An Army of One

“Be An Army of One” was a short-lived slogan used by the US Army in the mid 2000’s.  The vision of a single individual, bravely fighting off the hoards was thought to be an admirable vision to promote.

The great challenge with an army of one is that no matter how romantic the notion of the valiant solider holding off the masses in Rambo-like fashion is, eventually the army of one runs out of energy, resources and luck and is overrun.

The same is true in Life.  There are times when we must be the army of one, bravely standing up for what needs to be stood up for, striving for a vision that is important or courageously fighting off the hoards until the cavalry arrives.

Many times a situation calls for a leader to step forward whose vision, insight, knowledge, strengths and charisma inspire us and lead us towards whatever we define as victory.

However, once the leader has identified “the hill to be taken”, does the leader charge up the hill without support?

Not at all – because an army of one quickly becomes an army of none.

I am in the process of watching two not-for-profits and three for-profit companies die, taking tens of millions of dollars with them, because their leaders have decided to take the hill on their own.

Meanwhile, the talented, enabled, empowered members of their team who would help them take the hill are waiting for their orders or have been ordered to stand down until needed.  Some have gone AWOL with the hope of finding a better leader.

Perhaps the leaders of these organizations have plans to name the hill after themselves when they take it.  Owning the credit is something their ego-based existence dreams of, even as they deny it to themselves and others.

The thing that these leaders miss is that if they really want to plant the flag at the top of the hill, then they need to take the hill as a team.

Every one of their team members bring strengths, insights, talents and knowledge to the table that will help the team take the hill together.

Leaders who don’t effectively use their teams to be all they can be in taking the hill together soon discover an interesting lesson.

When it’s you against the world, the safest bet is on the world.

Leaders have a choice – they can plant the flag on top of the hill when the team succeeds together.

Or they can choose to be buried at the bottom of it.

The choice seems pretty obvious if the focus is on the ultimate result rather than the promotion of someone’s ego.

But then again, if it were so obvious, I wouldn’t be watching these leaders storm the hill by themselves right now, would I?

Be an army of one when you need to be – but know when the cavalry is needed to carry the day.

The result will be something to celebrate together.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My detailed blog entry for “An Army of One” is the same as this one and can be found here.

Wanted: Leaders For Immediate Hire

As I read the news, I have this thought running through my head about a classified ad that we need to run in papers around the world.  It looks something like this:

Skimming over some headlines reveals some alarming trends in regards to some of our leadership.

In Canada this week, the CRTC (the body that regulates the broadcast industry in Canada), banned the Dire Straits song “Money For Nothing” because it used the word “faggot” three times.  They banned the song based on the complaint of one individual who felt the song was demeaning to gay people.

Meanwhile, the song “Grenade” by Bruno Mars is soaring high in the charts with graphic lyrics about someone who is willing to do anything for someone, including:

I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my head on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya
I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain

The singer indicates they would do anything for this person, even though this person claimed that the other person beat them:

Black, black, black and blue, beat me 'til I'm numb

With all the violence in the world today, especially with suicide being one of the top killers of young people, the continued high occurrence of domestic violence and the shooting incident in Tucson, Arizona last week, these lyrics are not entertaining. 

But where is the outcry?

Speaking of Tucson, Arizona, it is disappointing to see leaders of the NRA and other pro-weapons organizations step forward to champion the right for every American to own any type of gun, including people-killers such as glocks and such.  One pro-weapons advocate in Arizona even said it is human nature to be armed.  Legislators are also VERY quick to continue to champion the need for people to possess these weapons. 

I wonder how Congresswoman Giffords, a pro-weapons advocate herself, will feel when she has recovered and discovers that a 9-year-old girl was killed as a result of Ms. Giffords being targeted.

Despite this, the annual gun show in Tucson this weekend (one week after the shooting) is expecting record sales of weapons.

Meanwhile, people who need access to mental health care struggle to make their way through the red tape, cost and excessive wait times so that they can receive the treatment they need.  These people deal with the pain they are enduring and the stigma that unfortunately accompanies mental health concerns while it takes forever for legislators to find solutions.

President Obama said in his speech “We can do better”.

I should be inspired by such a statement but I am not, especially since the people who are in government today have the authority to create a better result but choose not to.

The guy who buys the gun, then buys his ammo at Wal-Mart and proceeds to kill people is only half the picture.

Enabling him with the right to purchase such weapons indicts the people who embrace the laws that provide him with this right.

Which causes me to think …..

We all own the inconsistency of leadership that we see around us.

We like to lament about how government, or certain corporations or other leaders aren’t getting the job done.

The truth is that they will get it done when we demand it – not before.

We know that such inspiring, intelligent, transparent, values-based leaders are out there.  If they weren’t, the world would be in much worse shape.

We see many examples of inspiring leaders throughout history, including many today.

However, we need more of them – a LOT more of them.

The world is on the cusp – balanced precariously between a future of difficulty and pain and one of amazing potential.

Given this, consider that the classified ad above has been posted.

Will you or someone you know answer the call?

Will you encourage others to answer the call?

I hope so.

The world is ready for the next generation of leaders who will make a positive difference.

It doesn’t need people who assume power under the guise of “we can fix things in the future”.

It needs people who demonstrate that “we are fixing things now”.

And it needs such people NOW.

As Plato once said (substituting the word “leadership” where he used the word “politics”):

"The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in leadership is to be governed by men worse than themselves."

In service and servanthood,

Harry

This is the same entry as contained in my detailed blog, which can be found here.

When Ego and Common Sense Collide ….

…. or ….

“The noise in your car will go away if you turn the radio up loud enough”.

This thought came to mind today as I spoke to a good friend and Wall St. client as we exchanged Thanksgiving pleasantries.

My friend, whom I will name “Frank”, is working on a project of considerable cost and complexity that, after starting and being cancelled three times mid-project, was now starting to gain traction for a fourth go-around.

As a strategy guy, I was intrigued by this and asked him what was different about this version of the project versus the previous incarnations that had gone down in flames.  After determining that nothing was fundamentally different between this attempt and the previous ones, we explored why they were about to repeat a process that seemed doomed to failure.

Ego Overrules Common Sense

It turns out that the ego of the team, particularly within the leadership of the project, is shouting so loudly that it is preventing them from seeing that they are repeating history – a very expensive history.

The killer for me was when I asked Frank, if he knew that what they were doing was wrong, then why he didn’t just find somewhere else to work.

His answer summed it up:

Do you know how much I would give up in stock and perks if I walk away from my employer?

His personal values, common sense and life experience, which told him that what they were doing was wrong, had been compromised by the extrinsic motivator of money.

The life experiences of the team’s leaders and how they viewed the knowledge of the team members were being compromised by their ego.

Common sense, like Elvis, had left the building.

I realized as we spoke that many of our corporate leaders still don’t get it, despite assurances to the public, to shareholders, etc. that bailouts, regulatory changes, a few rah-rah team building exercises and other things have produced a different way of doing business.

Key Element of Leadership – Influence and Values

They miss a key element of leadership.

The demonstrated values of the leadership at the top of the organization grow and amplify as they move down through the rank and file.

Leaders influence their entire organization through their actions and behaviors and that as they demonstrate their personal values on a daily basis, so will the people within the organization embrace and emulate those same values.

This is the power of strong leadership, good and bad.

And so when I see poor actions taking place within the bowels of a large organization, I don’t think that the core of the problem, the “thing” that needs to be fixed, is at that specific level of the organization.

Instead, I look at the leadership of the organization, the behavior of the leaders and the values that they demonstrate.

And when I do that, I can tell exactly what type of “bread” their organization will bake throughout the different levels of the organization.

Avoiding the Negative Impact of Excessive Ego

Many leaders use their ego to brazen and bully their way through many situations, ignoring or covering up issues that are all around them.

So will the people who follow them.

The problem is that, as with a car that is making a bad noise , “turning up the radio” can provide you with an opportunity to ignore the problem.

But sooner or later, you end up broken down in the middle of nowhere – just as we were in the spring and summer of 2008.

The only way to avoid breaking down is to turn down the radio and honestly assess the problem.

With a focus on ego-less collaboration, acknowledging the respective skills, knowledge, talents and life experiences of others in a respect—filled, trust-filled environment.

Otherwise, the organization may be about to experience a significant problem.

It’s like car brakes that make a very loud screech when you apply them.

You can always turn up the radio.

And that makes everything ok.

Doesn’t it?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed blog on “When Ego and Common Sense Collide”, including a reference to the Bread Recipe Rule, please click here.

Leaders Serve Others–Not Themselves

Another mid-term election has come and gone in the US and amongst all the celebration, lamentations over losses and talk of change, there is another dialogue that is less exciting to hear.

It is the dialogue focused around “We the insert party name here Party will focus on the next two years in preparation for the next election”.

They are focused on future events that are critical to their personal needs instead of focusing on the important tasks at hand that are key to the futures of those whom they serve.

Leaders, whether they be within corporations, governments or any other institution, exist to serve others and to exert appropriate levels of influence in the course of serving others.  They serve others in order to maximize the potential of their organization and the team members within the organization and in turn, to maximize the product or service that their organization provides.  They also exist to represent the needs of others.  In the case of the US, 330 million people cannot fit into the Capitol Building.

When a leader is more focused on the leadership position itself and not on the people they serve, then they are merely self-serving individuals who seek the position for their own gain at the detriment of others. 

If a leader’s focus becomes entirely centered around the needs of the leader; attaining power, keeping it or getting it back if lost, then we need to find new leaders.

When it comes to attaining and retaining the title of “leader”, we must let their time in office be based on their actions on behalf of those whom they serve and not allow them to be focused on actions solely focused on retaining the title.

Let their actions speak so loudly that we cannot hear what they are saying.

When this happens and they truly serve others, they win and so do we.

And so we support them as we should ….

…. as long as we see them serve the needs of those whom they exist to serve.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

For my detailed blog entry about “Leaders Serve Others – Not Themselves” including observations about the Democrat and Republican Parties, please click here.

Wanted For Hire: Not Too Smart or Too Stupid

I was recently helping someone move from Europe to Canada and despite an impeccable academic background, attitude and outlook, he came up empty-handed and so he moved on to another part of the world.

He should have been a shoe-in for a job but he couldn’t find one.  What held him back?

It seems that in the marketplace he had targeted, there were additional criteria that he couldn’t meet; a secret, fuzzy criteria that was impossible to study for or anticipate.

The people he had approached didn’t want him to be too smart.  In essence, they didn’t want him to be smarter than they are (by their own definition and judgment) because it left their ego with a sense of being threatened.

So my response to them was “so you need this person to be not as smart as you” to which the response was “well, we won’t invest in him if he is too stupid either”.

So the final criteria for this enterprising individual was that he had to be less intelligent than the hiring person but not too stupid either – a nebulous range that would vary from one hiring individual to another and a range that would be impossible to anticipate on an interview-by-interview basis.

True leaders want and need to find people who are as smart or preferably, smarter than they are.  True leaders know they are tasked with leading individuals and groups to produce exceptional results and in the process, create leaders who are more knowledgeable than they are.

When leaders can adjust their ego such that they have enough to be confident but not so much that they forget their purpose, to create results as well as the leaders of tomorrow, then we will finally be on the road to a balanced, exceptional future – in business, in government, in institutions and in society.

Strong leadership and strong ego are both accelerants – one accelerates results and growth for everyone and one accelerates the demise of everyone.

When you are hiring, are you looking to create a legacy of results and strong leadership in your teams or are you hiring to fuel your own ego?

How do you know?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

To read my detailed blog “Wanted For Hire: Not Too Smart or Too Stupid”, 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.

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.

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.

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”.