Unstuck Future: Habits of Thinking for a Changing World

Turning the world upside down for a day

2010-03-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim. It is a holiday for turning your world upside down --by dressing up in costume, putting on a funny play called a Purim "shpiel," and, more radically drinking so much you can't tell the difference between Haman, the villain of the Purim story, and Mordechai, the story's hero.

Like Carnivale, and other holidays that take place this time of year, this is an opportunity to let loose, and try on new identities, new practices, and new mindsets.

It is a one day holiday --nicely bound and in that way, rather safe. Whatever you try on, you only have to do it for a day. And there really is no follow up step.

I think this is something we should build into our lives more -- at least once a year, if not once per quarter. It is a very different practice from making a resolution, for example. It is easy and fun and disruptive. It is a game rather than an obligation. And it is a useful way of climbing out of your box during this period of turbulence.

It would be nice if this practice was adopted in public life as well. Imagine what might be learned, or gained, if Republicans and Democrats engaged in this kind of experimentation once per quarter?

What would you try on if you were going to turn your world upside down for a day?

Risk and Innovation

2010-02-18T07:06:00.000-08:00

My husband and I have been in a very long process of adopting a baby --so long that it can safely be called a saga. Almost five years long. So long that our investigation of the many pathways and possibilities for bringing a child into our family have filled a whole file cabinet.

And being on this path involves a huge amount of risk analysis: what do I not know about the health background of the birth parents? what might the impact be (in international adoption, which is where we started, but didn't end up --due to risk analysis) of time in an orphanage?

It also involves constant innovation and creativity; how can I re-imagine the path I'll take to parenting? In all the ups and downs along the way, how can I keep seeing the possibilities?

Risk and innovation are two sides of the same coin. Both involve asking "what if?" Both require acute imagination of circumstances different from the comfortable present. Both require heightened awareness. Both are about being attuned to bits of evidence on the edge of our radar screens.

Yet while one brings us into the staid world of insurance, and emotions of anxiety, the other brings us into the wild world of design, and the buzz of possibility and play. In organizations, the people who worry about risk are often different from the ones who are responsible for innovation.

I think these should be more integrated, both in organizations and inside each of us.

How can we embrace both of these sides --as leaders? As parents? In our relationships?

Clearing the Shelves

2010-02-10T07:19:00.000-08:00

I spent a good part of last weekend clearing my shelves of books to give away to Good Will. This was long overdue, but until that moment, I had been unable to do it, even though i haven't touched many of those books for years, if ever. At least 85% of my wall of books was devoted to past professional eras --a vestige of sorts, of my life as an academic specialist on international relations and the former Soviet Union. I realized that while I have clearly moved on, and haven't worked in that area for over ten years now, I was clinging to it as part of my self image.

I parted with titles like, "The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict" published by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1961, Dmitri Volkogonov's "Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy," (a tome that weighs several pounds), a dense volume called "The State and Political Theory," by Martin Carnoy. Also included in my purge was a book called "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense," which some well intentioned person (possibly my mother) had given me probably a quarter of a century ago. An issue of the journal Global Governance, from 2003 got tossed, and a copy of the 2003 Writers Market.

Books are like artifacts; sometimes you keep them for show -- to yourself, as much as to others. These earlier parts of myself were precious; they spoke about an earlier passion, like photos of an old lover. I remember the pleasure I felt when I added the classics of Soviet Studies, Russian history, and several other subject areas, to my shelf, treasures I had found in old bookstores. At the time I thought I might need them for my career of teaching and research; but as important, (or moreso), I placed them there as show to students or colleagues perusing my shelves -- that I was a true expert; the impulse of the collector.

As I added books to the discard pile I felt increasingly buoyant and encouraged. These books were weighing me down; they were taking space -- a physical representation of how my prior professional self remained too present in my life.

I held on to one shelf for each of my previous areas of focus --nationalism; international relations; Eastern Europe; Jewish; holocaust/World War II; Russian and Soviet Literature. The one topic I couldn't reduce to one shelf was Soviet politics and foreign policy --my original grad school focus. Maybe it is because I had such a good collection of these books; no need to ask why.

The operative question was: which of these can you leave behind, and which do you want to ship ahead, in case you might need them some day? This question is iterative, I think; I may revisit in a few years, and toss some more. But for now I have made space for the professional self I now am.

I keep looking at the space I cleared on the shelf, pleasantly empty now, but waiting to be filled with new topics, new curiosities and new artifacts. My long transition from my past life feels more complete.

If you are in a transition, try this as an exercise:
What is most essential on your shelf?
What is expendable?
What can you leave behind, and what do you want to ship ahead?

Improvising Life

2010-02-10T06:46:00.001-08:00

I'm back to this blog after a long hiatus. And probably because my improvisation muscle was weak. I became too planful in this space, and lost my ability to build on the unexpected, the core capacity of improv. Improvising may be the central skill we need in this period of unimaginable change.

Last night I went to an improv class at Quick Thinking Improv
..I've meant to do this for years, but finally located the class and went because I wanted to check it out for a client. As is so often the case, what I'm working on with a client is a growth opportunity for myself.

Walking into the space, in a fourth floor studio on west 18th street, among mostly younger actors, was itself a stretch. It was one of those discoveries you make above the ground floor in New York. We were a motley assortment of people -- I stuck out no more than did the two twenty something and timid Brits on vacation, who the instructor began to refer to as "the girls," or the computer geek by day turned actor by night.

The instructor took us through a series of games and exercises, each one elevating the extemporaneous skill you needed. As he introduced each one my sense was --"I can't." But then you're up there, paired with another fumbling improviser, working on a scene like the following:

One person walks onto the stage from the side and says, "hi George (say--you make up a name), I've got to tell you something." The other player replies "Hi Dr. Jones,(you make up a title, like doctor, or president) what is it?" And then the scene unfolds -- I became a doctor speaking in hushed tones about a cure for cancer; my partner, a stranger until then, was my inquisitive student, and I told him conspiratorially "the cure was all in the mind." The scene went on for a minute or two more. The instructor didn't rate us that highly, but that wasn't the point, of course. (There I go, even as I write this, away from the improvisational mindset, which at its core is about "yes, and.")

You are trained to build on, rather than refute, whatever comes your way. That's how scenes emerge out of nothing; that's how you collaborate with a complete stranger; that's how you access your creativity.

Another core rule is that you don't ask questions. They call this "giving the gift." You hand an idea to your partner, trusting them to take the next step with it. But you have to put something into the mix, even if it is a total flop (I ended up telling a story about monkeys eating peanuts in the zoo, but realized I wasn't sure if monkeys actually eat peanuts!)

The other thing I realized, though this was a re-realization, is how games unleash creativity for me. It is the rules that allow me to get out of the box --they give me permission to be creative. They allow me to say yes and leap into the unknown.

What allows you to improvise?
What gives you permission to step into the unknown?
How many times today can you say "yes and" rather than "yes, but"?

Try an improv class -- you won't be sorry.

Is There a New Normal?

2009-06-08T07:21:00.001-07:00

I've been noticing a pattern in the news and commentariat in the last few months: at the very same time headlines shout --"are we getting back to normal?" --while just beside them others scream --"life will never be the same, so get used to it."

Take this past Sunday's New York Times for example: On the one hand was the article on the front page of the real estate section titled "Honk if You Think it is Over," saying it is exciting to be in NY real estate again -- back to the good old days of stratospheric prices and bidding wars.

On the other hand was a piece in the business section about the fall of the "the efficient market hypothesis," . The efficient market hypothesis said that stock markets were rational. The article was about the discrediting of the model, which many believe is itself responsible for the financial crisis -- "an academic model that offered a false sense of security," in a way reminiscent of Soviet style Marxism-Leninism in the early 1990's. This is just one of the many articles telling us that life will never be the same and that we don't yet have the frameworks to replace the old ones, an unsettling thought.

After watching this pattern I've come to a realization. Both are in some sense true. We each need to hold on to these two sides, the normal and the radically new, even as it begins to feel like an increasingly precarious balance. While we don't want to delude ourselves into thinking we can go backwards into a false sense of security, we also must live from day to day with a feeling of calm and connection to ourelves and our pasts -- to how it used to be.

At the same time, we must learn to be acute observers of the new and the upcoming, constantly opening our minds to the possibility that long held assumptions might need some challenging.

What's difficult is that we don't have good examples of what this balance looks or feels like.

I have found one way to get this -- to really get it --is to try the yoga position "tree pose," --standing on one foot like a stork, with arms raised overhead like a tree swaying in the wind.

You are simultaneously rooted on the ground, standing as you always have, while you concentrate on balance, and the discomfort of being precariously close to falling.

Another yoga pose that I've found helpful is Utkatasana, "awkward chair pose," sometimes also called "powerful pose." It requires you while standing, to sit back as if in a chair, while holding your hands up straight above your head. It is simultaneously extremely awkward -- you wish, every moment you are in it that you could straighten your legs -- but you also feel a sense of power as you remain in the pose and try to rise above your discomfort.

You might not be drawn to yoga, and may well have your own ways of learning this new balance.

What keeps you grounded in these crazy times?

What strategies do you have for challenging your assumptions about the future?

The Not Very Good First Draft

2009-06-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been away for awhile and I'm hoping this post will get me back on track with this blog. Really. Maybe I should take the tentativeness out of that last statement: it will get me back in the groove of regular writing.

Blogging should be fun, the antidote to perfectionism in writing. It is a wonderful example of a task that can only be "good enough." After all, it is often time bound and responsive to something or other fleeting -- usually news, or a moment of insight that passes.

As I've written here before, I've been learning something about goal setting these last months. It needs to be forgiving, even as it stretches you forward to break through inertia. Getting here to this page is half the struggle. The other half is the first few words and sentences -- taking that small step into the unknown in the not-very-good-first-draft that is the pre-requisite for any pursuit.

Phew...How many times to I have to relearn that one?

What is your mechanism for writing those first lines, for busting through inertia?

How can you remember, day after day, to relentlessly, but compassionately, push yourself to set and accomplish new goals?

small steps into the unknown

2009-04-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

I often see parallels between physical challenges, like biking up a big hill, doing a yoga tree pose, and intellectual/emotional challenges -- like embarking on a new marketing campaign, or doing a new piece of writing. My newest insight, which I thought I'd share, was in my first pilates class, which I took last week.

As I got to what I thought was the end of a set of particularly painful abs exercises, the instructor pushed on to one more set, this time with a challenging new twist. The details aren't important, but I plunged forward into a pretty feeble rendition of the new twist. And as I fumbled along and lost my balance, I had the insight -- sweating there on the floor: you need to fumble and flail before you can hope to be on the path to mastery. It isn't as if I hadn't learned and re-learned this countless times in the past, but I suddenly saw the process slowed down into micro steps.

I realized that I could hold on to the image of that moment next time I'm resistant to stepping into an unfamiliar idea, creating a less than wonderful first draft, or picking up the phone to make a difficult call. If I don't allow myself to fail, I wil never begin. I left the class feeling virtuous that I'd made it through, committed to returning. And in the retelling to myself, I remembered the success more than the failure.

What image of flubbing on the way to success can you remember and hold on to?

Envisioning your career

2009-04-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

A career is way more than a job. It is a path, even a calling -- and shaping it takes work and vision.

Here is the dictionary definition:
Career
1. an occupation or profession, esp. one requiring special training, followed as one's lifework: He sought a career as a lawyer.
2. a person's progress or general course of action through life or through a phase of life, as in some profession or undertaking: His career as a soldier ended with the armistice.
3. success in a profession, occupation, etc.
4. a course, esp. a swift one.
5. speed, esp. full speed: The horse stumbled in full career.
6. Archaic. a charge at full speed.

–verb (used without object) 7. to run or move rapidly along; go at full speed.

–adjective 8. having or following a career; professional: a career diplomat.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Origin:
1525–35; < MF carriere < OPr carriera lit., road < LL carrāria (via) vehicular (road), equiv. to L carr(us) wagon (see car 1 ) + -āria, fem. of -ārius -ary

Often we think about career from the outside in: what will make me the most money; what will earn me the most status; what will be a good use of all those years of education; how can I fit the job description I just saw posted.

But thinking from the inside out can get you in touch with your sense of purpose and where you want to have impact -- where you would come alive.

Many of us have several visions for where we might go. And some of those, or even all of them, can be vague, murky or appear preposterous. But having a vision can keep you focused when you have just lost a position, are having trouble finding the right next one, or run your own business and are hustling for clients.

What is your career vision or visions?

I get this exercise from my colleague Michael Melcher:

Try exploring one vision for yourself --five years hence --and avoiding the temptation to begin immediately to tell yourself why it is not possible. Maybe you are doing development work in Afghanistan. Maybe you are teaching first graders. Maybe you have discovered an green tech innovation, and are selling it to investors.

Stick with the idea.

What are you doing?
Whom are you working with?
What industry?
What kind of organization?
What does your workplace look like?
How do you feel in this place?

Try it on and see how it feels.

Now try it again with other visions, if you have them.

See what you learn.

Be proactive in your career

2009-04-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to read the piece in today's New York Times about the trend towards pursuing careers in public service, one of the bright sides of this moment of crisis. Hundreds of talented people are being proactive and moving toward growth areas that also allow them to pursue a desire for social contribution.

From the article: "In choosing careers, young people look for signals from society, and Wall Street will no longer pull the talent that it did for so many years,” said Richard Freeman, director of the labor studies program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “We have a great experiment before us.”

What will the new map of talent flow look like? It’s early, but based on graduate school applications this spring, enrollment in undergraduate courses, preliminary job-placement results at schools, and the anecdotal accounts of students and professors, a new pattern of occupational choice seems to be emerging. Public service, government, the sciences and even teaching look to be winners, while fewer shiny, young minds are embarking on careers in finance and business consulting."

At this moment of flux, where are you in your career?
Have you been pondering a move of this type?
What tools and support do you need to make this leap, or at least to begin to move along this pathway?

I am leading a workshop in New York -- a Career Action Group -- beginning on May 5 and continuing for four Tuesdays. The workshop will be full of tips and strategies, along with a structure for exploring your values and vision, honing your networking and communications skills and managing the uncertainty of the transition. All this in a group with about 10-12 other interesting people.

It includes ten hours of workshop, and a 45 minute one-on-one coaching session. Check out the information at www.careeractiongroups.com
If you sign up by April 15th, you'll get $100 off the price!

Hope to see you there.

A moment to connect with your sense of purpose in your work

2009-04-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile I ask myself why I do what I do for work. What's a political science PhD, a recipient of the top fellowships, who taught at Wellesley and has a book out on leadership and change in post-communist Eastern Europe doing helping talented people make their next career moves, or become more effective or creative in their current roles?

I do love this work. And I feel priveleged to be privy to the inner struggles of really smart and creative people figuring out how to develop their gifts and talents and to take on challenging projects.

But every so often I, like many of the people I work with, have to remind myself of the reasons and reconnect with my passion and purpose.

So here's my thinking.

Back when I was teaching at Wellesley and Berkeley, I offered guidance to my students not just by imparting knowledge or provoking them to think critically, but in helping them live up to their potential and make difficult choices about their paths as emerging leaders. I liked that helping-them-with-life part more in the end than directing them to good resources on peace-keeping or conflict prevention, for example. And I bet it is that guidance about the difficult choices about their careers, between practicality and passion, that they remember years later. For many of us, work is so central to who we are as human beings; how we gain satisfaction and joy; how we express our unique contributions; how we learn. It is about making a living, but it is even more about making a life.

Second, one of the most important trends of this turbulent time is the move of some of our best and brightest away from finance, and away from focusing primarily on economic gain and status and towards work with social purpose, either in government, in greening businesses, in social entrepreneurship or non-profit work. Helping those people find a place to contribute their smarts and creativity (what sometimes is blandly called talent management) is hugely important for our future as a nation. We are in a moment of incredible opportunity, if only we take it -- to throw a lot more firepower and innovative energy towards our most pressing social challenges.

For these reasons alone, I feel my choices, and my difficult career transition, was worth it. I can have real impact on peoples' lives, as a catalyst and thinking partner. And of course, I can make a living in the process.

What would you do if you weren't worried about the challenges of starting in a new field?

What is a step you can take towards aligning your work with you sense of purpose?

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

Navigating the Great Disruption?

2009-03-19T06:57:00.000-07:00

Thomas Friedman wrote the other week that we have entered a period which in retrospect we will name "The Great Disruption." As is often true of Friedman's naming of a social phenomenon, this one struck a chord.

"Let's today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall - when Mother Nature and the market both said: "No more.""

What does it mean to live in such a period? How must we change our lives? How do we adjust our expectations? What opportunities can we find? What small steps can we take to build our resilience?

As humans we are not good at anticipating futures all that different from the one we are in. Yes, we are worriers -- and can fritter the night away worrying about a worst case scenario that never plays out. But we tend to flit from one extreme to the other -- from our worst fears to wishful thinking.

Think about even the simple situation of planning for a storm you know from the weather forecast is coming your way. You are sitting out having breakfast on your deck under a perfect blue sky and you are told that by 4PM the winds and rain will be so powerful that anything that could move will blow away. Taking in your furniture at that moment seems far fetched.

Similarly, in the middle of the storm, hunkered down as we are, we tend to believe it will continue forever, that sunshine will never reappear.

When it comes to large social disruptions, we never seem to be prepared. It is not just that we are not good at tricking ourselves to anticipate the unexpected. It is also because every ounce of training we've had has been oriented toward extrapolating forward from what we know from the past.

An excessive focus on risk and downsides can be discouraging and certainly it is not terribly fun. Asking "what if?" can open possibilities that you've never before imagined.

We need to build this muscle of flexible foresight. This includes resilience in the face of turbulence, a skill in and of iteslf, and the ability to see the signals that are barely on our radar screen, and form a picture of what might be coming down the pike. We need to learn to be slower to say "that can't happen," and quicker to stop and ask "What if?"

Recognizing change when we see it

2009-02-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been at one of those moments when you know what you've been doing will no longer work -- that you are killing yourself by eating too much cholesterol, or that you are ruining your marriage by continuing to have the same debilitating fight -- but you are unable to map the way forward?

Or even if you know what you need to do, and have spoken of it, and resolved to do it many times, you find yourself standing at the edge of the cliff, fearful of stepping off because you are as vulnerable and wobbly as a child just learning to walk?

Or where you have begun your change, taken those few small steps, falling down every other one, but no one around you seems to notice? In fact they seem to be doing all they can to keep you from enacting the changes they say they want and not seeing success when it is right before their eyes?

Whether you are adopting healthier ways of eating, or you are learning to communicate with your staff in a new way, or trying to change your organization's culture, you move through four stages. You can learn more about this and other models of change here.
Stage 1:

In the first stage you are blissfully unaware. You may be in denial that any change is needed at all. You certainly don't have any idea how difficult and painful the required shift will be. You don't see the problem. Nor are you aware of the impact of your old ways. You are unconsciously incompetent.

Stage 2: Once you become of aware of the need to change, perhaps through a crisis, or because you want to learn a new skill, you become accutely aware of your incompetence. You are learning a new dance step. You are trying out a new language, and you realize how far you are from mastery. I think of the time when I was learning French, and I proudly attempted to order an ice cream cone in Montreal only to discover with dismay that the person behind the counter didn't understand me. At this stage you have the realization that you never even knew what it took to be good at this. You are in trial and error mode, taking one step forward and two back. We've all experienced this when trying to make something new happen. You need to spend a great deal of focus and effort on each step you take. At this second stage of change, you are consciously incompetent.

Stage 3: Once you have been trying and fumbling along for awhile, you get closer to a point of mastery -or at least mastery at the first basic level. I remember this happening when I was learning swing dancing. Suddenly one day I was able to let go enough to have fun at it, even though I had to pay attention to each step and keep looking at my feet. To the untrained eye it looked like I was beginning to know what I was doing. Only I knew how hard it still was to make sure all my steps were correct and that I was counting time under my breath. At this third stage of change you are consciously competent: you are practicing the new skill or behavior, but you still need to pay attention to it. You have not yet become fluent.

Stage 4: There is a final stage, when suddenly the new behavior becomes second nature. You are able to speak the new language without translating every word as you go. You are able to drive the stick shift car naturally, and able to carry on a conversation at the same time. It is hard to remember those first awkward steps when each new dance step -- slowed down as it was to lhelp you learn -- seemed so awkward and impossible. You have reached the stage of unconscious competence -- you no longer have to pay attention and you'ver created a new habit.

I have gone through these phases, multiple times and seen clients go through them too. The real work comes in that phase of conscious incompetence, when you cringe at how far you are from being where you want to go, and when others might not recognize your efforts.

I actually think that this framework is illuminating even on a political-social level. Take Obama's attempts to bring post-partisanship to Washington, for example. Altering habits of thinking and communicating that are heavily ensconced in the power arrangements and assumptions of years of bickering will not happen over night. Yet the discussion about whether or not Obama's approach is authentically bi or post partisan, is expecting just that.

We can all recognize these phases of change as individuals. We stay on course because we know that eventually we will get to fluency or fit into the smaller size pair of jeans.

It is all the more important to recognize these phases of change when looking at an enormous and complex shift such as the one Obama is attempting. Without going through that stage of fumbling, when it is barely possible to believe a different outcome is possible, we will remain stuck.

As individuals, as leaders in organizations, and as a culture, we need to be more cognizant of what change processes really look like, and to assess where we are in the process. It would help each of us bring the changes that we want to see.

Consider these questions:

If you are in a change process in some aspect of your life, whether personal or professional, what stage do you think you are at?

If you are considering making a change, what can you do to keep yourself moving forward, awkward as it is?

How can you withstand moments of discouragement?

How can you give yourself credit for making a change, and let yourself be where you are in the process, rather than at the end?

Learning from Obama's first days

2009-02-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

I found Obama's admission that he made a mistake in the Daschle case refreshing - not so much because of the ethical consistency it showed, but because of his willingness to admit error. As a leader, Obama has time after time, throughout the campaign, and now as president, shown a confidence and a depth of self awareness that is all too rare in public life (and elsewhere).

Many have commented on Obama's ambitious agenda. Taking on any one of the huge challenges he faces would be daunting, (from climate change to fixing our education system) let alone the multiple intersecting challenges (how relations with China intersect with the financial crisis, for example).

He is leading us into the unknown and there are sure to be many mistakes and corrections along the way. If there are no mistakes, there is no experimentation. No failure, means no growth. Check out Mary O'Hara-Devereaux's book "Navigating the Badlands: Thriving in the Decade of Radical Transformation." I have thought of it many times in the last few months --you'll definitely see what I mean about leading into the unknown. (More in a later post).

We all need to learn how to admit responsibility quickly and make corrections; that way we can take more risks, and be more creative. It is what you do with the mistake that counts.

What is your approach to failure, both large and small? How do you handle mistakes? When have you failed well?

What will this month bring?

2009-02-02T05:46:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is already February 1 -- we're solidly into 2009, a few weeks into the Obama administration, looking ahead towards spring. One thing I've been doing both for myself and clients recently is setting monthly goals on the first Monday of the month.

This seems obvious to many, and quite simple. Yet this simple act of intention can be empowering. It focuses the mind by clarifying what you want, and what is doable. It creates priorities.

Many coaches and organizational deelopment consultants use the term SMART goals -- a helpful acronym for powerful goals setting. SMART stands for:
Specific (not vague);
Measurable (you can tell whether or not you've done them--whether it is pounds lost or articles written);
Actionable (they are not just in your head);
Relevant (they move something forward that is meaningful and important to you) and
Time-bound (they have a specific time associated with them -- you will finish them by Feb. 15 for example).
Sometimes another "S" is added, for Stretch -- that is, they are goals that will push you a bit to stretch beyond your comfort zone.

I have to confess that one of mine this month is getting to the gym, or doing yoga at home, at least four times/week. I began last week and have broken through my months long malaise to get to the gym both weekend days the past two weeks plus two days during the week. The trick has been the simple act of going, allowing myself to start small (i.e. not being embarrassed to spend only 15 minutes on the bike, as long as I made it there to begin with) and building as I go along. I am reminded of an essay I wrote a few years ago about my perpetual struggle to get to the gym, called "In Search of the Perfect Health Club."

At the time I wrote this essay, (yes, I've been engaged in this exercise struggle for a long time) I was much more into perfectionism than I am now. During those years I spent my time thinking and speculating, rather than doing. Now, I go for "good enough"...

As you look ahead towards February, what do you want to accomplish? Who in your networks do you want to reconnect with? What do you want to accomplish on your various projects? How do you want to attend to your health, or the relationships with those you love? What kind of time will you allow yourself for reflection? Take a few moments to write down your goals...And then give yourself some slack.

Are you an ostrich or a flamingo?

2009-01-22T06:00:00.001-08:00

Some of us look at all the changes and panic; others of us just stick our heads in the sand insisting that nothing much has changed. I've found in working with individuals and organizations that those who can map multiple scenarios for how the future could unfold can keep their calm, access their creativity and stay afloat.

How are you responding to the current crisis?
What do you know about the 1, 2 and 5 year future?
What don't you know?
How are you retooling to thrive amid uncertainty?

Career management is an act of leadership

2009-01-22T05:58:00.000-08:00

In our rapidly changing work landscape it's time to promote and reinvent ourselves. Such is the pathway to continuing success and satisfaction. It is also the way we can have the greatest impact as leaders. When you reinvent yourself you are drawing on your passion, reconnecting with your values and using foresight. I have found that many people have trouble doing this on their own since it is so hard to challenge our past identities, or get to our best thinking, even if we want to move in a new direction. And this is especially true in crisis times.

What have you always wanted to do that you haven't yet done?

Are you using your creative talents to their fullest right now?

Creativity is more important than ever!

2009-01-22T05:56:00.000-08:00

Leaders who want to make a difference need to be more effective, creative and far-sighted in a time of rapid change and reduced resources. But how do we actually do that? The default position for many of us is to operate from a mindset of scarcity. But crisis-thinking narrows, rather than opens up options. So the psychology of scarcity only serves to make things worse.

Down economies are good times for bolstering innovation and creativity about doing more with less.

What kinds of investments have you made to help maximize your own and your peoples' creativity and resourcefulness?
What additionally might you do in the coming months?

Making a habit of asking "What If?"

2008-12-11T08:45:00.001-08:00

I wrote the scenario below --called "Dependent America" -- back in June as one of four possible 15 year futures --worlds of 2023 -- in which we'd be struggling to sustain the middle class. I'll share the other three in subsequent posts.

The project uses a powerful and fascinating technique -- scenario thinking -- in which you develop four plausible stories about the future in order to stretch your thinking about what is possible, and so that you can plan for the unexpected. (For more on scenario thinking see my website ; also check out http://www.gbn.com/ -- where I was trained to use this tool).

As I look back over these last few months, it looks truer and sooner than I expected.

As you read through it, ask yourself -- what do you see unfolding that seems to support this scenario? what about it seems most or least plausible? how would your work change if this scenario were to develop?

Dependent America: 2023
This is a world in which America’s example and vibrancy to attract global talent and investment is severely diminished. Its military power and reach have declined significantly, but government plays a larger role than it has for many years – both in regulating and providing. Globalization has slowed overall, but China and Europe have pulled ahead, having been the first movers on alternative energy and bio-sciences innovation, respectively. The U.S.’s historic role as a haven for migrants from around the world has shifted, and now more highly educated Americans are moving abroad in larger numbers.

The U.S. is a fine place to live – with higher levels of equity and a lower level of material consumption. "Simple" and "functional chic" were choices at first, when the "green tipping point" led some people to move off the grid in order to diminish their carbon footprints. By 2015, "functional chic" was a necessity, increasingly mandated by government, along with mandates about healthier eating and ownership.

ZipCars arrival on the scene in the early 2000s were viewed as a novelty, but in 2023 many people have forgotten what it was like to own their own car; vehicles are now generally shared by several families. By 2023, simple and low consumption was a way of life. Anyone who longed for the "good old days" of materialism or fast-paced, innovative business culture had to go abroad, most likely to Asia. They are now helping support families and favorite social causes back home.

While acceleration of life had once seemed inevitable with Moore’s Law and 24-7 trading, the world of 2023 is slower. Striving for success is no longer valued as the only pathway to a worthwhile life. "Slow down, don’t compete" became a popular catch-phrase. In part, this is because Americans can no longer compete with other global super-powers. But the slower-paced life is also driven by strong norms against consumption, as well as opposition to the whole ethic of innovation that had once been so pervasive. The U.S. government, in an attempt to recover an edge in innovation, is aggressively trying to attract highly-educated workers, both American ex-pats and non-Americans. One of its main recruitment strategies is an advertisement campaign in global newspapers touting America’s "multi" culture where anyone of any culture can feel at home.

Want to jumpstart your effectiveness and creativity? Invest in capacity building

2008-12-11T08:12:00.000-08:00

We use the somewhat deadening word "capacity building" to refer to some of the most important and undervalued aspects of organizational work: helping ourselves and the people who work with or for us to access their most creative, collaborative and effective selves. And, dare I say it, tapping into our sense of passion and purpose.

Capacity comes from Middle English roots meaning roomy and to hold. "Build" means to establish, increase or strengthen.

We analytically trained people, who do policy, advocacy, writing and strategy work, tend to think we have all the capacity we need -- mostly in our heads. We have our natural talent, no increasing or stengthening needed, thank you.

But why are we willing to invest in acquiring more and more knowledge, or learning to ski, but not to tap into our best selves? Why are we willing to endure less than productive meetings and thinking processes and participate in them over and over again?

A few questions to ponder as you think about whether you need to do this:
How can you expand your thinking -- and explore it in all its roominess -- to hold the most possibilites you can? How can you make room in your day to connect with your sense of purpose? How can you help your people or your organization to hold even more of your collective energy and creativity? What will you lost if you don't do this, particularly during these challenging times?

Honor your creativity, don't drown in it

2008-11-20T15:13:00.000-08:00

I can say from experience what it is like to be an entrepreneurially minded person: I'm in one of those moments now -- they happen every few weeks; at times every few days: I look around and realize I'm excited to be pursuing about ten ideas when all I can handle is one, at most three. I surf from one exciting possiblity to the next idea that is too fascinating and too good to put down.

Before I know it I am lost in a cloud of more and more ideas, moving and an ever faster pace, swirling around with no center. I am stuck.

Entrepreneurs, a wise person once told me, can either move mountains or burn out in despair. I do have a technique for getting out of this, if I remember to use it. You can use it too.

Buy a notebook and label it "good ideas." Use it as a place to note ideas as they come along: honor them. Write a few lines so you are sure you remember what's there. And then take the ones that have traction and leave the rest behind. You will not have lost them. They'll be there in a year or five when their time has come.

How to Break Free of Group Think: Challenge the Crowd

2008-11-03T06:56:00.000-08:00

Why is it that we pay so little attention to the impact of psychology in our policy discussions, when it is psychology -- in this case, of the policy makers, experts and pundits themselves -- that so often leads our smartest and most talented people to achieve less than they should?

I'm happy to see that some pundits are coming around, and that we are beginning to see a conversation about the human thoughts and feelings that shape the pronouncements of experts -- with sometimes dire consequences.

Yale economist Robert Shiller recalls Irving Janis' classic book "Group Think" in his insightful article in yesterday's New York Times Business section as a way of explaining why more economists did not foresee the financial crisis. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/business/02view.html

The idea is that often experts fear that "if they deviate too far from the consensus, they will not be given a serious role. They self-censor personal doubts about the emerging group consensus if they cannot express these doubts in a formal way that conforms with appraent assumptions held by the group."

Schiller goes even further though in his analysis of what keeps economists in particular from believing warnings about bubbles. He points to another social-psychological phenomenon -- that economists do not have the tool kit to understand psychology by virtue of their training, even if in casual conversation they regularly speak about the kind of mass psychology that can lead to speculative behavior. They prefer to focus the discussion to things they understand well.

Furthermore, those who are drawn to the study of economics, with its technical and mathematical character, tend not to be attuned to psychological nuances -- particularly those that may lead to massive errors in judgement.

This is why the new field of behavioral economics, that has so influenced Shiller's own work, continues to be marginalized by the field of economics, even as those titles move to the top of best sellers lists.

Until we focus on the humans behind the ideas, and shift the culture of the social sciences, we'll be stuck with experts who cannot lead.

How can you build your tool kit to become a thought leader?
1) Learn to recognize your assumptions: do a self assessment (design this)
2) what do you really care about: what is your vision for your personal impact?
3) When was the last time you said: "that can't happen" and been wrong?
4) Have you been willing to take outliers in your field seriously? Identify those people in your circle who challenge conventional wisdom and take them to lunch.

Looking back

2008-10-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

One of the images most present in our minds during this financial crisis is the depresssion that began with the crash of 1929, almost eighty years ago. We talk about its causes, the institutions that were created to avoid repeating it, and the pictures of employment lines and Grapes of Wrath type migrations.

One comfort during these times is the FDIC --which guarantees that savings won't be wiped out when banks get into trouble. We look to this protection with pride about what our government will do for the good of Americans and congratulate ourselves for successful learning.

What learning or institution will we look back to with pride eighty years from now? What will come out of this crisis, which is arguably more significant given the degree to which our economy is now globalized?

Creating new institutional protections and prohibitions on profligate risk taking is a no brainer. I hope that this will be a turning point of a different sort. I'd like to look back to the crisis of 2008 and remember a cognitive and behavioral shift in our very habits of decision making.

Looking back from 2089, 2008 will be the time when leaders and ordinary citizens alike learned to imagine futures very different from the ones they expect. This will be when we learned to adjust our thinking and judgment to an inherently uncertain environment; when adhering blindly to status quo thinking became archaic, like holding court with kings or relegating women to the home.

Rather than an institution like FDIC, we will have created an institution to focus the nation on building capacity to think the unthinkable, to develop personal resilience, and to know how to survive and thrive at a time of discontinuous change.

Just as we now see information technologies as essential to every aspect of our lives, by 2089 we will have developed social technologies that allow us to exercise and train our minds to think the unthinkable and to have the emotional intelligence to maximize our collective potential.

This is just a snippet of a much longer thought. We need to begin to focus not just on rules, regulations, and protections, but on the cognitive and leadership capacities that will support the new rules. If we don't, they will be empty, like the rituals of a religion we go through by rote. And we'll continue to move from crisis to crisis without much progress.

Swamp problems

2008-05-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

It was about ten years ago now that I heard the term, coined by Donald Schon, "swamp problems" to refer to messy, confusing problems that defy technical solutions. Schon pointed out that the problems of greatest human concern lie in the swamp, rather than on the high ground, where we develop most of our technical knowledge and apply the rigor of research.

Ron Heifetz talked about this kind of problem as an "adaptive," challenge as opposed to a technical challend and in his book Leadership Without Easy Answers, developed an approach to leadership in a world of adaptive challenges.

The problem is our social problem solving approach is still stuck in technical, rather than adaptive mode.

Check out the May 19 2008 issue of the New Yorker and Bee Wilson's review essay called "The Last Bite" for a doozy of a swamp problem. He is writing about the need to radically change the system of Western food production, "right down to the spinach." According to Wilson, as of 2006, there were eight hundred million people in the world who were hungy, but they were outnumbered by one billion who were overweight. As he puts it, "Our ability to produce vastly too many calories for our basic needs has skewed the concept of demand, and generated a wildly dysfunctional market."

This complex and interconnected challenges, which includes food producers, large food companies, consumers, advertisers and a host of other players, will be difficult to solve. It was created in part from a failure to develop the habit of looking at the pieces of the problem as a whole -- as a system where a solution in one place may create an unanticipated problem in another.

A place called the "Sustainable Food Lab," is trying to back out of this mess, http://www.sustainablefoodlab.org/overview/ by taking a different approach, and acknowledging this as a swamp problem. Check it out to see what they are up to.

More in subsequent posts.

Habits and culture

2008-05-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

Stephen Covey, in his 7 habits of Highly Effective People, was one of the first to put forward the idea that being effective in today's and tomorrow's workplace requires intentionally creating new habits of thinking, communicating and acting. Covey defines a habit as "an acquired pattern of behavior that often occurs automatically."

Habits are unconscious ways of being -- we use the phrase "get into the habit of..." going to the gym regularly, for example. Or we talk about "breaking the habit of..." -- for example eating all the potato chips that come with your sandwich at lunch.

Personal habits -- what we do with our bodies for example, are only one kind. Alexis De Toqueville talked about "habits of the heart" to refer to the particular norms of American culture that make Americans different from Europeans and American civic culture so robust.

Widely shared habits -- how we think, talk and communicate -- can add up to shared culture. Once these habits are shared, largely unseen and made more stubborn and enduring through their use in schools, businesses and politics, cultural change becomes difficult. Some would even say it is impossible.

The emerging conventional wisdom in neuroscience would suggest othewise. The idea that brains are more changeable than was originally understood -- what's called brain plasticity -- may well make a big difference for what kind of culture change is possible. While there are grooves of thinking -- literally ruts along with nueral signals travel -- that are unlikely to change, it is possible to create new neural pathways, that can run along side the old, and become habitual themselves. Kind of like the super highway built alongside the old and slow country road.

Janet Rae-Depree had an interesting article in the New York Times business section two Sundays ago (May 4). While we tend to see creativity and innovation as coming from habit breaking, increasing numbers of brain scientists, coaches and others who work with people and organizations to develop innovation and creativity are saying the opposite. Innovation comes from habit-making. We can, writes Rae-Dupree "create parallel synaptic paths and even entirely new brain cells that can jump our trains of thought onto new innovative tracks."

All of this has great implications for how we as a society go about solving our most pressing social problems. What kind of habit making and habit breaking do we need when it comes to addressing climate change? Or fixing our educational system?

More on that in later posts.

tales from the edge

2008-05-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Where are the people and organizations who have already created the new habits of thinking that will maximize our creativity for solving social problems in a new era? Sometimes it is important to look backwards for examples. In retrospect, cultural change is always easier to see. And cultural change has always been about getting unstuck -- moving from one paradigm of thinking and behaving to another.

One of the most powerful stories of this comes from Roman times. The story is of a rabbi named Yochanan ben Zakkai. Jerusalem was in flames, and the Romans were about to destroy the temple, the very core of Jewish practice. Ben Zakkai went to the Roman general Vespasian on behalf of the Jewish community but made an unexpected request. Instead of calling for a truce or begging for mercy, so that the precious temple could be restored, he asked the general to give him the city of Yavneh. Yavneh was where the embryonic new rabbinic movement was developing. A place of conversation and debate about Jewish law and practice and how to adapt it to changing times. It was also a magnet for a new kind of Jewish thinker and teacher – the people who became known as the rabbis who wrote the Talmud. So he asked for a place and for the “human capital and talent” that had begun to gather in that place.

It was a daring move on his part. Instead of fighting to preserve the old ways – the institution and related practices that formed the very essence of what most people thought defined Jews as a people -- he asked for a place for conversation to invent the new practices that would shape Judaism in its next era, in the face of a world in which practice was no longer centralized and where the temple priests were no longer the primary arbiters of what was right and wrong.

It would not be difficult to change the names and the places and see this story’s relevance for our time. What the rabbis went on to do was to suspend prior ideas about what was Jewish or not; what defined core Jewish practice, and to look at what was emerging and what was most alive and true in their own era.

What would it mean to do this in our times? Where are the people and places that have developed the new habit of standing back and looking at what is emerging, rather than immediately imposing upon it the categories they bring from the past. Those places are most likely on the edge of established institutions. They may not be on the radar screen yet as having significance. I'd bet on them.

Capacity building

2008-05-06T05:59:00.000-07:00

John Esterle is an unassuming man who runs the Whitman Institute out of an apartment in San Francisco's Embarcadero neighborhood. He's been at it for twenty years, though the foundation has become better known since it shifted from being an operating to a grantmaking organization just a few years ago.

This tiny foundation is at the leading edge of supporting the development of capacities the individuals and institutions addressing our most pressing social problems need. But he is very much alone in this task. While "capacity building" is the concern of the hour in the foundation world, most foundations define it much more narrowly and only in conjunction with their own grantees.

Here is the Whitman Institute's mission: "promotion of open-mindedness, cross-perspective dialogue, and engaged communication to improve the process and quality of public and private decision-making. Our ultimate goals are to broaden the public conversation about the importance of critical and collaborative thinking and to link that deepened awareness to effect individual and social change."

More specifically, the foundation is committed to the following capacities (from their website: www.thewhitmaninstitute.org:

exploring diverse viewpoints broadly and deeply
engaging across difference, discipline, sector, and geography
discovering how language affects perception
approaching problems and decisions from multiple perspectives, particularly perspectives that may challenge their own
recognize and question assumptions underlying their beliefs and action
test the logic behind their thinking
become aware of, and learn from, the interplay between thinking and feeling
develop a capacity for empathy
creating sustainable processes for inquiry and reflection

As Esterle says, there are really no other players in this field currently. They hope that there will be more. All of the foundations are in perpetual strategic planning mode, he said. They are struggling for a new paradigm. What could that mean? Something is changing in philanthropy, and focus on capacity as a primary grantmaking area, not a secondary one, is critical.

In our discussion we realized that there are three pieces to getting unstuck: changing incentives; making the time for a different kind of decisionmaking; and tools for shifting our habits of decisionmaking.

Imagine, I said to him, that we are now at the point regarding tools-for-thinking and decision making --call these social technologies -- that information technologies were in the early 1980's before PC's and the internet penetrated and shifted every aspect of our individual and organization lives. He and I are betting on the idea that ten years from now, every educational program, every organization, every political campaign, will have integrated the available tools to the point that they can barely remember life without them.

crossing boundaries

2008-05-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

I sat down recently with Charlie Halpern at a sunny Bay Area cafe. Having just read his memoir in preparation for the meeting, I realized how intimate this meeting suddenly felt and how different he seemed to me now that the layers of his life had been uncovered in the book. I also felt a new bond with him since I now knew that we shared a passion and a commitment to bringing the internal practice of wisdom to the work of solving our society's most pressing problems.

In the foreword to Halpern's new book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents (Berrett-Koehler: 2008), Robert Reich points out that Halpern's personal journey "illuminates and integrates two overarching social movements that have occupied what is commonly referred to as "the Left" over the last forty years. One has focused on the potential for a more just society and the world...The other, by contrast, has looked inward. It has focused on the potential within every person for a full and meaningful life. These two overarching movements --one exterior and the other interior, if you will -- have evolved separately...By findging the means of weaving the movements together in his own life, Halpern invites you to do the same in yours..."

Integrating these two pieces is countercultural for each of these movements. Getting unstuck in addressing our most pressing problems requires this integration.

Halpern tells his own story through memoir, which is probably the best way someone trying to illustrate the importance of what he calls "cultivating the practice of wisdom" could. It is a story of changing from the inside out -- from beating the doors down as a public interest lawyer convinced of the rightness of his position in the face of abuses of power and injustice, to someone who thinks that solution is only partial -- that change is more likely to come from within, which entails having compassion even for your opponent, listening rather than debating, and opening your mind to unlikely potentials for new forms of understanding with your opponent.

There are several wonderful scenes in the book that illustrate Halpern's struggle to integrate the world of law and social justice with that of meditation, yoga and other techniques for gaining inner wisdom.

Halpern has been a pioneer in trying to bring contemplative practices into the world of advocacy, law, medicine and even academia. First, when he was president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, he created a funding program for integrating contemplative practice with social change efforts. Now he is the chairman of the board of the Center for Contemplative Mind and Society which has developed a number of programs and fellowships to do the same www.contemplativemind.org

Getting unstuck from the inside out --using ancient and new wisdom practices -- and bringing the cultivation of wisdom to the work of social problem solving is one of the most important trends of our time. How many others like Charlie Halpern are there who embody this trend?

Cognitive age

2008-05-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

David Brooks' column (I find myself in surprising agreement with him much of the time) points out something really important about our current policy dialogue and a way in which it is stuck. He makes a distinction between globalization as a process, and how that affects American workers on the one hand and technological change that requires different cognitive capacities on the other. Calling this the "cognitive age," he says that our focus needs to be on skill building, rather than tweaking and critiquing trade agreements. The focus needs to be within not pointing fingers at foreigners.

While the business community, and to some extent the military, has focused on skill building for a long time, the policy community is behind -- not just in devising policies to develop and fund skill building for all, and at all levels, but in focusing on its own need for skill building --in the complex of institutions that develop, talk about and implement solutions to society's most pressing problems.

What those capacities are, the tools we already have to build them, and how important they are for solving our most complex problems going forward is the topic of my book.