I Like The Way This Guy Thinks…

Leaf Hacker or Root Striker??

I was reviewing a DVD the other day that I checked out from our local library.  It was a BBC production titled “Unheard Prophet: W. Edwards Deming”, and it carried me back to my own personal experience with Doctor Deming when he provided his four-day seminar at Boeing.  His curmudgeonly style, especially during the presentation of the “Red Beads-White Beads” experiment, is inimitable with the effect that he created.  His mutterings contained the essence of his theories, and the one that stuck out for me that day was “There is no substitute for knowledge”.

It has always struck me as a bit of non sequitur that Doctor Deming, being a mathematician by training and considered by many to be the [perhaps "a"] father of statistical process control, would exhort so strongly against against “the numbers” that modern executives so worship.  In the video, he comments, almost as an aside, “Beware of figures, be guided by theory.”  Among my myriad notes from the four days of seminar and the three evenings of small-group discussions that I enjoyed with him, I find several repetitions of “The most important numbers are unknown and unknowable.”  And I believe that this is a side to Doctor Deming [and the many programs that have flowed forward from his teachings, some correctly, some incorrectly] that is often overlooked: his insistence on  honoring the human side of the business proposition and on deep understanding, what he characterized in his conversations as “profound knowledge”. 

Early in the video, he was expressing his traditional concern, “They were only doing their best.  They were doing their best, but without knowledge. ‘Doing our best’ without knowledge will be our downfall.   There is no substitute for knowledge.”  You see, among each and every one of his Fourteen Points, knowledge is the basis, the foundation on which to build your actions:

1. Constancy of purpose requires knowledge of the company, the environment, your competitors and your customers.
2. Adopt the new philosophyrequires us to awaken to the challenge and learn new responsibilities, something we can do only with new knowledge.
3. Cease dependence on inspection requires changes [new knowledge] to build quality in the first time.
4. End practice of business on price tag requires more knowledgethan traditional purchasing processes, knowledge to determine total costs instead of immediate price.
5. Improve constantly and foreveris practically a re-framing of consistent new knowledge as an underpinning of your company.
6. Institute training is simply distributing knowledge in new ways or to different audiences.
7. Institute leadership requires new practices which require new knowledge.
8. Drive out fear presupposes a new knowledge basis, since fear is rooted in uncertainty which is rooted in ignorance. [NB: ignorance is not the same as stupidity; ignorance is not knowing, which can be remedied; stupidity is knowing but not responding]
9. Break down barriers requires most companies to adopt completely new philosophies about the “freedom of travel” of knowledge within their company.
10. Eliminate slogans and exhortations presumes replacement of these artificial goals with true knowledge-based targets and systems.
11. Eliminate work standards and MBO by replacing it with leadership requires [as in Point 7] new practices, based on new knowledge.
12. Remove barriers for both hourly and management workers requires new systems based on new knowledge.
13. Institute education and self-improvement is essentially the embodiment of the transfer of new knowledge to new recipients.
14. Put everybody to work will require all companies to rethink its current knowledge dissemination practices to achieve fuller distribution.

Knowledge is at the root of each and every one of these points underlying his theory, and it calls to mind the often cited Thoreau adage that “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.”  Knowledge systems are at the root of every company’s operations.  Practically all of most current operational improvement programs consist in hacking at the leaves.  How many of you are striking at the root?

Without assuring the integrity and solidity of these knowledge roots, maintaining or improving any commercial enterprise becomes riskier in the long term.  Yet so many executives are content to hack at the leaves, achieving a topiary that can be sold to shareholders. Your company’s knowledge must be placed into a system, guided, as Deming would instruct, with a true theory and structured practices and processes that can be controlled.

Your company’s knowledge systems are the roots that feed all of your other operations.  Have your knowledge systems been optimized?  Have they even been objectively assessed lately? 

Don’t settle for topiary.  Become one of the truly transformational leaders, the ones that strike at the root, for lasting change.

Here’s a good way to start: Knowledge System Risk Assessment

Betting Your Ass-Umptions

I had a very interesting conversation the other day with a man I shall call “Number 104” as part of my goal of “a thousand cups of coffee”.  And please consider this article your personal invitation to be one of my thousand cups.

Number 104’s company is undergoing significant changes on a number of fronts: recent purchase by overseas company, shift in procurement strategies, lessening power of traditional project management into centralized functions.  They are struggling with handling the multiple conversions, but these changes are necessary and cannot be avoided.  Oh, and add to the list, the implementation of a new SAP system to match that of the acquiring company.

Although he is not leading this convolution of “chances to make the wrong choice”, he is deeply involved in two of them: the SAP conversion and the reorientation of project leadership.  He expressed his frustrations in this career-defining stage of his work very succinctly when he commented, “The main problem that I run into is that no one is willing to challenge their own assumptions.”

He had asked himself to consider why that might be the case, and his realization had been that people operate every day on a set of assumptions.  We assume, when we drive, that stepping on the brake will stop the car.  We assume that other drivers will follow the rules of the road, staying in their lane and stopping at red lights.  Without these assumptions, our driving lives would slow to a crawl.

At work, we assume that the office will be open in the morning when we get there.  We assume that our co-workers will arrive.  We assume that we will have paper, pencils, computers, work spaces…  well, you get the picture.  And in the main, we can count on most of our assumptions being valid and holding true.  But what happens when our assumptions are not met?

Assumptions are the foundation of our belief system.  Chris Argyris, well-known business thinker, author and professor at Harvard, created a tool he called the “Ladder of Inference”, intended to help parse our thought process into identifiable and manageable segments.  This ladder has six rungs, which operate in this manner:

• We observe real data, but
• We select which of these observed data to consider as we
• Affix meaning to our observations which lead us to
• Make assumptions which then drive us to certain
• Conclusions which form the basis for our
• Beliefs which are the ultimate basis for all of our
• Actions.

Right smack in the middle of everything are those pesky old assumptions.  And whence did they come?  Meaning which we applied to data, but not accurate meaning applied to all observed data.  Instead we had a step in between where we only considered “selected” data in affixing meaning.  Therein lies the rub.

As Number 104 realized, and practiced, he needed to question the source of assumptions that he and others were making, both in the SAP implementation and in the project leadership changeover.  He asked, as should you, “On what grounds am I entitled to this assumption?”  I sent him a copy of the essay, “The Ethics of Belief”, published by William K. Clifford in 1877, which outlines the obligation of the prudent inquirer before establishing “beliefs”.  I have included a link here for those of you inclined to read the entire essay.  And for those not so inclined, here is Clifford’s own summary of the matter [but the emphasis is mine]:

• We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.
• We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.
• It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.

For Number 104, it was a very helpful link, and it opened his eyes to the wide range of opportunities to be lulled into making assumptions that were not warranted.  I would encourage each and every one of you to begin to challenge the assumptions underlying beliefs that will lead to decisions.  Your success, and possibly your career, could depend on how well you bet your ass-umptions.

Culture, not Competition; Character, not Crisis

A recent study by McKinsey, completed within the last two months with over 1400 respondents, identified strategic capability building  as among the top three priorities of more than 75% of the senior executives.  At the same time, almost the same percentage felt that their companies were not good at building a capability that is strategically relevant.  Now doesn’t that make you stop and wonder?

What are we missing here?  There are the obvious “surface” issues such as being too close to the problem to be objective, having the day-to-day work competing [and winning] over future-focused adjustments, or any of the other top ten challenges mentioned in the report.  But companies, and executives, have been at this “capability building” thing long enough that these factors should be much less important than they seem to be.

Then it hit me – out of this report, a solution appears that is considered more to be cause than effect.  Companies, and executives, are seeking and making these changes, not in response to competitive pressures and to critical circumstances, but in search of a shift in culture and character, in basic values underlying the organization.  Yet, the changes they are applying are in the area of processes and procedures, and not in foundational characteristics.  Business processes, the tools that every company uses to bring value to their customer base, do not operate in a vacuum- they are instead immersed in an environment of culture and character that must be changed as well.  Until the foundational characteristics are consciously and definitively realigned, the processes and procedures built upon these characteristics will have their potential effect diverted by them, returning to status quo ante.

A key factor in such an environment is a company’s knowledge system.  As Deming would often chide: ‘How could they know?  They were only doing their best.”  Many companies are unaware that they have a knowledge system, but it drives everything that they do.  Even those who are aware of their knowledge system are often unsure of how to approach it.  People cannot do more or better than they know. 

Managing one’s “Intellectual Capital” is becoming a more prevalent conversation among today’s business leaders, and it is one that will often decide the long-term viability of your organization.  Intellectual Capital is as important to today’s business as oxygen is to life.  It should be approached with no less diligence that our perpetual human struggle to breathe. And that becomes the real challenge, adjusting our knowledge systems to deliver the culture and character we seek.  Strategically.  Definitively.  Deliberately. And most importantly, productively.

Failure of the Successful

At another of my “thousand cups of coffee” the other day, Jim Fay [USNA, '75] was trying to recall the details he had just read about reasons why successful companies fail.  We had been talking about a specific company and a specific circumstance, and Jim remembered that one of the stages of failure was “desperate search for a savior“.  The notion intrigued me, and so I started a mini-research campaign.

I found a reference to Jim “Good to Great” Collins and his new book “How the Mighty Fall”, which seems to be the source.  At least, let me attribute this citation there and go on. 

This book apparently outlines [and supports] the philosophy that there are five stages involved in the failure of good companies, and that these stages are readily identifiable.  I wanted to offer these five stages to you, my readers, for your comments and observations, to see if you place in them the same degree of validity that I do.

Stage 1: the Hubris of Success – this involves the feeling that because we have been successful, we will continue to be successful.  Now this might, in fact, be true, but being true does not make it something that one can or should believe prima facie.  If you have investigated and analyzed why you have been successful, and the conditions remain favorable for continued success using these causes, and you continue to use these favor-gaining strategies, then you might have cause to believe in continued good fortune.  But simply having done well in the past is no guarantee that you will continue to do well in the future.  Proceeding on this assumption alone without investigation could be perilous.

Stage 2: the Undisciplined Pursuit of More – this can be the case of a company becoming “too big” for its own good and overreaching its ability to control itself, or it could be as matter of too much of a good thing [as is attributed to Karl Popper: just because some salt is good does not mean more salt is better].  The drive in American business today, though, seems to be to become as big as one possibly can.  Remember your birthday parties as a child?  Blowing up balloons?  See how big it can be… oops!!  As with the balloon, many times with one’s company, there is no recovery from “too big”.  Growth must be disciplined and strategic, developed not simply accepted or permitted.

Stage 3: the Denial of Risk and Peril- an offshoot of Stage 1 and “before the pop” of Stage 2, this stage can set in, a feeling of invincibility.  Even with investors and stockholders, certain leaders have a cachet of superpowers.  Witness Bernie Madoff, before the fall.  Carl Icahn in his heyday.  Some names simply exude confidence.  Sometimes this denial is active thought, that someone has considered the possibilities and is confident of overcoming them.  Other times, it is a position of ignorance: the potential threats before us are simply discounted or not acknowledged.  It is normally the confluence of these first three stages that forces a company or an organization into the next stage.

Stage 4: the Desperate Search for a Savior – in the book, I think this is called “Grasping for Salvation” but I liked Jim’s [Fay's, not Collins's] wording better.  We see this most prominently in the “Musical Chairs” game of big name CEO’s.  A company begins a free-fall into an abyss, and the call immediately goes out- get me Eisner, get me Welch, get me ANYONE!!  The flaw in this is that the incumbent is not always the reason for the fall; in the words of Deming, it is the system that is in play.  However, fortunes are made [and golden parachutes lined, just in case] in honor of this penultimate phase of failure of great companies.

And then there is Stage 5: called “Capitulation” in the book, Jim Fay covered it better as “Resignation to Insignificance”, where a company accepts the fact that it is [hopefully only temporarily] dethroned.  This is the acceptance of what is perceived as “the inevitable“, but I would maintain that it is not.  Inevitable, that is.  In fact, none of these stages are terminal nor unavoidable.

Jim Collins, in his books, attributes the success of the successful to “discipline“, indicating that when the “great” companies fall from grace, it is due to lost discipline.  Not to upstage Mr. Collins, in my estimation, each of these stages can be avoided, and cured, through improving the knowledge systems underpinning the company’s operations.

Every company has a knowledge system- most have not been designed, they have simply emerged as operations evolved.  Consistent attention to your knowledge systems – the discipline to know – can resolve or remove these traps along the path to success.

As for Jim, I like the way this guy thinks…

Blitzkrieg, Schwerpunkt and Other Prussian Fancies

Back from the holidays!!

How about you?  Have a good break?  I have missed having my cups of coffee, and I am resolving not to go so long as I have recently without meeting and conversing with new and interesting people.  I am also looking for volunteers for cups – whether virtual or in person.  Sign up simply by commenting, and I will get back to you and we’ll set something up.

Just before the holidays, I had a very interesting conversation with a member of the Board of Directors of Op-Con Technologies, a California-based company specializing in knowledge retrieval and codification [www.opcontech.com], and as is always the case, the discussion wandered through any number of different topics, each spurring ideas that led into others.  We spent some time talking about Blitzkrieg and Schwerpunkt in great detail.  Now, what, you may ask, do these concepts have to do with business?

Blitzkrieg [literally, lightning war] is probably more familiar to most of you, as it was used to describe the German model of warfare at the onset of World War II, when Poland was invaded in September 1939.  The concept, new to warfare, especially compared to the previous World War’s trench warfare, involved rapid mobility and high degrees of maneuver.  These tactics allowed armies to succeed through surprise and opportunism in ways that military leadership had not thoroughly considered.  Using tanks and mobile forces, territories and entire cities were captured, often before opposing headquarters even knew they were under attack.

Business today requires a blitzkrieg mentality.  No longer can a company afford to “dig in” and fight the “trench warfare” of the past.  Mobility and responsiveness are the hallmarks of successful business today.  Opportunism abounds, and “time to market” is the Holy Grail.  In this environment, knowledge becomes the most important commodity.  Knowledge of the customer, knowledge of your competitor, knowledge of the marketplace.  Bad product reviews are no longer buried in some back office at Customer Service – they are now around the world in a matter of minutes through Twitter, Facebook and a myriad other channels.

But where should I blitz my krieg?  I can’t be blitzing everywhere or my krieg won’t work.  This is where Schwerpunkt comes in.  Literally, this term means “difficult point”, but it is most thoroughly captured in the title of Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book, “The Tipping Point”.  Schwerpunkt is that critical point to which your krieg must be blitzed. [OK, I'll stop.]

Identifying the correct Schwerpunkt is no easy chore, and it requires diligence and insight.  It also requires extension and risk.  Generally, a Schwerpunkt is schwer out of surprise, out of unexpectedness, out of non-conformity.  Attacking where an enemy expects you to attack will be met with stiff resistance; attacking where they least expect it is part of Schwerpunkt.  However, territory that is not worth defending is often not worth taking.

Joe had a million other stories about Prussians.  You’d expect that from a West Point graduate, retired Army Colonel.  But the lessons he learned in the military, from the Prussians, aren’t just for armies, and aren’t just for warfare.  As the second decade of the Third Millennium begins, ask yourself, is my Blitzkrieg aimed at a Schwerpunkt or not?

Again, this is where knowledge systems come in.  Do your knowledge systems give you enough information to know what territory is worth taking, and what territory is stiffly defended?  Can you aim your blitz effectively?

As for Joe, I like how this guy thinks…

Take It From a Pro…

I am so heartened after each of my cups of coffee, and I hope that you, as you read of them through this blog, are equally as encouraged as I am by the integrity, creativity and absolute power and positive promise of the independent business owner in America.  I spent an enlightening ninety minutes this morning, through GoToMeeting, with Ron Cox [www.tailwindconsulting.com] in Tampa, Florida.  I know that I was having my own home-brewed cappuccino at the time; I don’t know if he had coffee or not, but it counts toward my thousand.

I had been  very intrigued by his notion of “Strategic Literacy”, and I wanted to know more.  He and I had been introduced, only peripherally, because we each know another mutual acquaintance, but more about that other guy later.  We started off with the normal “show and tell” of “what do you do” and soon got into a discussion that raised an interesting question in my mind. 

We have all seen the professional football head coaches on the sidelines, holding a laminated [usually large and colorful] piece of paper in front of their mouths, as they discuss options with their coaching staff.  These papers are summaries of various “strategic options”  for the team, considering the opponent of the week, based on particular circumstances.  Also, most quarterbacks have a corollary, usually hinged, laminate on their forearm, a summary of these options, often with execution assignments. 

Ron, when he was CEO of his own company, developed a similar laminated “front and back” strategy sheet.  In fact, even today at Tailwind Consulting, they refer to it as the “Strategic GamePlan^©”.  The value of this sheet, and this process, was that it explained and supported Ron’s strategic thinking about his company.  His managers could review this one-pager and, like the quarterback, have their own “laminate” on their forearm.  That way, when faced with a particular situation [third and long], considering the circumstances [bad weather, strong pass defense], Ron could choose the “right play”.  His managers could then look at their own laminate about “that play” and call the assignments to the rest of the team. 

What if all the managers at your company had a similar set of documents?  If we can do something like this for a football game, why can we not do that for business?  Imagine the alignment, and the buy-in, and the excellent execution that a company could achieve with a well-communicated game plan such as this.  Ron has completed these types of strategic alignments at multi-billion-dollar international companies with amazing results.  One of his last client CEOs, one he still counsels today, said simply, “One company, one plan” while that company’s COO’s comment was “Our company has never run this well before”.

A great strategy, poorly executed, is still poorly executed.  A great strategy, to be well executed, must first be well articulated, well understood, well communicated and well translated into tasks and assignments.

What is your team’s game plan?  Do you have it on a simple “front and back” laminate?  Why not?  Too crude?  Not professional?  Doesn’t work?  It works for a company that just made a $1.2 billion dollar facility investment, the Dallas Cowboys.  Are you beyond that level of decision?  Didn’t think so.

And as for Ron Cox, I like the way this guy thinks.

The Business of Christmas – A Guest Blog

My deepest thanks to good friend, Ken Lerman, and his permission to resend this business message to my readers in this Christmas season.

The Business of Christmas

The 1951 movie, “A Christmas Carol” remains an endearing favorite to many – best  for acting, props, music score and content.  Past its wonderful Christmas message, Charles Dickens’ early Victorian economic insights and social commentary of 1843 closely align with our diminished U.S. world position and eroding U.S. cultures – social, corporate and political.

My brothers and I, all with careers in business, often quote “A Christmas Carol.”  My favorite is from the Ghost of Christmas Present:  “We spirits of Christmas do not live one day of the year.  We live the whole 365.  So it is true of the child born in Bethlehem.  He doesn’t live in man’s hearts only 1 day of the year, but in all the days of the year.” 

When Scrooge’s first employer, Fezziwig, is approached by the 1818 M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) teams of investment bankers, he is first told “We’re men of vision and progress.”  When he wavers on selling, he is then told “We small traders (businessmen) are old history – dodos.”  Fezziwig wasn’t biting.  “The offer is large,” Fezziwig acknowledges, “but it’s not for money alone that one builds a family business…  it’s to preserve a way of life that we knew and loved.

Jorkinson finally wins out and after some quick years of fraud and embezzlement he announces to his Board of Directors – “Come, come Mr. Snedwick – we’re all cut throats under this fancy linen (GQ) and to pack me off to Botany Bay (prison) would be poor compensation for the panic that would arise among the shareholders.  Their annual meeting would resemble an orchestra of scorched cats (Enron).”  Scrooge and Marley immediately recommend a cover-up (Arthur Anderson accountant-consultants) and in an eventual business “takeover” they become the company holding 51% of the stock.

Love of money rules young Scrooge’s heart as his fiancée Alice releases him from their engagement.  “Another idol has replaced me in your heart – a golden idol.”  She goes on, “If you were free today, would you seek me out and try to win me over – a dowerless girl with neither wealth nor social standing – you who weigh everything by Gain?”

The first words Marley spoke to Scrooge, “The world is on the verge of new and great changes.”  Scrooge replies, “The world is becoming a hard and cruel place.  One must steel oneself to survive it and not be crushed with the weak and affirmed.”  Marley agreed.  Do you?  Will National Health Care be part of 2010 politics as baby boomers pass 60 years?

Marley’s ghost cries, “In life my spirit never roamed beyond the limits of our money changing hole.”  Scrooge recounts that Marley was always a good man of business.  His response, probably Dickens’ most famous and profound statement on business and humanity – “Business, Mankind was my business!  Their common welfare was my business!”

Many hoped the 9/11 catastrophes that shook our world would awaken us – like Scrooge – from a myopic dream of greed and wealth placed above all else and at any cost.  Alas, as those before us daily bowed to a golden calf in the desert, we continue to daily check stock portfolios to measure our happiness and comfort.

Following Scrooge’s own awakening, he attends Christmas dinner to tell the wife of his nephew, whom he’s ignored, “Can you forgive a pigheaded old fool, for having no eyes to see you with, no ears to hear you with, all these years?”  Later he leaves us with the words, “I haven’t lost my senses, Bob (Cratchit), I’ve come to them.”

It is good to be a child sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

Merry Christmas – God Bless Us, Every One!

Click here for a printable version of this article.

Copyright. © 2009. Kenneth B. Lerman. All Rights Reserved.

Republished with Ken’s permission.

I think you can see why…  I like how this guy thinks.

Do You Sleep Peacefully in Your Bed at Night?

It technically wasn’t coffee, but I will count it among my thousand cups.  It was a great lunch with Tom Solomon, US Air Force Academy, Class of ‘69.  He and I are part of a couple groups that he founded, one that meets regularly for breakfast on the second Friday of each month at the Westchase Marriott [all graduates of military academies welcome], and one that meets for lunch on the fourth Fridays at the same location [Air Force Academy graduates].  These meetings are filled former Air Force fighter pilots, Army Special Forces types, astronauts, naval aviators and engineers, Marine pilots, and Coast Guard [current and reserve] and Merchant Marine veterans.  This lunch, however, was an “off-site meeting”, a one-on-one apart from the normal networking interface.

Tom is a lawyer [www.tomsolomon.com] - he’s a business lawyer, and he specializes in helping small businesses [like mine] “get legal” and stay out of trouble.  But we were focused on someone else that day- Tom had just attended a fundraiser the previous evening where the speaker was Ollie North – yep, that one, Iran-Contra and all that.  Tom provided me some startling statistics that Colonel North had mentioned, and the exact numbers escape me, but this is the gist of it:

The average combat service of an American soldier in World War II, the greatest generation soldiers, was about six months; in the Korean Conflict, it was almost 9 months; the average combat tour of duty in SouthEast Asia [VietNam] was 12 months.  But the average combat exposure for today’s soldier in a “normal” 60-month enlistment is almost 45 months.  Almost four years.  Imagine a young man or woman entering the service at age 18, who, by the time he or she is 23, will have spent one sixth of his or her life deployed into combat areas.

I am a veteran myself, having served almost ten years in the Air Force and another thirteen in the Guard/Reserves.  I flew fighters and protected my country, sometimes in remote assignments and sometimes in south Florida.  I volunteered to go to “the war”, but I was not sent.  I have never fired a shot in anger, nor have I been subjected to enemy fire.  Yet every month, and sometimes twice a month, I sit and associate with men and women who have.

Tom went to the Air Force Academy, intending to fly.  Before graduation, nature played him a cruel trick, and his eyesight deteriorated to the point that he was ineligible for flight school.  So committed to service in that difficult period of the late ’60s was he, that he secured an assignment as an Intelligence Officer in SouthEast Asia.  And I respect him for that.  Not only did he find a way to serve, he also figured out how to get on flight status and flew with the Nails [forward air controllers], for which he received a Bronze Star, an Air Medal, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm.

And I applaud his service.  Tom learned, as did we all who have attended our nation’s great military academies, that “service before self” is more than a slogan.  Tom joined, without reservation, the long line of men and women who have offered, and continue to offer, to die, if need be, so that we may all enjoy the benefits we do in this great country of ours.

I am working with Project Wounded Warrior, a volunteer organization aiming to support returning veterans from our current warfighting who have given of life and limb.  It is a humbling experience to interact with men and women the age of my son and daughter who have given so much, yet to see no sense of anger or resentment.  As we work to assist these brave soldiers in their re-integration into society, their gratitude embarrasses me as I consider my feeble efforts compared to what they have done for me. 

I have to admit that I cry every time I hear the National Anthem, remembering the men and women, friends all, who have given “the last full measure” so that others do not need to.  Same thing for “Taps”.  It embarrasses my step-daughters, but the tears run shamelessly as the names and faces “parade” through my mind.

I recall a quote from George Orwell, the British author, that “Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.“  And that is true yet today.  I ask us all to take notice of today’s soldiers, sailors and airmen who stand in harm’s way on our behalf, protecting us to agree or disagree with war, to respect or not respect the role of the military.  And they do it willingly, generally without quarrel nor concern for others.

Being willing to lay down your life for another or for your country does not mean that you want to lay down your life for your country or another- simply that you will if asked.  And so, every Friday, you will find me wearing a red article of clothing of some kind: shirt, tie, whatever I can manage, because our veterans deserve so much more than an annual holiday.  They deserve to be remembered every day, but failing that, perhaps you can join me, and Tom, and countless others who – as a minimum – remember them every Friday.

I do it because I understand “integrity” and I understand “service before self” and I understand “excellence in all we do” – the core values of fighting men and women the world around. 

And I do it because I sleep peacefully in my bed at night.

And I know whom to thank for that.

As for Tom, I like how this guy thinks.

The Myth of Accountability

What a jam-packed day for discovery!!

Hats off to Mattison Grey [www.greystoneguides.com] for showing me Catalina Coffee, an eclectic roasterie and coffeeshop in the Historic District of Houston.  I highly recommend the experience: the coffee is superb, the baristas are performance artists, the ambience is delectable and the patrons are warm, open, talkative and an utter joy.  2201 Washington- get off I-10 at Taylor exit, head south, keep right when it turns to Sawyer, turn left on Washington and it’s on the right on the corner.  I expect to have many many more of my “thousand cups of coffee” there.

Mattison is a coach, and as she explained, she is a “real coach“.  In a time when so many recently terminated mid-level managers are rebranding their unemployment as “executive coach”, it is understandable that she might seem a bit peckish about that distinction.  As always happens in these encounters, the conversation wandered.  Actually “wandered” might even be too weak a word.  “Caromed” comes to mind: women’s rugby, aerial photography, CrossFit Training [all the rage; look it up], Superperformance, underperformance, “Crossing the Chasm”.  Did I mention that I love this project?

About midway through our stay, we ran across the concept of accountability.  I had recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, a coach, a real coach, about the notion of “contructive accountability”, a topic on which he and another colleague of mine have done a great deal of work.  Expect to hear more about “constructive accountability” on this blog at a later date.  But Mattison took the position that accountability is actually a myth in the way it is implemented in most circumstances: “we only use it to get people to do something that they don’t want to do”. 

Think about the last time that you heard the word “accountability” [or "accountable" ] used; most likely it was on a newscast, or immediately after some report of a failure, when someone is demanding that someone else be held accountable.  When was the last time you heard someone insist that another person be held accountable for having done something positive?  “Accountable” strikes fear in our hearts.  What image does this sentence conjure for you: “Someone has to be accountable for this.”  Do you see a mother standing in the doorway with an armful of flowers and adoring children and husband looking on, or do you see that same mother finding a peanut butter and jelly rendition of “The Last Supper” on the dining room wall?  When we hear “accountable”, we internalize “punishment“, creating a response of fear and dread.

I had to ask if this weren’t simply a semantic manipulation, but I have to admit that Mattison’s examples and points did lead me to her same conclusion.

How are you using accountability?  Are you perpetuating the myth?  Why?  Can the dread internalization be changed?  Need it be changed?  I wonder if JP’s ideas about “constructive accountability” will help this.

I would like your opinion on this concept.  Drop me a line through the Comments section below.  I’m going to hold you accountable.

And as for Mattison, I like the way this woman thinks.