s your long distance dedication.

To the entrepreneurs I have served with, I thank you – you have blessed my life tremendously and I owe you a lifetime of gratitude.  The lessons we have learned together are deep, broad and rich.

To all entrepreneurs, you are closer to your dreams than you realize. 

It all comes down to how badly you want it and what are you willing to do to make your dreams come true?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

PS I would be remiss in my duties if I neglected to write about the importance of family and friends.  While you may think that others don’t understand the world of entrepreneurs, they know more than you realize and they care more than you know.  One of the greatest lessons I learned despite all of my so-called confidence in my own abilities was the ability to be able to ask for help when I needed it and to be open to receiving help.  I have my friend Leonard to thank for this lesson.  When all is said and done, humility may carry you further than confidence.

In addition, if you are a person of faith, hold onto it, however you define it.  It will be an incredibly powerful, guiding, nurturing light when darkness seems all around you.

For a much more detailed insight into the world of entrepreneurs, I invite you to read my detailed blog “Entrepreneurs – A Long Distance Dedication” by clicking here.

Authentic Leadership – Looking the Part Versus Living It

It is with a mix of gratitude, amusement, disappointment and sometimes downright anger that many of us look at today’s leaders, whether they be in the community, corporate world, government, church or any other organization of influence.

What appears to attract the most press are the ones who either let us down or infuriate us with stories of how they acted in their own best interests at the expense of someone else.

Today’s leader faces many great challenges – the challenges of the world are broad, deep and complex.

What makes the challenge of today’s leaders even more complex is how we define and establish our leaders.

Think about we seek in a leader.  At a minimum, we expect them to be charismatic, passion-filled, visionary, connected, value-rich, idea-abundant, brilliant in statesmanship, powerful in negotiating skills and plentiful in morality and ethics.  Some of us expect even more than this.

We expect them to be perfect.

In a world that rewards people who embrace this model and then punishes them when they almost inevitably fail to live up to the expectations of others, who owns responsibility for these leaders?

Is it the fault of the people who erect a facade in order to obscure who they really are or is it the fault of the people who prefer to vote for a facade than someone who is truly authentic and transparent, even if the news is bad?

We all own the responsibility of choosing the type of leaders who attains a position of influence over us. 

Perhaps we should be less disappointed in the leaders that the system produces and be more cognizant of the type of system that causes leaders to have to be something other than that which they are.

We need to embrace a dialog built around transparency and authenticity and then perhaps we will find more opportunity to select strong leaders whom we can collaborate with to produce a better result.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For the detailed version of “Authentic Leadership – Looking the Part Versus Living It”, please click here.

“Saving The World at Work” – A Call To Action

I am a passionate person.  Anyone who has met me can attest to my passion – my passion to try to be the best I can be and to encourage others to be the best they can be.

In a beautiful world filled with potential, the need for each of us to be the best that we can be resonates more than ever.

Our world of unlimited beauty, potential and sustenance is being assailed by the challenges of war, hunger, disease, poverty and pollution.

Our phenomenal potential to create a world of unlimited health, peace and prosperity is in need of someone to step up to make that potential a reality.

Who of all of us can save our beautiful planet?

You can.

I can.

We can.

We must.

Perhaps many of us think this is too big.  How can one person possibly make a difference in this large, complex world?

As my friend Tim Sanders notes in his powerful book “Saving the World at Work”, one person can indeed have a profound impact on the world.

That person is YOU!

In his book, Tim tells the stories of individuals whose hearts are gripped by the need to do something, to do anything, to make a difference on this planet.

His book is a powerful call to action.

When Tim was looking for stories of people whose passion influenced the direction of large corporations, I was proud to be able to connect Tim with Joan Krajewski, a member of the Microsoft Personal Empowerment Group that I incubated with a number of friends at Microsoft.

Here is Tim describing Joan’s passion and her impact. 

 

Tim’s book offers us hope and examples of how each one of us can do what we thought to be the unthinkable – each one of us can leverage our vision, our purpose and our passion within the organizations that we work with to have a profound impact on the planet.

That is an incredible thought, isn’t it?

Check out Tim’s book “Saving the World at Work” and his website here.  It has links for where to find the book, including free goodies such as DVDs, that you can read and watch; to inspire you and the people  you know and convince you that YOU can make a difference.

The earth is calling.

The world that we are leaving to our children is calling.

The legacy that we leave to our children is calling.

What are we waiting for?

Let’s get engaged and make the difference we are capable of and called to create.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For the longer version of “Saving the World at Work” – A Call to Action, please click here.

Authenticity – A Personal Assessment 8 Years After 9/11

Today, many of us honor those lost during the attack on 9/11.  Regardless of what terrorist theory, conspiracy theory or anything else people subscribe to, what is important today is to honor those who were lost and to offer love and support to those they left behind.

I have some poignant memories of that day and the days that followed that are as fresh in my mind today as they were eight years ago.

With these memories in mind, I wonder how we as a society have grown since the events of that horrific day.

Greed, apathy, indifference and lack of foresight have allowed us to create one of the greatest financial collapses in history.  The governments tell us that it is near an end.  Tell that to the many who lost everything.

Disease, hunger and poverty continue to kill millions every year, including 29,000 children under the age of 5 every day for lack of clean drinking water.

Wars continue for the standard reason – primarily political agendas that kill our young people to satisfy the need of some administration or dictatorship.

Now I’m an optimist – perhaps fatally.

Despite all of the things that continue to go on in the world, I believe that we can solve all of these problems.

I also know there are a lot of great optimists in the world striving to solve the world’s challenges.  They need our help to make solutions a reality.

We won’t solve them by simply pretending the world is all good (as in the rose-colored glasses optimist) and assume this will make it so.

We won’t solve it with positive thinking alone although belief in our ability to solve these things is essential.

We won’t solve it by prayer alone although for many, it brings strength.

We won’t solve it by refusing to collaborate with others. 

We won’t solve it by expecting something for nothing. 

We can only solve it when we return to a place of authenticity, a place that says we need to be more accountable for what we do in this world and we need to hold others more accountable for their actions and results.

We have to start naming the elephants in the room when it comes to accountability and responsibility.  We must do it with respect and with an eye towards collectively solving the great challenges in the world.

We can’t just name the elephant and say “my job is done”.  Once we name it, we need to play an active role in deciding what to do with it.

When we do this, we choose to unleash our phenomenal potential to love, create, cure, share and solve problems to make a difference in the world.

I know that we all prefer to envision a world of unlimited potential.

I know that my friends Eric, Narender and Stephen believed in this also.

Let’s not delay releasing our fullest potential to make this world a better place.

Let’s do it now.

Isn’t that the best way to honor those who are lost? 

Is that not the greatest legacy we can leave to the next generation?

Yours in service and servanthood and in dedication to those who were lost and those who grieve their loss.

Harry

For the full version of this “Authenticity - A Personal Assessment”, please click here.

Accountability and Authenticity

As I dressed this morning, I donned a pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt and prepared to meet the day - nothing significant to report there.

However, to a small band of entrepreneurs in New York in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Tuesday was Yellow Shirt Day.

Every Tuesday, my team and I would all wear yellow shirts and would go for a walk during our lunch break and compliment other people who wore yellow shirts.  The reaction from strangers on the streets of New York covered a broad spectrum, ranging from humorous to angry.

The co-founder of Yellow Shirt Day, Narender Nath, was killed in the World Trade Center less than a year later during the horror of 9/11.

Narender came to mind this morning as I realized I was wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday and I thought about how he lived his life versus how the media tells us we should live.

The media encourages us to focus on the disaster all around us under the guise of informing us.

If only we could get some breathing room from all of this gloom and doom, we reason, then we could be more true to ourselves.

Narender looked at this challenge differently.

He knew that if he waited for the opportunity to be authentic with himself and with others, he would wait forever and would be incredibly frustrated as he waited.

Narender believed that our world is what we believe it to be.

The media wants us to believe it is all coming apart.

Narender believed it to be one of unlimited opportunity for living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy.

I know you believe this also.

As many experts say and as Narender practiced:

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yes, it is an overused statement.

But perhaps it is overused because we still haven’t learned the truth within it and so we need to keep hearing it.

How do you see the world today?  How badly would you like to see it in a different light?

Look around you – there are many people who are ready to collaborate with you to create that world.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS – A guy by the name of Mike walked into the coffee shop as I was writing this.  He was wearing a yellow shirt also and so I couldn’t resist introducing myself and telling him the story of Narender and Yellow Shirt Day.  As he left, he laughed and said “maybe we can start Yellow Shirt Day where I work”.  That would be cool, Mike!

It sometimes doesn’t take much to influence someone else in a positive way.

Simple actions touch hearts and in turn influence minds.  Whose heart are you touching today?

For more detailed musing about Accountability and Transparency, please click here.

Consistent Messages – The True Source of Inconsistency.

I noticed a sign on a cemetery gate as I drove by it the other day.  In large letters it read “VISITORS ONLY”.

As I read it, I thought “well, there are only two types of people of interest here”:

• The people who stop by to pay their respects are just visiting and have no intent of moving there permanently … at least for now.
• The people who are buried there have no intention of leaving.

So who does the sign apply to?

I laughed and drove on.

We laugh at the inconsistency or humor of signs that we read that weren’t intended to be funny.

But perhaps if we look inward, we might stop laughing.

Do the signs that we project make sense?

Do we say one thing to someone but inwardly say something else to ourselves?

When it comes to inconsistencies, it is easy to find examples of them in others.

I wonder though if the greatest inconsistencies that we see are in fact mirrors of inconsistencies within ourselves.

It is easy to observe, laugh and muse at the inconsistency of many things and people in this world.

But before we do this, let’s make sure we are consistent with ourselves and the message we promote to ourselves and others.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some inconsistencies to iron out.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For the longer version of “Consistent Messages – The True Source of Inconsistency”, please click here.

The Shadow Effect – The Inner Demon That Enables or Disables Our Life

I have seen a lot of self empowerment movies over the years, including the modern classics such as “The Secret”, “What the Bleep” and others. I enjoy and have been impacted by books such as the classic “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale and the powerful “Leading at a Higher Lever” by Ken Blanchard. They were all interesting, fascinating, positively disruptive and informative in their own ways.

However, when I watched “The Shadow Effect”, my personal definition of who I am and how I came to be was shaken to the core.

“The Shadow Effect”, like some of its contemporaries, sports an appealing cast, including Debbie Ford, Deepak Choprah, Mark Victor Hansen, Marianne Williamson and others.

The movie is based on the premise that each one of us has a shadow side to our life, a darker, potentially disempowering side that was formed early in our childhood through a number of less than positive experiences (at least as perceived by the child). This shadow plays a key role in determining your thoughts and actions through your life and therefore, many of the results in your life, both good and bad.

The movie is based on the medically accepted fact that any disabling thoughts in your mind will produce disabling actions. Disabling thoughts produce a disabled result just as enabled thoughts produce enabled results.

This is also not a movie that you can just watch – watching will be insightful but not transformational. However, if you use the interactive version of the movie as I did and honestly perform the exercises that it presents, I think you may find the results profound.

How is this done? You’ll need to watch the movie to find out.

I will say this. To name and embrace your shadow takes a lot of courage. To not embrace your shadow is up to you but to not do so perhaps reduces the phenomenal potential of your life and with that, perhaps your sense of purpose, happiness and contentment.

Do you have the courage? I believe you do. I also believe that you deserve greatness in your life.

Embrace your purpose, your gifts and the lessons from your life.

Watch this movie and be prepared for a new journey in your life.

To purchase a copy of the movie, go here.

To watch it online, you can find it here.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed review of this movie, please go here.

Nominating A Few Heroes

In my typical day of driving my life at 1000 miles per hour, I am blessed with the opportunity to share with and learn from many people.

Every person, whether they represent something we like or don’t like, provides us with an opportunity to marvel at the creativity of the human mind and the notion that unlimited potential exists in all of us.

Given all of this potential, today’s world is complex and there are many people out there crying for help – perhaps one of them is us.

In this same world, there are many people who are answering the call, bringing their wonderful talents, strengths and compassion to bear to help in any way they can.  Perhaps one of these people is you also! :-)

On my full length version of my blog, located here, I nominate 5 special people who are heroes in my world:

Mark Hundley

Terry Reilly

Leonard Szymczak

My Family

A special hero I won’t name here

These people represent the best of humanity – people who do their best with what they have to make a difference in the lives of others.

The qualifications for being a hero have nothing to do with the scale of the act of heroism – we don’t need to be a hero for thousands of people.

What matters is that we use our gifts, talents and strengths to make a difference in the life of someone else.

When we do this, we are a hero to someone else.

You also have your own heroes.

I invite you to publically acknowledge them and share with the world why you believe they are a hero.

Despite what some people would say, the world is filled with heroes.  Let’s bring them out in the open and celebrate what makes them special.

We can all learn from them.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For the full length version of this blog on “Nominating a Few Heroes”, click  here.

A Quest for Authenticity – How Many Lives Are You Living?

I am running into more and more people these days who are living two or more completely different lives.

One life is the life of their dreams – passionate and living on purpose.  In this life, they are living their dreams, creating their own companies, making a huge, positive impact on the world.  Many of them are best-selling authors, in-demand speakers or high-powered consultants offering advice to the elite.  Their home life is right out of Leave it to Beaver, the Brady Bunch or some other idyllic family experience.  They live in a world where they speak freely and passionately about their purpose, their faith, their ideals and core values and their vision of the world. It is a beautiful life without fear of anything.

What a beautiful image they weave.

The other life is the life the same people are currently experiencing.  They are frustrated with their boss, their business partner, their client, their spouse, their children, their President or Prime Minister or someone else.  They feel frustrated that nobody seems to care about their vision for the world.  They are afraid to expose their core values, their faith or their belief structure.  They are afraid to stand up and speak out when they witness something that is legally, ethically or morally incorrect.  With this in mind, they assume their own personality is flawed or unworthy and thus they create new personas based on the situations they find themselves in.

Life is challenging enough when you have one life to live.

If we are living by our core values and are aligned with others with similar values, it helps to know that we should push through because the results are worthy enough to persevere for.

If we are pushing something that we are not in alignment with, then we often wonder why we should bother.  After all, we may be pushing for something important for someone else and not for ourselves – living a life for someone else.

If that’s the life we want to live, then we should select a person that we are living our life for and ask them if we can leave their name on our headstone when our end-of-days has arrived.

We might as well, since we lived their life based on their values, beliefs and expectations anyway.

Wouldn’t it better to be remembered for who we are and not for how we reflected the best of someone else?

Exactly – so what are we waiting for?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Click here to read my detailed blog entry on “A Quest for Authenticity”.

Observations on Leadership

I have been rereading Ken Blanchard’s recent works, including Leading at a Higher Level and The One Minute Entrepreneur and thinking through a number of organizations that I am familiar with for one reason or another.

I am struck with the brilliance of his work and at the same time, alarm bells go off in my head as I see many self-described leaders failing at basic principles of leadership, namely:

- having clearly communicated vision, mission and purpose

- empowering their teams to achieve the vision, mission and purpose in a manner that allows for significant contribution and personal growth of team members based on their strengths and abilities

- recognizing and highlighting the strengths in team members and finding ways to explore and amplify these strengths

- proactively coaching their team members

- encouraging team members to grow beyond the capabilities of the leaders themselves

- creating an honest, respectful, trust-filled, transparent environment where communication and collaboration are embraced.

Only about 20% of the leaders I have worked with actually follow these basic, common-sense principles.

Are we doing these things as a leader?

How do we know?

We need to remember that leaders are not just producing quality corporate results.

We are growing the next generation of leaders.

Whether the world grows or collapses economically, socially, ecologically or any other way depends on whether we empower or cripple the next generation of leaders.

If you are not sure how you feel about the leaders in your organization, feel free to drop me a note. I welcome the opportunity to explore it with you.

After all, our future is tied to our leadership.

How bright a future do we want?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Click here to read my detailed blog entry on “Observations on Leadership”.

Appreciating What We Create – A Lesson from Michael Jackson

Yesterday, an amazing talent in the person of Michael Jackson was lost suddenly.

His life was a dichotomy of phenomenal talent and passion for his craft on the one hand and a misunderstood, anguish-filled, pain-laden person on the other.

It is easy to embrace the positive and be critical and harsh of the negative – even when what we demand of celebrities often puts them on the slippery road of selling their soul to give us what we need.

Just as we cry foul when a company that produces the products we crave pollutes the environment in order to create them.

Just as we scream for justice when the financial institutions that we demand staggering returns from go belly up as they discover that the means of producing those returns is unsustainable.

Just as we turn our back on the incarcerated, writing them off as the lost and unsalvageable when investing our own gifts in others may have prevented someone from becoming this way in the first place.

We are quick to congratulate ourselves when we harvest something positive from society.

We are just as quick to criticize and blame others when what we harvest or perceive is not positive at all.

We can’t have it both ways.

We need to accept that we are responsible for what we create – the good and the bad.

Once we accept responsibility for both ends of the spectrum, maybe we will complain less and work harder to step up and create more positively and purposefully.

Michael Jackson did some things wrong in his life.  He did a lot of things right.  He overcame a lot.  Despite some of the things that he did that were wrong, he left a legacy to millions.

John Ruskin had a stone on his desk with one word carved in it. 

The word was “Today”.

What are you doing with the gift of today to leave a positive legacy to others?

Look within before looking outside.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Click here to read my detailed blog entry on “Appreciating What We Create”.

Living a Life of Gratitude

In a world that the media would love to convince you is falling apart, there is still much to be grateful for.

There will be many times in our life when we feel that we are being squeezed or even crushed.  Financial worry, relationship trouble, illness or other challenges will visit us at some point in our lives.

Anyone who says they have never had a challenge to overcome and don’t anticipate ever having one are either lying or delusional.

Life is not meant to be easy all the time.

M. Scott Peck, in his book “The Road Less Travelled”, opens the book with this thought:

Life is difficult.  This is a great truth , one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Despite our challenges, we continue to be blessed with much. 

Regardless of what we think of others, there are others out there who care for us and love us. 

There are people who are prepared to step up and help us.

The world is still filled with love, opportunity, collaboration, truth, sharing and beauty. 

The opportunity to create and to manifest miracles is greater now than ever.

It is still a place where dreams come true. 

Take some time and observe the strengths and resilience of people, especially children, who are struggling with poverty, illness, abuse, neglect, war, violence, loneliness, depression or some other great challenge.

Now take a look at people who have overcome all odds and made an impact in this world.

It’s an incredible world, isn’t it?

Be grateful for the opportunity to contribute to it and to leave your own legacy to others.

When life is hurting, dig deep.  Hold on to your faith and your belief that you must overcome this.  Look for the life lessons that will empower you to move forward.  Throw off the yoke of challenge and keep moving forward.

Live your life with the gratitude that you are blessed with many gifts that are unique to you.

Gifts that we can’t wait to experience and celebrate!

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Click here to read my detailed blog entry on “Living a Life of Gratitude”.

Introducing Musings-in-a-Minute

Good day!

This is the new home for my musings-in-a-minute.

This is the home for a summarized version of my detailed musings and observations, for all blogs posted after June 23, 2009.

Each of my musings-in-a-minute has a link to the main blog if you would like to read the detailed version of my blog entry!

Create a great day!

Harry