A Sense of Urgency by John Kotter
Mr. Kotter’s very clearly written book A Sense of Urgency caused me to be too urgently busy to post a review!
I first encountered Mr. Kotter in a business meeting when a partner I was working with put up Mr. Kotter’s 8 rules of change. (For more detail on the 8 rules of change and Kotter’s wisdom overall see http://www.kotterinternational.com). At the time, we were working with the CIO of a large company trying to get mid level management to change from a build it yourself mentality to an innovate or else urgency. I have had the opportunity to work in a similar settings amongst large and small companies, young and old companies in various stages of IT transformation aka change. In all cases, either at an organizational or individual level, a sense of urgency was the cardinal business virtue of success.
Early in the book, Mr. Kotter is quick to separate urgency from complacency AND “false urgency.” I dare say every reader can relate to this taste of false urgency: “The frustrated boss screams “execute.” His employees scramble: sprinting, meeting, task-forcing, e-mailing – all of which create a howling wind of activity. But that’s all it is, a howling wind or, worse yet, a tornado that destroys much and builds nothing.” The urgency which Mr. Kotter promotes is one that focuses on critical issues, not agendas. “True urgency is driven by a deep determination to win, not anxiety about losing. With an attitude of true urgency, you try to accomplish something important each day, never leaving yourself with a heart-attack-producing task of running one thousand miles in the last week of the race.”
Yet urgency is rare – it needs to be created, sustained and even recreated because the successful results of urgency carry with it the seeds of complacency right on the heels of celebrating the success. Mindful of many a hollow business initiative we have all experienced, Mr. Kotter reminds the reader that true urgency does not just engage the mind but the heart as well. Hence, Mr. Kotter’s strategy for urgency:
Create action that is exceptionally alert, externally oriented, relentlessly aimed at winning, making some progress each and every day, and constantly purging low value-added activities – all by always focusing on the heart and not just the mind.
Mr. Kotter then goes on to detail four tactics to successfully advance the strategy and increase urgency:
- Dramatically bring outside reality into groups that are inwardly focused
- Behave with true urgency yourself, every single day
- Look for the upside possibilities in crises
- Confront the problem of the “NoNos” and do so effectively
I leave to the reader to read the many words of wisdom and real world examples that apply these tactics.
Mr. Kotter ends his book with a chapter title “the future”. Mr. Kotter again stresses that the very nature of change is changing from episodic to continuous change at an accelerating rate. Rather than urgently coming up with a long list of urgent linear items to tackle, Mr. Kotter suggests a more agile approach.
An alternative to struggling with fifty items or limiting yourself to the logically linear is to focus first on what is quick and easy. Be opportunistic. Try something… Whatever you do, look for feedback. If an action does not help, abandon it. It it works well, consider doing more. Make something happen. Develop a bit of momentum. Then move on to bigger items, actions that do require planning or scarce resources.
Whether professional or even personal, Mr. Kotter’s strategy and tactics for urgency offers a powerful recipe for anyone leading change or even just leading in today’s rapidly changing world. To one and all I suggest urgently reading Mr. Kotter’s book!
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Individuality is what ultimately enabled Independence Day and ultimately what will or will not perpetuate a great democracy. As John Stuart Mills wrote (http://www.proconstitution.com/freedom/):
A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.
Posting on the 4th of July, I feel compelled to share a perspective on individuality (aka independence). A serendipitous reference by a friend, co-worker and enlightened individual lead me to The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. The book is based upon mystery teachings of the Toltec, described in the opening of the book not as a nation or race but as “scientists and artists who formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones.”
While not intending to write about the esoteric elements of Toltec philosophy which I am certainly not qualified to comment on, I found the four agreement fruit of the philosophy very intriguing for Territory.com (and for anyone evaluating the meaning of Independence). Building up to the four agreements, Mr. Ruiz shares foundational insights which will echo themes from previous authors on Territory .com, such as Drive by Daniel Pink:
The reward is the attention that we got from our parents or from other people like siblings, teachers, and friends. We soon develop a need to hook other people’s attention in order to get the reward. The reward feels good, and we keep doing what others want us to do in order to get the reward … Eventually we become someone that we are not. We become a copy of Mamma’s beliefs, Daddy’s beliefs, society’s beliefs, and religion’s beliefs.
Mr. Ruiz describes this acceptance of reward as an agreement. However externally imposed and subconsciously conditioned, the wheel of rewards is sustained by an agreement to seek the conditioned reward and avoid the conditioned punishment. Ultimately this cycle leads to constant illusions, delusion, disillusion and yet more illusion.
On top of the risk reward Input / Output buffer of preconditioned daily life, Mr. Ruiz frames a provocative Judge / Victim belief system that is inherently flawed. Mr. Ruiz argues that, “During the process of domestication, we form an image of what perfection is in order to try to be good enough … trying to be good enough for them, we create an image of perfection.” Not able to attain perfection, what follows is a Judge and/or Victim mindset that causes people to “punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be.”
The formula Mr. Ruiz lays out for breaking through the illusion cycle to the bedrock of true self is to follow four agreements. “If you want to live a life of joy and fulfillment, you have to find the courage to break those agreements that are fear based and claim your personal power.” I leave it to the reader to explore the four agreements themselves but in summary, they are:
- Be Impeccable with Your Word. “The word is a force, it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life.”
- Don’t Take Anything Personally. “Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me.”
- Don’t Make Assumptions. “All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally.”
- Always be Your [Balanced] Best. I add the [Balanced] because I love this description behind the much used slogan – ‘Be Your Best’:
Regardless of the quality, keep doing your best – no more and mo less than your best. If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough. When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal. But if you do less than your best, you subject yourself to frustration, self-judgment, guilt and regrets.”
The Four Agreements is a provocative book for any reader, certainly someone in sales because let’s face it, the sales professional live with a constant undertow of fear. While parts of the book, certainly the end, will get too esoteric for some readers, asking your self what agreements you make with yourself which are not healthy is healthy. Asking yourself when, even in the most subtle of encounters, you are playing Judge or Victim is very enlightening. Conducting your daily interaction with customers, employers, co-workers, partners, family and friends in light of the four agreements is transformational.
Shifting back to Independence Day, I daresay the Four Agreements present an interesting test to the strength of a nation as well as individual. Quoting Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, “Moral duties are as obligatory on nations as on individuals.”
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
In my post on Seth Godin’s book Linchpin, I positively referenced Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. I contrasted Outliers from Linchpin, both great books, by observing that Outliers is a left brain – empirical book whereas Linchpin is a right brain – inspirational book. I started reading Outliers well over a year ago but left unfinished until recently. I bought Outliers as soon as it was published because of my respect for Mr. Gladwell’s preceding books The Tipping Point and Blink. (See Malcolm Gladwell’s TED Talk “on spaghetti sauce” below”)
In Outliers, Mr. Gladwell delivers an easy to read, deeply researched, insightful book on profiles in success. In his introduction Mr. Gladwell provides two definitions of the noun “out-lie-er”:
- something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body;
- a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.
Mr. Gladwell proceeds to apply this one – two definition of outliers in each of the following chapters to first define the data set that is situated away from the mainstream and then to narrate the observations which make it markedly different from others. From the Beatles, to Bill Gate and Bill Joy, to Korean pilots, to wet rice cultivating societies, Mr. Gladwell hops the reader from data set – narration to another data set – narration.
Outliers is similar to Linchpin in another way relevant to this blog. Each title begs the reader to ask a simple question. Are you a Linchpin? Are you an Outlier? As for the outlier, the one guidepost which I found especially revealing is the 10,000 hour mark. Mr. Gladwell applies the 10,000 hour talent yard stick to the Beatles, Bill Gates, Bill Joy and professional athletes. Quoting neurologist Daniel Levitin, Mr. Gladwell writes: “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything.”
Harking back to the Territory.com review of Mastery by George Leonard, in what field have you amassed 10,000 hours of mastery level practice (3.42 years of back to back 8 hour days of practice)? Not just going through the motions, but actual dedicated, focused, on the line practice. Like the Beatles playing in run down Hamburg concert venues night after night for years or Bill Gates programming on shared time at University of Washington in the middle of the night or your doctor in residency (you hope) etc etc…
Shifting from a book review, two podcasts on BBC Documentary struck me as different but interesting to review on Territory.com.
The first podcast, “The Art of War on BBC World Service”, is on the book by the same name written by Sun Tsu. Most know of General Sun Tsu semi-spiritual / tactical sayings but what I liked about this documentary is the amount of knowledge and perspective that is conveyed in just 22 minutes. The moderator gives generic background interspersed by quotes in native tongue, with commentary from soldiers, military historians and writers. Not interested to comment on war to be sure, the insights of General Sun Tzu are nevertheless valuable having originated when life was constantly on the line through a prolonged period of war have and have stood the test of time now well over 2o00 years later. Boil it all down and the theme that comes repeatedly is: Think rationally not emotionally regardless of the symmetry or asymmetry of your opponent.
The second podcast, “Thank You For My Freedom”, resonates with Herb Cohen’s book Negotiate This! : By Caring but not THAT much previously reviewed on Territory.com. Mr. Cohen applied his negotiation skills at times to hostage situations. In Thank You For My Freedom, former Beirut hostage John McCarthy travles to meet Giandomenico Picco, the United Nations negotiator who arranged his release. The documentary explores the development and role of the negotiator. The theme that comes through again repeatedly is the need to stay detached
Linchpin by Seth Godin
I received some fair criticism on Seth Godin’s book Linchpin from a co-worker I respect a great deal. His criticism centered on the lack of empirical statistics you would see in a similar work like Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers. Outliers, a great book in its own right, uses statistics and observation to challenge conventional wisdom on talent and success. Outliers is a left brain ground turner well worth reading.
Linchpin, however, is a right brain psychic depth charge for anyone evaluating their career if not fundamental purpose in life. This is the first book to appear on Territory.com that I can say without any reservation: drop whatever you are reading and read this book. Better yet, read Linchpin carefully and completely and then recommend it to your spouse, children, extended family, friends, co-workers (past, present and future), class mates, teachers, school boards, elected representatives and all the other co-dependent constituencies in your life.
Mr Godin openly references Stephen Pressfield’s “resistance” concept described in the War of Art previously reviewed by Territory.com. Mr. Godin puts his own spin on resistance with a whole chapter titled “Resistance”. Coming from a software development background, Mr. Godin simplifies the essence of the artist saying, “Real artists ship…Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world.” A linchpin, as opposed to a “cog”, is someone who is capabale of “Shipping something out the door, doing it regularly, without hassle, emergency, or fear…” This combination of skills producing regular results (aka shipping) is a rare skill that makes linchpins indispensable.
Mr. Godin explains that shipping is difficult ultimately because of resistance. Mr. Pressfield speaks to indivdual writers bloc-like resistance. Mr. Godin speaks to this but also to the group dymanics of resistance. Resistance in a group setting surfaces in the challenges of “Thrashing” and “Coordination”. On thrashing, Mr. Godin explains the challenge of thrashing with an example from software development: “Every software project that has missed it’s target date (every single one) is a victim of late thrashing. The creators didn’t have the discipline to force all the thrashing to the beginning.” On coordination, Mr. Godin points out why start ups beat big companies: “The reason that start-ups almost always defeat large companies in the rush to market is simple: start-ups have fewer people to coordinate, less thrashing, and more linchpins per square foot.” Continuing, Mr. Godin outlines a simple recipe to overcome the challenges of coordination to overcome resistance:
1 – Relentlessly limit the number of people allowed to thrash.
2 – “Appoint one person (a linchpin) to run it. Not to co-run it or to lead a task force or to be on the committee. One person, a human being, runs it. Her name on it. Her decisions. Get scared early, not late. Be brave early, not late.”
Shifting from the group setting to the individual, Mr Godin puts his spin on Resistance adding in the concept of the Daemon . Mr Godin explains, “Your mind, the thing that drives you crazy and makes you special, has two distinct sections, the daemon and the resistance….Daemon is a Greek term (the Romans called it a “genius”). The Greeks believed that the daemon was a seperate being inside each of us (readers of the Golden Compass will especially appreciate)…The daemon is the source of great ideas, groundbreaking insights, generosity, love, connection, and kindness…The resistance spends all it’s time insulating the world from our daemon. The resistance lives inside the lizard brain…
Continuing, Mr. Godin writes: “Artistry it seems, always leads to anguish. This anguish is caused by the clash between the daemon and the resistance…the chasm between the part of you that wants to be safe and invisible, and your daemon, which is demanding to speak to the world…The resistance is nefarious and clever. It creates diseases, procrastination and most especially, rationalization. Lots and lots of rationalization…The resistance has been around for a million years and the lizard brain will not give up easily. While the neocortex (that’s where your daemon lives) is much newer from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s not stronger. Given the chance, the lizard brain will shut you down and the resistance will win.” The challenge, then, is to create an environment where the lizard snoozes. You can’t beat it, so you must seduce it…Why do entrepreneurs get so close to success and then sabotage all the work that they’ve done in a moment of fear? We mess up precisely because of the “we”. There are two, not one, voices in our head, and one of them is closer to the spine and the chemicals that generate our emotions than the other.”
Putting in the context of sales, Mr. Godin spells it our precisely!
“Sales resistance? Why is it that some salespeople put in years of training, hours of effort, thousands of dollars in travel expenses and then leave without the sales…? That’s the two brains again, the amygda fleeing the moment that it feels threatened….In fact, if we go down the list of behaviors that are highly valued because of their scarcity, almost all of them are related to bringing a conscious and generous mind to the work, instead of indulging our lizard brain’s reflexes of fear, revenge and conquest.”
What’s your territory? Put another way, are you a linchpin? Bravo Mr. Godin!!
America the Innovation Of US
“America the Story of US” on the History Channel is worth watching. I had seen the commercials promoting the series and pretty much tuned them out until the couch god happened to plant me in front of one of the first episodes: “Revolution”. Stripping off the whitewash but polishing the fence, Revolution narrates how the colonists “won a war they were never supposed to win.”
The documentary starts with George Washington digging in to defend New York’s 20,000 residents from imminent invasion. To pull yourself from today’s when is my next Latte and put yourself in this moment in time in Washington’s army is sublime.
On June 29th 17–, 45 British “ships of the line” arrive. Each ship of the line was built from 2000 century old trees with 64 canons with a mile range. One ship of the line cost the equivalent of a modern day air craft carrier. Another 300+ ships are en route for a total of 400 British ships with 32,000 battle hardened veterans outnumbering the patriots 2:1. Just 5 of the ships carry more firepower than in all of the city. It is the biggest attack on New York City until 9/11 and the “rebels” are there to stand and fight.
The British wanted to intimidate the rebels into surrender but instead inspire men like Washington and Revere to lead and fight and transcendentally unleash men like Franklin, Jefferson and Adams to lead and write.
Needless to say, Washington finds himself soon retreating down an ancient native American path now known as Broadway. From a hill they watch fires rage in the city for two days. 3000 Pows were taken to British prison ships where 9 in 10 die.
Yet American freedom requires not only perseverance and leadership but also INNOVATION. The episode portrays the battle graphically from space as General Burgoyne marches south with 8000 British troops from Canada. Undaunted, Washington unleashes new tactics and an entire new type of soldier who did not play by the open battle field rules. These troops lead by the likes of Daniel Morgan start slowing the British to a mile a day as they march thru 5 times as much forest as all of England. Adopting tactics learned from the Native Americans, Morgan’s men first attack and scare away the British Native American guides leaving them mostly guide less in woods the patriots know well. Boring their muskets with rifling like German hunting guns, Morgan’s men are able to shoot from the trees at three times the distance of the British muskets and decimate the officer ranks until the whole army is eventually forced to surrender in their first conventional battle.
On top of extreme cold and starvation, Washington’s troops must survive a truly horrific small pox outbreak. Washington gambles and experiments with inoculating all of his troops for small pox. While there are still tragic casualties because of the crude method of inoculation, the pandemic passes. Washington again gambles and places Prussian General Baron Von Steiuben in charge of training his army. The Baron writes a manual of military training still in use today and trains battle tactics to an elite core of 100 men who train the remainder of the army that is then ready to win Yorktown. The show references a quote of the Baron which every American should embody today as much then:
“In Prussia I tell a soldier what to do it and they do it. In America you need to tell them why and they do it.”
On top of all of this, Washington personally leads a network of spies in New York. They use invisible ink and help Washington save the arriving French fleet from destruction. Further, by masking movements feinting an attack on New York he is able to move his entire army unmolested to corner Cornwalis at Yorktown.
I found this episode and the ones that I have been able to watch which follow tremendous perspective inspirations on multiple levels. We have no shortage of patriotic “inspiration” today. What lacks is the perspective that anchors and transforms the inspiration into grounded action. The woods that Washington and the British had to fight thru a mile a day, Modern Americans today can pull up maps in seconds and see a local satellite photo and even projected future weather.
Anchored to the territory bent of this blog on sales and alliances, America Story of Us “Revolution” presents a raw case study of how to wage a successful campaign against truly daunting odds: lead, inspire, persevere AND innovate! On the alliances side, often forgotten is that while the British founded America it was the French and Ducth alliances which helped fight and pay for America’s liberty.
PS - The next episode is equally sublime to watch: “Westward. Where a colony becomes a continent.”
The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr
After a long hiatus from blogging due to a time warping amount of work with a very exciting new company called Joyent, I am happy to return to blogging with one of the books that explains my reasons for joining Joyent.
The Big Switch: Rewiring The World, From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr is a book written for every reader looking to understand the titanic shifts taking place in information technology already impacting every facet of your life – whether you know it or not.
After a brief anecdotal opening recounting a visit to a data center provider, Mr. Carr describes the shift underway in the entire technology industry where “instead of buying their own computers and software, businesses in the future would just plug into the Internet and get all the data processing they needed…” Putting this new shift in perspective, Mr. Carr outlines the 150 year history of industrial innovation from waterwheel to electric generator to personal computer to internet.
Part 1 of the book, called “One Machine,” starts circa 1851 when the Burden Iron Works built “the Niagara of Waterwheels” to beat out competition to sell horseshoes to the Union army and spikes to American railroads. Yet after 50 years of turning, the wheel lay abandoned when manufacturers no longer had to be in the power generation business but could instead buy power from central generating power utilities. Tracing the similarities between electricity and computing, Mr. Carr observes that electricity and information technology are both “what economists call general purpose technologies” used to perform as many purposes as human ingenuity can devise. Further, both electricity and computing share the common trait of being able to be delivered over long distances. Given this central generation capacity, Mr. Carr details that the longstanding idea of the free standing computer is obsolete. Connecting the arc, Mr Carr predicts:
“In the years ahead, more and more of the information processing tasks that we rely on, at home and at work, will be handled by big data centers located out on the Internet. The nature and economics of computing will change as dramatically as the nature and economics of mechanical power changed in the early years of the last century.”
Building upon this prediction, Mr Carr writes how the extension of man’s physical powers with electricity and the profound changes such extension enabled will be nothing compared to the extension of man’s intellectual powers to come with utility computing. Man power joined with electron so that now mind can meet computing hence forming one big machine.
From there Mr. Carr dives into an interesting to read narrative of inventors (Thomas Edison & Herman Hollerith), inventions (Generator & Tabulation Machine), managers (Samuel Insull & Thomas J. Watson) and the resulting businesses that still dominate today (General Electric & International Business Machines). These businesses then offer their general purpose technologies to other businesses seeking competitive advantage such as American Airlines building a ticketing system called SABRE in the 1960s which “provided as great an advantage to American Airlines as Burden’s waterwheel had provided to his waterworks.”
The arms race is on! Fast forward to today and several trillion dollars of inefficient investment later and now “Most of the software and almost all of the hardware that companies use today are essentially the same as the hardware and software their competitors use.” Now with the platform of the internet and pervasive networking available, the pendulum is going to swing from distributed computing generation to centralized computing at a frantic pace. Today, Competitive advantage will NOT be derived by how much computing infrastructure companies buy, build and operate but rather by how quickly companies transform capital expenditure on infrastructure and shift instead to invest in intellectual property built on centrally generated computing.
From there Mr. Carr reaches out to look at the broader consequences of the one machine. Mr. Carr speculates that the phenomenon of user-generated content or “crowdsourcing” will gravely threaten individual professionals such as journalists, editors, photographers and analysts. Further, Mr. Carr predicts how centralized computing is accelerating the increasing concentration of wealth writing:
“Computerization hence puts many American wage-earners in a double bind: it reduces the demand for their jobs even as it expands the supply of workers ready and able to perform them.”
Anchoring back to the sales and alliances perspective, the Big Switch is a must read. Obviously this will be most relevant to IT professionals but given again the epic general purpose technology reach of utility computing to all areas of industry, almost anyone would benefit from the perspective offered by this excellent book.
The Way Of Aikido by George Leonard
On 1/24/2010 I reviewed George Leonard’s book Mastery and now I review his book The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons From an American Sensai. Funny that an author I knew nothing of when I started my weekly book review project just two months ago is now the first to get two books reviewed on Territory.com. I bought both books upon the recommendation of a mentor and thought that I might review the “Aikido” book in several months.
Flipping thru the book in passing, this paragraph grabbed me:
“When confronted by an any attack or problematic incoming energy, the aikidoist doesn’t strike, push back, pull or dodge, but rather enters and blends. That is, he or she moves toward the incoming energy and then, at the last instant, slightly off the line of attack, turns so as to look momentarily at the situation from the attacker’s viewpoint. From this position, many possibilities exist, including a good chance of reconciliation.”
Mr. Leonard’s book examines this core approach in and out of the Aikido dojo applying the universal wisdom of Aikido. In order to enter and blend, everything rests first on on being centered: “Whether the attack is physical or verbal, it’s important that you be firmly connected to the earth with your energy concentrated in your “center” or ‘hara‘ (the Japanese word for belly), as you blend.” No surprise that the author of Mastery preaches practice: “to blend consistently and to do so under pressure requires a great deal of practice. Start simply by listening carefully and sympathetically to everything people say. (Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing.)” Giving examples of “verbal aikido”, Mr. Leonard emphasizes that “The aikidoist is looking at the situation from the attacker’s viewpoint without giving up his or her own viewpoint.” Rather, by “coming around to your attacker’s view point, seeing the situation from his or her viewpoint,” … numerous options present themselves.
Needless to say, anyone in sales and alliances can benefit from tactics that help address verbal attacks or problematic incoming energy! The real blessing of this book, however, is not the very practical advice to center, enter and blend. Rather, centering, entering and blending are just enabling means to the much more profound ends of seeing from the attackers perspective, protecting the attacker and ultimately opening a chance for reconciliation. No wonder that the founder of Aikido, O Sensei, was inspired to start Aikido at age 42 when he heard the words “I am the universe.” In O Sensei’s words, Aikido is “not a technique to fight with or defeat the enemy. It is the way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family.”
Sadly, Mr Leonard passed away on January 6th, 2010. I thank him for his books and many insights. and end with one of my favorite paragraphs in any book I have read:
” Finally, it is this feeling of being totally absorbed and entranced that joins play and practice in a marriage where both past and future fall away and we are privileged to exist, if only for a while, in the present moment. The greatest spiritual leaders tell us that this is the place where God is. It is also where the most efficient and ecstatic learning of every kind can happen. If the human destiny on this planet is to learn, then it is through the happy, magical marriage of practice and play that we can best realize that destiny.”
Choosing Civility by P.M. Forni
When considering about how best to let my employer know that I was leaving for another job, I was guided in part by P.M. Forni’s book, Choosing Civility. Mr. Forni, a professor at John Hopkins University and co-founder of the John Hopkins civility project, outlines 25 rules of “Considerate Conduct”. While the formatting of the book on the Kindle is a little rough, the content and insights are a blessing.
Part 1 of Mr. Forni’s book is disjointed but the 25 rules of considerate conduct in Part 2 engage the reader. Mr. Forni’s first few rules of civility are apparent, but worthy of everyone’s refreshment:
- Pay Attention … “or, to be more precise the victory of attention over carelessness, indifference and inertia. … Attention entails a transcending of the Self. (The fun part with this one is how quickly you can put it into affect and how much you observe when you pay attention from a posture of civility.)
- Acknowledge Others … “And yet we often play the game of invisibility. We see someone we know coming our way, but instead of saying hello or even just nodding our ackoweldgment, we proceed as if that someone were invisible or we weren’t there.”
- Think the Best … “When we approach others assuming that they are good, honest and sensitive, we often encourage them to be just that.”
The rules that follow get more nuanced (perhaps a little pedantic for some) but I found it interesting to compare the rules against various personal and business encounters. For example, Mr. Forni’s Rule #10 is “Respect Others’ Opinions.” Pretty obvious but follow this analysis and you see things from a deeper and more challenging level if you really do the self examination:
“Those who operate according to the I’m-sure-you’re-one-of-us assumption think on your behalf. They dismiss the notion that we might have a different opinion. This is, for lack of a better word, rude.” Instead, Mr. Forni coaches, “Present your opinions as just opinions, rather than transcendental truths. Make room for disagreement. Invite feedback. Among the most civil utterances of all time is the simple, humble, and smart question ‘What do you think?’ “
In Rule 15 (Respect Other People’s Space), Mr. Forni has an interesting discussion directly related to an extension of Territory.com’s mantra aka Know Thy Territory, here respect thy neighbor’s territory:
“Respect that extension of personal space some call territory. Our home is our territory, and so is our office at work or the space we have claimed for our family on the beach on a sunny summer day. Our territory is any space we feel we are entitled to control.” I would add that respecting territory holds true not only in spacial terms but also in logical or sphere of interest terms.
Sales and alliances call for persistent civility. However, like many human virtues, it is progress not perfection that paradoxically enables the virtue to foster. Civility awareness, let alone progress in today’s speed of light saturation is not easy. There is pressure to get the number, beat the competition, manage office politics and get home in time to put the kids to bed. All these pressures pull many of us into the suddenly uncivil mid brain gear of fight, flight, … Mr. Forni’s examination of awareness, inclusion, attentiveness and other attributes of civility are valuable anchors from which to grow and sustain a civil posture in all walks of life.
The World Is Curved by David Smick
Thus far on Territory.com I have been reviewing books through the binoculars of applicability to sales and alliances. This week I pull out the telescope under the category of “See the Forest” and review David Smick’s The World Is Curved. Standing on the wings of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, Mr. Smick provides a a pretty darned scary perspective on the current state of world economic affairs. Where Mr. Friedman talks about the world being Hot, Flat and Crowded, Mr Smick writes how the global economic system is Shot, Fat and Shrouded (not his words exactly but you get the gist).
There are no shortage of books at this point that speak to the “2007-2008 Global Credit Crisis.” I read Paul Krugman’s The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 and George Soros’ The Crash of 2008 and What It Means. These books (more pamphlets) were worth reading but were limited in the size, insight and scope. Mr. Krugman’s message though that Latin American like financial corrections are now fair game for western economies clearly made sense in the context of the 2008 sky falling. Now with Greece, Portugal and Spain playing Mediterranean currency dominoes, the whole world indeed does seem in play.
Where Mr. Smick book stands on the wings of Mr. Friedman’s hot, flat and crowded world, it stands on the shoulders of Liaquat Ahamed’s book Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. Mr. Smick gives you the feel that we really are living in an age eerily similar to the gilded age before World War I and the great depression which Mr. Ahamed wrote of in Lords of Finance. Mr. Smick does and admirable job of explaining why:
“In essence, the survival of the world financial system depends on an elaborate global game of confidence. The size of the financial markets, relative to the governments, has become so monstrously huge, there is no other means of maintaining stability than to establish a psychology of confidence. The governments themselves cannot by edict restore order. They can only project to the markets a sense that they know what they’re doing.”
In his opening paragraph, Mr. Smick writes of the “enormous frustration in writing a book about new global economy … One minute the cybernetic (computer) revolution has transformed the economy into a veritable global wealth machine, as stock markets around the world soar to new highs. The next moment, markets plummet.” Mr. Smick uses entertaining and insightful metaphors to ease the writing frustration: “The best metaphor I can summon is that global financial markets are a bit like a rich, generous, but occasionally deeply paranoid great-uncle.” He also uses impactful statistics: “During the 2007-2008 subprime crisis, the Swiss central bankers discovered, to their utter dismay, that the total financial exposure of just one of their banks, UBS, amounted to more than 2 trillion Swiss francs .. Yet Switzerland’s entire GDP is only 475 billion Swiss francs.”
For America, Mr. Smick sees the only way forward to “make the American economy on a long-term basis the most attractive destination for global investment ,, retaining the pro-entrepreneurial capitalist model of the past quarter-century.” Mr.Smick observes that if caring for entrepreneurs is not the light at the end of the tunnel then it could alternatively be the whistle of the train writing “tinkering with this new global system to make it seem fairer, or to use confiscatory taxation to try to create a feeling of a greater security in general, carries with it the potential to produce unintended consequences… Because when all is said and done, entrepreneurs enjoy the capacity to be mobile.” I leave to the reader the many other insights shared by Mr Smick (the potential bubble brewing in China, the financial power of Japanese housewives…)
Overall, I think everyone could agree with Mr Smick’s prognosis: “What is clear is that financial stability is here to stay.” Given this near certain financial uncertainty, anyone involved in selling and partnering needs to at least educate themselves on the new global jet streams of finance that impact every industry sector. Mr. Smick’s book The World is Curved is well worth the read.
