As a leader, do you recognize that your capacity to lead depends upon learning from others? Are you informed by the people around you – receiving their experience and their input regarding your decisions and behaviors? Do you recognize that your success is interdependent with their wellbeing? If it is true that “people don’t work for companies, they work for people,” then it is reasonable to assume that if you are the head of your organization, they work for you. By cultivating your capacity to lead, you are opening your process and recognizing that you are accountable to these people. Are you willing to accept this responsibility for the control that you have over the people that depend on you? Can you see how risky it is to do so without their input? If so, then you are listening, and you recognize that because you have the power of leadership, you are accountable for using your control – responsibly.

Something in the story below reminds us of the need for leaders to listen, even to the smallest of impulses, and of what happens when they don’t:

“Over the years, a practical and materialistic society can usurp the original mystery of childhood. We are sent to school early to “grow up,” to “be serious,” and if we don’t let go of our childhood innocence, all too often the world tries to knock it out of us. A hundred years ago the American painter James McNeill Whistler encountered this attitude in his engineering class at West Point Military Academy. The students were instructed to draw a careful study of a bridge, and Whistler submitted a beautifully detailed picturesque stone arch with children fishing from its top. The lieutenant in charge ordered, “This is a military exercise. Get those children off the bridge.” Whistler resubmitted the drawing with the two children now fishing from the side of the river. “I said get those children completely out of the picture,” said the angry lieutenant. So Whistler’s last version had the river, the bridge, and two small tombstones along its bank.”

Kornfield, J.  (2000).  After the ecstasy, the laundry:  How the heart grows wise on the spiritual path.  New York:  Bantam, p. 9. 10

Sometimes, when an organization is out of  alignment, all that is necessary are a few adjustments; with the right people, in the right place, at the right time, by someone who knows what they are doing.

“I remember the time, as a boy, when I had this bicycle with a wobbly wheel. Everywhere I went my journey was difficult. The front wheel of my bicycle rotated seemingly with a will of its own. First to the right and then to the left I would careen down the road.

When I finally earned enough money to take care of the problem, twenty-five cents as I recall, I zigged and zagged across the boulevard to the garage of old Mr. Oberwagner. As I approached his driveway, there he sat smoking his cigar; open from 2 to 5pm each day in time to catch the after school traffic of kids just like me, in need of an adjustment, a repair, a replacement or an over-hall.

I remember this as though it were happening today. After surveying the problem he grunts and says “there is a solution!” To my amazement and surprise, he states that a simple adjustment is all that is required to address this seemingly incomprehensible problem.

He walks over to his bright red tool box. He lifts the lid and takes in hand the tiniest of tools. His “spoke adjuster,” as he calls it. With two, three, perhaps four simple turns of the spokes, right at the hub of the wheel, the outer rim groans into alignment. Then one more tap, a little bit of oil, and he sends me on my way.

The wheel now turns true. And I am heading home.”

©Timothy Dukes January 2005

  Above Image: www.hopscotchtechnology.com/…/boy_on_bike.jpg

Accepting change necessitates the willingness to age. What comes with age? Experience, institutional memory and knowhow, all good things, right? Your company has experience – “we know how to get the job done.” You have institutional memory – “we have done this before, learned from our mistakes and don’t have to invent a new solution.” You have good old fashioned knowhow – “all the skills we need to accomplish our goals, we possess.”

However, the future is unfolding before us at an extraordinary and mind-numbing rate. So much of what we thought we could trust, the “gold standard” - our ability to make sense of our customer needs, our industry and the world at large - seems to be changing.

It is time for us to recognize that change is an invitation to recognize that each moment contains within it a hint of the future that is emerging. Age is about letting go and receiving the future as much as it is about learning from the past.

A recent article in the Providence Journal reminds us that we have control over our success and our failure, if we pay attention:

“With the downturn in the economy comes an increased interest in starting a business.

You may be interested because you lost your job, or because you have a great idea, or because you cannot find a job you are interested in.

Regardless of the reason, however, you will find there is more information available concerning starting a business than the average human being can consume in a lifetime.

Standard advice includes: prepare a solid business plan, have cash for at least six months, work with a good accountant and attorney; understand your market, understand your competition and have a marketable product or service.

This is good advice indeed. But in our experience, business success or failure involves more than adhering to these maxims. You can have an excellent business plan, good financing, a good product or service and good advisers, yet you may inadvertently sabotage your business and fail. Here are the things you need to pay attention to in order to avoid sabotaging your business success.

• Don’t let fear immobilize you. We believe the No. 1 issue adversely affecting success in a new business is fear: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of criticism, fear of feeling unappreciated, fear of thinking no one will like your product or service or you. Understand that fear can immobilize you and learn to recognize it and deal with it. (more…)

I am delighted to come across a blog by Helge Hellberg an apparent leader in his field and the organic movement.  After a panel discussion of the film Food, Inc. , Helge reflects on his participation and leaves us with the realization that  - through being judgmental and reactive we may actually become an obstacle to the very thing we are trying to understand and change.

“And who are we to display the organic movement as the solution and the food industry as the evil “other”, when it is all about engagement and integration and changing things by becoming a part of it, because, truly, we are already a part of it?”

We have all heard that “we need to become the change we are trying to envision.”  Yet, how do we do this unless we develop the internal capacity to embrace difference; the “good” and the “bad,” the “ugly” and “the pretty,” or “what we hope for” and “what we fear?”

Settling our thinking, our behaviors and decisions simply by addressing one side of the equation, as Helge reminds us, perpetuates the struggle of “my way” is better than “your way,” or simply “self vs. other.” With training and practice we can develop a capacity for difference. This capacity allows for ambivalence and moves the struggle as perceived externally into a more global and holistic perspective, when managed internally. We can actually develop an “evolutionary capacity” that holds and facilitates authentic change. One side of the equation does not have to defeat the other side. In fact it is an equation that informs us of all the variables that are necessary to be whole.

Holding an Evolutionary Capacity is one of the true expressions of leadership. How do we lead, ourselves and those who depend on us, into the complexity and the contradictory nature of life? How do we greet a life that is so full of challenge? And how do we do this with a heart that both envisions possibility and love of life while at other times shrinks from the suffering we experience and the fear of what is to come?

If we recognize that what we are trying to change is already a part of us and not something separate, would it make a difference in the decisions we make and how we make them? Please take a look at Helge Hellberg’s blog and the community that seems to be working diligently to develop this Evolutionary Capacity. For more, please contact me at: tim@drtimothydukes.com.

There is such an extraordinary value to allowing silence to be a part of our every day practice. Find the time, inside of your business day, and “choose” to be in stillness. Take a moment. Stop and listen to the inside and the outside. Simply sit without being compelled to move to the next thought or action. Allow silence.

Later, notice if your performance is affected. Is your mind clearer? Does your energy level change? Has your ability to listen deepened?

Film: http://www.purposeprinciple.com/

Follow Kevin Doherty’ work and insights on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/Kevin_S_Doherty

What strikes me about this film is the authentic and collective voice of leadership. In my opinion, individually and together these leaders recognize that to ensure the sustainability of their businesses, they have to participate in a cycle of generosity: they benefit by the coffee they receive from growers as they ensure that these growers will be able to continue to produce their products. Coffee Kids
About the Video:

“This video served initially as a mechanism to reach an audience at the SCAA convention. It had to be short, succinct and immediately on message. Not only did we achieve that… we have been able to use this video as an outreach and fundraising tool ever since,” said Carolyn Fairman, Executive Director of Coffee Kids. “The team did an excellent job of capturing the nuances of our mission and communicating what makes us unique.”

About its Production

 Josh Backer , the creative director and filmmaker, speaking about his production company: “Animal Studio has always operated on the principal of working collaboratively and utilizing new technology to maximize creative output. By design, we have created a studio that can produce high end work, typically found only in markets used to paying a premium for good strategy, creative and execution. The pipeline we have created for projects – our work flow – the people we bring together and the way we do it – this is something that goes into every project. It’s just who we are.” (read more)

“A leader is best

When people barely know that he exists.

Of a good leader, who talks little,

When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,

They will say, “We did this ourselves.”

                                                      Tao Te  Ching (Chapter 17)

When does the foundation of leadership form?

Rhode Island School of Design students talk about the many meanings of “leadership” on the RISD campus. (Courtesy of Animal Studios)