The Pursuit of Purpose

Sometimes you have to wonder if progress is being withheld for a reason – a purpose. And you begin to reflect. The recession and its reluctant recovery have us all questioning ourselves, our motives, our methods, our very lives and our purpose.

In the years that I’ve been a manager and leader in business and in volunteer service a recurring theme continues to surface – people have a desire to be inspired. At the root of that desire is a DNA-level yearning to serve a purpose.

In the past year I have never had so much time to contemplate my life and its purpose. This summer has been slow and I believe that most have made a concerted effort to slow down, assess and collect themselves for the future. I hope and trust that the pause is more out of true contemplation and less of procrastination and fear to act.

There is nothing worse than to go through life without a purpose. The accumulation of stuff and titles and power is not purpose. William James was a wealthy heir, notable psychologist, philosopher and contemplative of the 1800s. He was a member of a literary and intellectually elite family that included his brother the novelist Henry James. He said, “The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.” That statement rings of eternity, purpose and calling. We may all be created equal but we are not all the same. While equal before the law, we are each unique and uniquely gifted – special - purposeful.

I am forever confounded by the free-wheeling misuse of the statement “… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The American Dream. The phrase itself is adapted from a more materialistic statement made by political philosopher and existentialist John Locke – pursuit of property. It has become every man’s declaration of his/her unalienable individual sovereignty. It is a statement made by men adapted from scripture and there is a nugget within it that draws us and draws our spirits – the pursuit of happiness. What is that? What is happiness? Is it joy? Is it self exaltation? Is happiness the accumulation of things? Truly, it’s whatever you make of it and our so-called unalienable right is not to the attainment of “it” per se but to the pursuit of “it”.

I believe that true happiness lies in discovering the fine line and direction one takes in either the pursuit of a kind of happiness found solely in the pursuit of perishable things or in the pursuit of a kind of happiness or fullness found in the pursuit of purpose toward things that go beyond this life and its “stuff”.

When times are easy and success flows freely, we are easily distracted from our true purpose as individuals and the place where we will find joy – true happiness. It is a narrow path and few find it. It is also a path from which we easily stray.

What defines us? Purpose? Profession? Is it the collection of our possessions? French writer Andre Gide had this to say about possessions, "Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you."

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s get a perspective;

"You do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." ~ James 4:14 ~
Or take it from King Solomon who had it all – the greatest of knowledge, discernment and wisdom and all the riches of the world at his disposal. He authored the book of Ecclesiastes;

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 “ Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher;
“ Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
3 What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?
4 One generation passes away, and another generation comes;
But the earth abides forever.
5 The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And hastens to the place where it arose.
6 The wind goes toward the south,
And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit.
7 All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.
8 All things are full of labor;
Man cannot express it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.

Say what you want about Lee Atwater’s politics, but he was an accomplished man very early in his life, rubbing eldbows with and relied upon by some of the most powerful men on the planet. He died swiftly at age forty of a brain tumor and this was his contrite commentary on his life (from a Life magazine article in February 1991), “My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”
Thousands of years apart – same bottom line - same conclusion about life. What do Donald Trump or Ted Turner have to say on that? If their pride will allow it we may find out some day from their death beds.

Is life summed up in some “bucket list” of “to dos”, “thrills” and “to gets” that justify the self? Or is it about purpose discovered and devoted. In that there is no vanity. While we’re on it, here’s the Merriam-Webster definition of vanity; something that is vain, empty, or valueless, the quality or fact of being vain: inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance: conceit. A cutting word. Surely I am not vain! But is my life vanity?

Another fellow who died young but “in” his purpose was a young missionary by the name of James (Jim) Elliot. If you ever want to watch a compelling documentary film about divine purpose take a look at Through Gates of Splendor which is based on a book written by Jim’s widow Elizabeth Elliot. There is also a movie on the same topic titled, End of The Spear. Convicting to say the least – and perhaps senselessly fanatical in the opinion of some not so focused.

Two Jim Elliot quotations;

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

“Wherever you are, be all there.”
Finally, I present to you, William Borden (1887-1913). Yes, he died at age 26. Borden, of the wealthy Borden family we all know, was a well educated millionaire of privilege who had a promising life in industry before him. He turned it all down because early in his life he wrestled with the question of eternal “purpose” as expressed by this passage taken from the book, Borden of Yale '09 written by Mrs. Howard Taylor in 1926. “Borden's first disappointment at Yale came when the university president spoke in a convocation about the students' need of "having a fixed purpose." After that speech, Borden wrote: "He neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations.”
Borden died of spinal meningitis as he trekked to China and his mission field. Written on the inside cover of Borden’s Bible in his own hand – “No reserve – No retreats – No regrets”.
Our lives are finite yet despite our intellectual knowledge of it our end creeps up so surprisingly on each of us. The wealthiest and most powerful among us, when asked what they would want more of respond without hesitation – “time”. In the time that we have, to be the best in what we do, not in the eyes of others but in our own eyes and those of our Creator is to live in the purpose from which we derive truest joy and truest happiness.

You only have so much time to_____________________________.

I think we are meant to struggle with our pursuit of purpose.

All the best!

Bill
Acknowledgement: This Blog was a partially crafted draft of thoughts and fragments of thoughts in a file folder until the exhorting, challenging and encouraging words of my Pastor (Gerald Martel, Grace Gospel Church, Swansea, MA) goaded me into action for its completion. I also attribute to Pastor Martel's research the examples of Lee Atwater and William Borden into which I further delved for inspiration.

Beauty and the Bureaucracy

“Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.”
~ Dr Jim Boren ~

Everyone says they hate a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies hamper our freedom, force us to conform, throttle progress and are no respecter of our individuality. But the idea of bureaucracies is necessary and beautiful in a complex society. How else can complex programs and initiatives be locked-in and translated into meaningful, broadly and evenly applied execution without some form of consistent, non-discriminating deployment mechanism? This is no small task. Personalized service applied with the efficiency of a broad brush is a tall and often counterintuitive order.
Sidebar: There is a trend in the global economy toward mass customization and with it the urgency of rising expectations for more features, utilities and personalized add-ons. We see the implication of this in the ever complex world of personal electronic devices where the explosion in “APP”s is so evident. Here software applications are the enabler of mass customization and every handheld device must be able to adapt through APPs and other “features” to serve the individual’s perception of customized need. The device is manufactured as a one-size-fits-all platform that may be mass produced within acceptable cost efficiency parameters and becomes vastly more complex and costly AFTER it gets into the hands of the user/consumer through imported APPs. Take careful note of the hand-off. This trend is representative of a market tug of war between the bureaucratic and things custom.

Sociopolitical Commentary: As citizens come to expect greater customization our society becomes more and more like a proverbial salad bowl than a melting pot. The complexity of our government bureaucratic programs are, by necessity, becoming bigger and more complex as they attempt to comprehend every variation and peculiar anomaly demanded by society WHILE maintaining control of service vending. Bureaucracies can be great “levelers” – but they can also become contrarily benign in their attempt to “routine-ize” interaction with an increasingly diverse and demanding constituency.

And so bureaucracies, under their own momentum, can become ineffective – the opposite of their intended purpose. What gives?

Like any complex and monotonous thing, bureaucracies resist change. They are often concocted and launched into existence by higher powers and handed to lower powers to implement and run. By design, the bureaucrats who run the programs do not have the delegated power to change the systems they operate. Process is king. Implementers are protected by plausible deniability and things lumber forward – unchanging and unable to adapt. Odd and fantastic logic and problem solving patterns arise as users attempt to personalize results or deal with unanticipated scenarios and outcomes. All effort is made to preserve the integrity and constraints of the established system. Rigid software programs cement the logic circuitry to ensure conformance.

We talk about embracing mass-customization and personalized service. Do our systems reflect that banter?

Every business, no matter the size, creates bureaucracies of its own - its “ways of doing things”. This is necessary and expedient for operational discipline, consistency and efficiency. But here’s a rub; change is not viewed as efficient in a bureaucracy. Change is, we know, a reality of life and adapting to change is critical to success. So how can a bureaucracy be at its “consistent” best and adapt for change at the same time?

The answer lies in two concepts: delegation of authority and continuous improvement cultures that deliberately seek feedback for constructive change. Find the bureaucracies that are inevitably in your business and give them a “delegation” and “improvement loop” checkup. Better yet, involve the bureaucrats in designing the system they will have to use as they interface with customers. And, like the handheld device, let your customer have a greater hand in customizing what they get from you. Push it out a little. Your bureaucracies can be beautiful living and adapting things.

“Make decisions as quickly as possible, to keep momentum; procrastinating causes a different set of problems.”
~ Jeffrey Katzenberg – CEO, DreamWorks ~

All the Best!
Bill

RELEARNING HOW TO FLY

I had an encounter with a dragon fly the other day. He had flown too close to our pool and had inadvertently “splashed”. There I found him upside down and motionless on the pool surface. He was a big guy with a five inch wing span, colorful and with very peculiar markings. I found out later that he was a “Black Saddlebagged” Dragon Fly.

I thought he was dead and proceeded to scoop him out with my leaf net. But as soon as my net touched him he clawed at it and scrambled onboard like a ditched pilot to a rescue raft. I paused at the spectacle and the size of the beast as he gathered his bearings, tested his wings, took off and cart-wheeled back into the pool like a helicopter with a tail rotor malfunction. He lay there motionless again. I scooped him up again. He re-tested his wings but didn’t attempt a take-off this time. The markings on his beating wings created the illusion of three dimensional “bags” saddling his body. I rested the net on the edge of the pool and looked for a stick which I used to transfer him to an Iris shoot in my garden. He seemed to like that.

For about three hours he stayed there perched on the Iris shoot, motionless. He would not fly off. I figured he was recovering, drying-out. I checked on him once in awhile and he even let me pet him - but he stayed glued to that Iris shoot. I thought maybe he was too far gone to fly and was slowly dying.

The sun was setting and I was beginning to get concerned that he might become food for some nocturnal hunter – we have bats. I started to nudge him to fly off and return to whatever safe haven dragon flies go to at night. He wouldn’t even beat his wings. Then it occurred to me – maybe he had just given up the idea of flying and was “playing it safe”. But he was created to fly and he needed to fly. So I had an idea.

I offered him another stick and gently urged him onto it. Waving the stick slowly, I began to walk him around my yard like a child might with a toy glider, letting the air flow across his wings. Then in one smooth arcing motion I swung the stick up and flicked him off into the air. He catapulted upward, began to fall and then, as though snapping out of a daze, his wings sputtered to life - he hovered for a just a moment as if doing a “systems check”, did a little circle and took off in a straight line – a “bee line” – a determined line – into the dusk.

He was himself again. And NO, a bat didn’t swoop down and eat him!

“Saddlebags”

"If black boxes survive air crashes, why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?" ~George Carlin~

I help business and organization leaders define and achieve their ambitions by helping them address the issues problems and opportunities - not acted upon – that dominate their thoughts.
For most of us it’s been a tough go. Maybe you haven’t “flown” for a while. It’s time fly.

All the Best!
Bill

Power To The People!

“In times of change – learners inherit the earth.” ~ Eric Hoffer ~
The “people factor” peculiar to small businesses. As businesses downsize – less may become more but less certainly becomes critical. In small businesses, flat org-charts are the norm – and both a strength and weakness. It takes a certain type of person to thrive in a small business environment – especially nowadays. Wearing many hats and enduring shifting priorities and tempos can wear on the non-generalist. This goes for both the entrepreneur/owner AND those on his/her staff. The stress is especially acute for those who may have been on the job for some time (having acclimated to the organization during simpler and more relaxed times) or who have formerly luxuriated in a single-discipline focus. CEOs take note: though your staff certainly appreciates their jobs – they have endured downsizings and taken on more responsibilities along the way. This HAS added mental and emotional stress. Be proactive before vital links begin to fracture. Sometimes an outsider’s perspective can detect fractures that you cannot.

Is your front office (you know - your SG&A cost center) disconnected from it’s business enterprise roots? In his book, Shop Class As Soul Craft (©2009 by The Penguin Press), Matthew Crawford looks at the office dynamics of small and large corporations that have lost focus on individual contribution and how new “office centric” and often non-productive and erroneous criteria for performance are diluting SG&A value and derailing companies. You know, like focusing on political correctness versus getting the job done and office cultures that use limp phrases like “I don’t disagree with you” that lead to phony consensus building.

In growing enterprises, valuable and contributing individuals are promoted and given increasing responsibility and authority – sometimes beyond their capability – “The Peter Principal”. These very key players can become roadblocks to further progress when their ambitions digress from those of their leader.

Having ambitions and being ambitious are two very different things. A wise business leader is conscious of this. I cannot count the times I’ve seen key middle managers holding back a company while paying lip service to the ambitions of an earnest CEO. The toughest group are the seasoned veterans who have given their all to ambitious projects and implementations in the past. They may no longer “see the light”, they may be tired or just plain coasting toward retirement. These reluctant participants may often be individuals who are viewed as vital. The questions is this; is your ambitious plan equally as vital as you perceive these individuals to be? If so - a line must be drawn. Who may quit and who may need to move on is a function of the CEO’s commitment to and ambitions for the enterprise – for the good of the enterprise. CEOs should realize that their ambitions may exceed the ambitions of their staff and then have the courage to break through resistance – no matter what the perceived or feared consequences in employee turnover may be. Such fears generally exceed reality. This is why enterprises that embrace a culture of change and continuous improvement have a vitality borne from their culture and not supposed “vital” individuals.

Are your production workers BAD ROBOTS? Matthew Crawford (Shop Class As Soul Craft), makes another good observation about worker mentality in the modern age – “If occasions for the exercise of judgment are diminished, the moral-cognitive virtue of attentiveness will atrophy.”(pg. 101) In other words, too much monotony and systemization in human operations can become counter-productive. All the written procedures and auditing you care to apply will not stem this human result. In certain environments where human involvement in productivity approaches that of machines - you might as well invest in the robots - because your workers will evolve into mindless and, worse, error prone automatons.

Along the same line, organizations that lack ambition will trend toward mediocrity in human capital. Jason Jennings in Hit The Ground Running,©2009 puts it like this, ”Without growth a company will eventually be unable to hire and keep talented people. People work for businesses in the hope of achieving their own full economic potential. When highly talented and ambitious people discover that a brighter tomorrow doesn’t exist, they’ll leave at the first opportunity. Eventually the only people left will be those incapable of finding work elsewhere.”(pg.28)

I help organizations define and achieve their ambitions and I’m available to listen and hear about the problems, issues and opportunities - not acted upon - that dominate your thoughts. That’s where it starts.

All the Best!
Bill

Where are we headed?

“As the leader, when you enter a brainstorming session – take the cotton out of your ears and place it in your mouth.” ~ Seen on a online Business Leadership Chat Site ~

Where are businesses focusing in this recovery? What is working for others? A 2010 Executive Market Intelligence Report surveyed executive recruiters to identify the top high-growth functions for executive placements in 2010. They were, in ranked order:

1) Business Development
2) Sales
3) Operations Management
4) Engineering
5) Marketing
6) General Management
7) Finance
8) R&D
9) MIS/Information Technology
10) All other disciplines

What does this tell you? If you consider the top five categories, there is a theme: Top line growth, bottom line control and adaptation/optimization of “what you have”.
If you haven’t gotten the message yet, the present and future are going to be all about change. As soon as businesses relax their hold on what used to work and begin to embrace the concept of change, new methods, new perspectives and new market adaptive directions - business should begin to accelerate into a drive-able recovery.

“Sometimes if you hold on too tight to what you have, you end up choking it.”~ Anonymous ~

REALITY: Most will agree that inflation is coming (no one knows when but it's coming) and that the economy is going to take a long time de-leveraging - so cash will continue to be tight for some time. Government stimulus programs will phase out later this year and the hand-off to the private sector for the recovery will take place. That hand-off will be felt in the form of a dip in the recovery. Businesses already have cut costs - so liquidity will have to come from revenue growth. The market WILL NOT ALLOW revenue growth from price increases. Revenue growth will have to come from sales diversification and market share growth. In other words - successful competition. Most businesses recognize that they need a plan for that. Such a plan involves much more than new advertisements and adding to the sales force.

BUSINESS PLANS AND THE RECOVERY. Small and Mid-size businesses (SMBs) intuitively know that there is no standard blueprint for their specific business – they have to draw it themselves. Yet, most SMBs don’t take the time to initiate and maintain even the most modest of business planning processes.

Successful businesses have plans. So why don’t more SMBs have one?
Here are FIVE reasons why:
Reason #1: Belief that a business plan is only required when borrowing or when soliciting investors.
Reason #2: Belief that a business plan will constrain the owner’s creativity, be too rigid and diminish the ability to flexibly operate the business.
Reason #3: Belief that those who will have to draft the plan are too busy to focus on a plan and that they don’t possess the knowledge or time to do it right – so why bother unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Reason #4: No excuse.
Reason #5: Your reason.

Reasons 2 and 3 are perhaps the most reasonable. It has been said that every business is either in a storm, coming out of a storm or going into a storm. There is never a convenient time to carve out the time to do a deliberate plan. But the reality of changing markets and circumstances really prescribes planning – even if the plan must change and adapt along the way. Business plans are not meant to be stagnant documents.

“I was wondering why the baseball was getting larger and larger – then it hit me!” ~ gotta be Yogi Berra ~

Larger companies employ Boards of Directors and Advisors who use a business plan as the subject of their fiduciary attentiveness. These Boards bring external perspective, experience and provocative ideas that stimulate thought and action for the good of the enterprise. Small business owners with their day-to-day perspective rarely have access to such talent and the accountability to success that comes with it.

Business planning is a project that becomes a process. I'm working with companies that undertook an internal business planning project that quickly identified other profitable projects of opportunity that presented themselves along the way. We took those new paths – and we’re still doing the business plan. That’s okay!

Through relationship oriented business advisor/management consultants like WayPoints Partners, you can bring an external perspective, objectivity and a sympathetic resonance with the issues of small businesses into YOUR small business. With it you will get fresh energy and sense of urgency for success at a fraction of the cost and without all the formality of a Board of Directors. You also get an advocate for your business through the many network contacts of your advisor - and, perhaps, some marketing and sales experience and intuition that will kick-in for REVENUE GROWTH.

The WayPoints Partners motto, “with you along the way … all the way” is a good example of the relationship orientation you will want from a business advisor/consultant such that any business planning process that you might jointly initiate doesn’t become a dusty document left on the shelf but part of an ongoing and evolving business success story.

All the best!

Bill

"LEADERS - Bring it on!"

“Do or do not. There is no try.” ~ Yoda ~
What Successful Leaders Bring. I like to read the websites of venture capital and equity investment firms – where they expound on their successes. A recurring theme; Their team or the CEO they placed into an investment entity was able to bring leadership, execution and sales growth. Indeed, any chief executive can’t be seen as just the boss but as one who stimulates activity and brings fresh energy into a company. Decisiveness is often a keynote trait of leadership and such behavior from a newcomer is often mistaken as change for change sake. Not so.

Execution is staying with the strategy (making decisions along the way) and not being distracted by the day to day. Fresh energy is found in the readiness to make decisions. Further, successful companies are started by entrepreneurs who had a vision and passion for a product – that met a market need - and who had a burning passion to sell. Somewhere along the line that passion may get diffused with time and the hand-off to a sales force that may or may not possess that same initiating passion in product meeting market need. Successful leaders bring that passion and a talent for sustaining aggressive and market adaptive efforts. Markets change – you must change. This market HAS changed.

“The only time a man has the right to look down on another is when he is helping him to get up.” ~ Author Unknown ~

BOWLING FOR SUCCESS: To gauge the success or failure of a system implementation, culture shift or new practice; apply the Bowling Ball Test. If you have laid the proper groundwork, explained the reasons and goals, provided the resources for success, trained the people, delegated authority and established buy-in, your new initiative will roll on its own after the initial push. If not, it will behave like a bowling ball in the sand – push, push all you want but it won’t roll after you stop pushing.

- OBSERVANCES -
May is a month of special remembrance of sacrifice. We observe Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day and Mothers Day in May. My words are insufficient - so I offer these;


Motherhood ~ Joaquin Miller (1839-1913)


The bravest battle that ever was fought!
Shall I tell you where and when?
On the maps of the world you will find it not;
'twas fought by the mothers of men.

Nay not with the cannon of battle-shot,
with a sword or noble pen;
Nay, not with eloquent words or thought
from the mouths of wonderful men!

But deep in a walled-up woman's heart -
of a woman that would not yield,
but bravely, silently bore her part -
lo, there is the battlefield!

No marshalling troops, no bivouac song,
no banner to gleam and wave;
But oh! those battles, they last so long -
from babyhood to the grave.

Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars,
she fights in her walled-up town -
Fights on and on in her endless wars,
then silent, unseen, goes down.

Oh, ye with banners and battle-shot,
and soldiers to shout and praise!
I tell you the kingliest victories fought
were fought in those silent ways.

O spotless woman in a world of shame,
with splendid and silent scorn,
Go back to God as white as you came -
the Kingliest warrior born!

Thanks Mom …


All the best!
Bill

What's in YOUR Logic?

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers.” ~ Colin Powell ~
Deductive? Inductive? Abductive? Last month we looked at introverted or directional thinking and compared it with extroverted or intersectional thinking - which can vault companies and whole markets forward with great leaps of breakthrough innovation.

I recently came across a related article in Bloomberg Businessweek (January 25, 2010) titled "Innovation’s Accidental Enemies" by Roger Martin & Jennifer Riel. I have to share it.

Martin & Riel argue that most ideas provoke an impulse to demand proof of viability through deductive or inductive reasoning. In deductive reasoning, an idea is stacked up against a widely held rule. In inductive reasoning a new rule is developed from a base of accepted data. Great breakthrough innovations, however, often correlate to no established set of rules - nor can they draw on any font of data to derive a “certainty of success”. What to do? Toss it all to luck? Move forward on NO logical basis? The authors propose a third form of reasoning: ABDUCTIVE logic - the logic of what could be. Abductive logic can be used to make an inference – a leap in logic. I love this because it resonates so well with intersectional thinking.

To illustrate, here’s a paraphrased excerpt; “At Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the Blackberry, abductive logic is embedded in the culture. RIM’s founder encourages his people to explore big ideas and apparent paradoxes to push beyond what they can prove to be true in order to see what might be true. In the mid 1990s RIM was a modestly successful pager company but its founder wanted to get into portable email devices. He imagined something much smaller than a laptop but easier to type on than a cell phone. A super miniaturized QWERTY format keyboard had feasibility limitations (remember the Palm Stylus?) - UNTIL - he achieved a leap of logic: What if we typed using only our thumbs? A prototype quickly proved the logic and the Blackberry was born! Asking what could be true and jumping into the unknown is critical to innovation. Nurturing such ideas versus killing them is the tricky part. Once this hurdle is cleared the “proofs” can be developed and a vision of the future can be turned into fact.”

“When something is unsustainable – it stops.” ~ Anonymous ~
The “MOD QUAD”
Modified “Quad-Charts” can be used to reduce projects to their significant talking points and help succinctly visualize new opportunities (new product vectors). Quad Charts are great for provocative brainstorming because they force simplicity and keep cross functional management teams focused. They can be made a part of a strategic business plan for sustainable market relevance. Quad Charts are ONE page by design and deliberately succinct. Could you do one for your new development? Here’s a template:

How do you know when a change initiative has been successful? Just because you have concocted a plan and launched it does not mean that your execution has been successful. Initial employee enthusiasm from the CEO’s announcement, the big pizza party, the new incentive program, mugs and ball caps will fade and with it will evaporate your hopes of residual impact. Sustainable change is usually marked by four key indicators. These indicators will be observed from your employees.
• Declarations and testimonials are heard.
• There is appetite for more.
• Value adjustments are observed – culture shift is evident - change and productivity related peer pressure is evident at the shop floor level.
• Members become evangelists and the initiative has legs of its own without management prodding.


“Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.” ~Warren Buffet ~
Zen and the Art of Raking (If you don’t have trees – you can skip this piece.)
It amazes me how much garbage falls out of the sky (or trees actually). Every year, as the seasons cycle, I’m constantly raking. My lawn is perpetually littered. I’m raking in the Fall of course, but I’m raking well into Winter. I rake in the Spring and all through the Summer too. It is truly incredible how much “stuff” trees shed in the course of the year. Leaves – sure, but bark, old branches, major limbs, the husks and fluff from spring buds. Pulled from the ground, converted into biomass and deposited on my lawn. Nature, self-pruning, making way for new growth. I partially heat my home with a wood stove and I never have a lack of kindling. I just walk outside and scavenge twigs and branches right off the ground. Fabulous!

Many large branches also fall in the dead of winter that were probably wounded by some big wind long ago. Unattended, those limbs eventually dried up, lost their leaves and stood naked until their brittleness succumbed to gravity. I often look up expectantly at the “not yet fallen”, out of reach – destined to fall and stoke my stove.

I think about people who, in their youth and strength, flail at life and receive for all their efforts wounds they often don’t even feel until much later in life. I know I’ve been wounded and I’ve wounded myself. I’ve wounded others. Someone once told me “we’re all victims of victims”. But I can tend to my wounds and those I’ve inflicted if I recognize them. It’s never too late. I don’t have to lose any limbs.

And then there’s the ground itself – the substrate of my raking. Freezing and thawing the ground seems to push things out onto the surface or gobble them up. I think it’s a function of mass. The winter loosens up the dirt like no cultivator ever could. When I recall how concrete hard the ground can get in the dry heat of August it’s amazing the see how frost-heave, soaking rain and time can so effectively loosen it up again. So patient, so efficient. I think about hardened people and how time works on them and softens them physically and emotionally. Most become fertile and more open with time. Some resist and stay hardened – and barren of new growth.

As I rake through the seasons I find meaning in Proverbs 20:29; “The glory of young men is their strength and the splendor of old men is their gray head.” I’d personally like to think that the author also meant “bald” head. Spring is upon us! Maybe the Winter has loosened us up a little (I think the recession surely has). Maybe we’ve reconciled some old wounds, healed them, done some spiritual pruning and readied ourselves for new growth. I’ll probably be raking this weekend … weather and soggy ground permitting.

All the Best!
Bill