Annual Planning–My Experience

A mentor of mine once told me that the answers we seek are all around us, if only we were not so deaf, dumb and blind. We very often simply cannot see, or read, or interpret the subtle clues. I certainly struggle with it, mainly because I am so focused on looking for validation of what I want (desires / preferences / what feels good) that I can hardly hear the whisper of what I need (growth / learning / what feels uncomfortable).

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”   Winston Churchill

Every now and again something will get through to me. That happened yesterday for me. I received unequivocal validation that I was on to something. Here’s the story.

Sara and I were in a truck wreck three weeks back. I rolled the truck at 65 mph after hitting black ice. My wife Sara, our dog and I walked away from the wreck (actually, Stone ran). It was a terrifying experience (bad) and yet so many magical things happened (good) that we walked away. The feeling (intuition) I had was that one hand slapped us down and the other caught us. Sara captured both of our feelings when she said, “I am clear something just ended.” But what?

As we have wrestled with insurer over whether to repair or total the car, we’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster. As traumatic as that has been it has shaken something loose. Thinking about replacing the truck with another like it meant having a car loan. Something about that didn’t feel right.

The issue of money. How many people do you know of that have mastered the darn thing? I look around me. I know people who have a little, one friend is just ahead of homelessness save for another friend’s sofa. I know people who have a comfortable amount coming in. I know people who are totally set for life. And I cannot think of a single person who has a truly high-functioning relationship with money.

I am not talking about knowing how to make it: I am not talking about skill in handling it. I am talking about how money makes them feel, how they cling to it, obsess over it, deny it, feel bad about it, at some level feel they don’t deserve as much as they have, or don’t deserve any more, or don’t need it at all… I am talking about how they relate to money. And how they pretend to relate to it. So something was up and stirring, and one feeling melded into the next.

Something whispered inside me to look up a “money expert” my friends Henry and Jenny told me about, Dave Ramsey. That was four days ago. I searched the web. I downloaded his audiobook, The Total Money Makeover for $9.95 from his web site (50% off, friends). I started listening, and okay, the guy is over-the-top evangelical, but I got something from it. I decided we should buy a truck with cash.

I told Sara and she looked as if she were thinking, “What alien snatched my husband and invaded his body?” Then she was a little disappointed (there went the leather upholstery we wanted). And within 60 seconds, she softened and was palpably relieved. Then she got excited.

For the first time in my life, I am excited about mastering my relationship with money.

Yesterday morning, I was driving up to snow ski with relatives, continuing my listening to podium-pounding David Ramsey and immensely enjoying the show. As I drove up canyon toward Brighton Ski Resort, the traffic slowed to a crawl. Seventeen inches of new powder and a holiday week brought out every skier from the valley. Either that, or someone put up a sign that said “free food.”

I started to get anxious about whether I’d be skiing. Or not. Oh. But why worry? I am enjoying both the information and the pep-talk from Ramsey, and I am getting more and more excited about moving to the next level of money mastery, and more and more clear about what I need to do. Not based on what he is saying but based on what I am feeling, what I already know to do but simply have not done.

When I finally got to the top, saw the “lot full” sign and the grinning Sheriff enforcing its validity while patting his Glock (that’s a firearm, so settle down), I smiled. I knew Dave had arranged to keep me captive audience. And rather than looking for Plan B (double parking and hiking up to the resort), I submitted to my fate, quite assured that Dave had pulled rank on me. My ski car had been transformed into a mobile classroom, and who was I argue? Heck, out all the windows was snow, evergreen, blue sky and red rock.

As I straightened out the wheel and headed downhill, I smiled: I “knew” (without knowing why I knew) that the “class” (audio) would end just when I left the mouth of the canyon and re-entered the valley. (You will note Dave has a penchant for drama.) Sure enough, as if on queue, Dave closed the book and unlatched the classroom door just as the Salt Lake Valley came into full view…

Truck, Salt Lake City, 31 Dec 2009

So I’m driving along, spellbound and a little in awe at how I’m feeling. I decide to just be quiet, and drive. As I head homeward, a truck catches my eye. To you, it likely would be just an old “beater” truck–long ago paid for and now having no value.

But there was something about the way I was seeing the truck made it really stand out in a way I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I whip out my iPhone to take a photo cuz I know something is going down and I don’t know what.

Then, I saw the bumper sticker: the first word was “manifest.” But I couldn’t q-u-i-t-e make out the second word. As that driver and I were making our ways the the stop signs (there are a thousand of them) in the Avenues area of Salt Lake, I’m sure the guy thought I was crazy, pulling right up on his bumper. But still I couldn’t make it out, and I “knew” the answer was right there in front of me.

I was headed to the liquor store (we call ‘em package stores in the South) to buy New Year champagne for the wife and me. And all of a sudden I relaxed. I knew this truck was headed to the same shopping center, LOL! Sure enough, he turns off B Street onto Sixth Avenue. Oh, but it is even better. He doesn’t go into the parking lot: he stops right on the curb!

In glee I swung the block and circled back ’round. I pulled in behind the truck, and I had to laugh as the bumper sticker became legible. In fact, I’m sure as I  kneeled down behind the truck, taking a picture for ya with my iPhone, I’m sure all the other folks going by couldn’t figure out what the heck I was doing out in the street, on my knees, taking a photo with my mobile phone of the back what some would call a charismatic but most others would call a “beater” truck.

But I knew what I was doing: and for the thousand messages I’ve missed, I got it. Money will be my #1 theme this year. Money is power. Technically, crystalized power. So you can say I’ll be working with my relationship with power this year, in the context of working with money.

The wreck opened that up that shift (among other things). A feeling queued me. Dave Ramsey hollered at me. And a truck talked to me. That’s how my New Year’s Eve began. And here’s that bumper sticker for you. Who knows. Maybe, based on what you are working on as you plan for 2010, something about this story may be a clue for you as well.

Now the riddle is far from solved. But I got the next step and the next clue. But I’ve been round long enough to know two things. First, this is just a next step and a pat on the back to move forward. Second, this isn’t about money. Don’t think for a second it is. It is about the self mastery. Money, well, that is simply the context in which the learning and mastery of the self will take place.

There’s a place, a context, for you, too, this year. A context in which you are being called to master your self. What is yours? That is the question I hope you are pondering. That is a question worth asking, worth exploring, and worth hunting for clues. B:-) Happy hunting!

Get the Message?

Annual Planning Exercise 2: Envisioning 2010

Okay, so you made it through New Year’s Eve and you’ve landed yourself squarely into 2010. Nicely done. Let’s take the next step in the annual planning cycle, shall we?

The nice thing about this planning approach is that it is hard to fall behind: you can start from wherever you are. So don’t indulge in believing you can’t do exercise 2 without having done exercise 1. If you didn’t, answer the questions here anyway. However, if you did exercise 1, time to whip out that whopper of a page with the six section grid and your responses to the questions of exercise 1. Take a few minutes and review your work. Make any adjustments you feel to make. Now you are limbered up and ready.

We are going to ease into planning 2010 by answering questions similar to those we used to reflect on 2009. Again, to give credit where credit is due, I’ve adapted these questions from David Allen. Just work your way through the questions. That’s it. Have fun. Take a light approach. And I’ll be back with you soon.

1. What would you like to be your biggest triumph in 2010?
2. What advice would you like to give yourself in 2010?
3. What major effort would you like to improve your financial results in 2010?
4. What is the most important thing you did not complete in 2009 that you’d be most happy about completing in 2010?
5. What major indulgence are you willing to experience in 2010?
6. What would you most like to change about your behavior in 2010?
7. What are you looking forward to learning in 2010?
8. What do you think your biggest risk will be in 2010?
9. What is your biggest fear or concern about 2010?
10. What about your work, are you most committed to changing and improving in 2010?
11. What is one as yet undeveloped talent you are willing to explore in 2010?
12. What brings you the most joy and how are you going to do or have more of that in 2010?
13. Who or what, other than yourself, are you most committed to loving and serving in 2010?
14. What one word would you like to have as your theme in 2010?

Get Up. Stand Up. It’s 2010. :)

Here it is New Year’s Eve, on the same night as a blue moon, and at the same time, an eclipse. That’s some extra special sauce as we transition from the single digits of two thousand into the double digits.

These are interesting times: pretty much everyone is starting to ‘get it’ that the stakes are high. The social structures are a bit wobbly and unwieldy, nay imbalanced. And we elect someone on the basis of hope, hope that change can happen. What, we don’t know, but a lot of folks realize that change is needed. We feel it.

The problem is, whether we admit it or not, my self included, we keep hoping he is going to do it. And if not him, someone will do it. Whatever it is. We pace back and forth along the bluff overlooking the shore, but there are no ships on the horizon. At some point, it will dawn that we each must act.

A lot of people, myself included, know intellectually that we need to do something: we don’t, really. And I pause to wonder at the seam between these two years what will have to happen for us to realize that the only real hope we have is to each straighten out our own lives.

I’d like to close this year and open the new by sharing a clip of writing from Eric Francis. I hope you enjoy it, and that it provides some food for thought… whether you are thinking along the same wavelength as me or not.

Happy New Year, my friend. And Godspeed to us all as this year blends into the next.

“One of the themes of [this] eclipse… is emotional dependency and its counterpart, the need to submit to authority. Back when people other than advertising writers thought about psychology, a few of us understood that giving away our power was an emotionally-driven process, fueled by fear and the refusal to take authority for our own lives. Erich Fromm called it the Escape from Freedom.

Here’s a theory for you: humans rarely seem to grow out of the tendencies we develop in our early childhood relationships with authority figures — such as our almighty parents; ministers who claim to personally wield the power of God; and teachers who can inflict torture and humiliation on us. Once instilled, these patterns dominate our emotional landscape; and take up residence in our relationships, our homes, our jobs, our creative experiences — everywhere. Under such emotional conditions, the only acceptable way of life is to be stupid, fat and bored: nobody is threatened. We would in fact express ourselves, if not for the fear of threatening others; which is a ruse for refusing to grow up.

If the Western world is stuck on one issue, this is the one. We love to be told what to do; we love to have our decisions made for us; we love to be told what is right and wrong and who is honest and who is not and whether it’s okay that some golfer had a lot of girlfriends. We need to be told what is perfectly safe and how long we’re going to live and to be angry about lead in Barbie dolls and that toxic dorms are safe; and as a result, this whole concept of becoming an adult is a little like reaching Valhalla. Where the heck is that? I think it’s in Connecticut.

We Americans in particular tend to spend our lives acting like little children, and it’s time we grow up and claim some accountability for our actions, our choices and our destiny – personal and collective. Part of that is admitting that we do indeed make choices, which is to say that we don’t need our internalized parents, teachers and ministers to run our lives. We can do a lot to take care of ourselves; all the ‘health care’ in the world will not substitute for throwing out your microwave oven. We don’t need content filters to tell us what is ’safe’ to read.

Humans tend to be creatures guided by our emotions rather than by reason or intellect; and as such we are easily led around and told what to believe, based on what we think will make us feel better or ‘be safer’. [This] eclipse… is about setting ourselves free from those emotional patterns… and taking on the mantle of authority over our own lives.

Somebody has to; it may as well be you.“

Annual Planning-My Experience with Exercise 1

My View as I Write to You Now, 30 Dec 2009

I completed exercise 1 today myself. Here are the brass tacks of my experience with it.

It was hard in some ways. It was a difficult exercise for me primarily because of all the implications around my response to question 3, “What one word best sums up and describes your 2009 experience?” My response. Intense. Also, it was yet another year in a string of unbroken years of having to acknowledge that I start so much and complete so little.

Primary insight: Changing this one thing would have the most profound impact on results, my projects, my sense of fulfillment and my self esteem. The lack of regulation of my own energy (and focus) is very costly. I have a lot of ideas and energy and I disrespect the fountain by not channeling its waters. And the lump in my throat gets a little larger with each year that I have to face that unequivocal fact that I have been mostly ineffective in changing over the many years I’ve been at this.

Yet some things got much easier in the reflection process. For example, in the past I have focused more on activity and insight than results. I made a significant shift this year due to my application of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. Believe me, I am far from a maestro at the GTD methodology, but I damn sure know how to set objective, clear results for goals and I just wasn’t doing it for my self to the same level I do with my clients. I did much better in that area this year, and the results really show.

Another thing I am proud of–relationship with money. I really hadn’t fully acknowledged just how far I have come this year with money. I’ve always been good at earning it. I’ve been even better at spending it. And I have done poorly at tracking it (even though with my CPA background it is downright easy from a skill standpoint). This year, I rocked. It feels great, and I am excited at building on that in 2010.

I made a lot of progress my self with money, and now I am ready to cooperate with Sara, my wife, to develop our financial prowess as a couple (as I continue to develop mastery myself). Last night, we spent an hour writing out our joint financial aspirations–it is far from the drudgery I thought it would be. It was energizing. I cannot wait to see what we accomplish together in 2010 with such a clear intent.

What am I most happy about completing? Hand’s down, that’d be finding and buying 11 acres with a house in Oregon’s wine country with Sara. The biggest surprise? Finding out we’d have to build a house on it, LOL! (We thought it had one.) Which brings me back to the second thing I am most happy with completing: building a house with Sara on our property and moving in to it.

I have revised Exercise 1 based on my experience of completing it. In the following exercises, I will be working ahead of you, posting only after I have completed the exercise my self. So if you have not done the exercise yet, click here to access the most current version of Exercise 1.

Did you notice what I just admitted? I’ve let you in on another troublesome shortcoming I have: encouraging people to do what I have mapped out in my own mind, but not done with my own hands. Now, mind you, I am not pulling this stuff out of thin air. Versions of what I am using here, I have done. However, I am evolving all that I have ever done into a new form of planning, and bringing it forth here. However, the fact remains that I just asked you to do something I myself had not done in the way I am bringing it forth here, now.

As the Irish Proverb goes, “You can’t plough a field by turning it over in your mind.” I must think, for some reason, that I am exempt. I am not. It’s quite inauthentic, and costs me dearly in many ways.

I can see something now, right now: this is the other side of the coin. I told you above: I start a lot more than I finish. That is one side of the coin. The other side is I ask others to do what I myself have not done. There is a core thread–a connection between these two shortcomings that at the face value appear different–that may profoundly impact my planning for 2010 and the way I approach it.

What is fun about this is this–because I am doing this on the fly, I can shift it on the fly. So, the rest of the exercises you will receive, you won’t be the first to try them.

If you have comments, please do post them to the blog. I’d love to hear your comments, your experience and your recommendations.

Annual Planning Exercise 1: 2009 Reflection

Let’s get started with an exercise that I’ve adapted from David Allen’s work (Getting Things Done) to reflect my own experience and approach. The first step is to pause and reflect on 2009. We start with reflection because when you really reflect you expand your perception. When you expand perception you change your “current level of thinking.” (As Einstein put it.)

When you change your current level of thinking, you change your frame, your filters, your paradigm, such that new insights arise and new problems and possibilities and solutions are seen. And that isn’t a bad thing when you want the best plan you’ve ever put together in your life.

It is this simple: true reflection expands perception, expanded perception generates a better plan. Therefore, pausing to reflect before launching into planning is intensely practical.

You don’t need to go sit on the top of a Himalayan mountain to do this, and don’t make a science project out of it. I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible, and you should be about to complete the exercise in 90 minutes or less. (Then, go back and update it as you have more a-ha’s.)

Before you begin, you should decide whether this reflection will be personal, business or both. I’m always asked that question, “Which should I do?” My response? “What do you feel you should do?” I am writing for three types of “users.” 1. leaders who own their business, 2. leaders working within someone else’s organization, and 3. Individuals who understand that we are all leaders, in that at a minimum we have to lead our own life. For purposes of this exercise, most will benefit from combining business and personal. But again, let your feelings guide you.

In this exercise you will be reflecting on three key things:

1. Results (Outcomes)–the tangible results you produced in 2009, and if you set targets for those results, how you did versus the targets you set.
2. Projects (Drivers)–the tangible projects you undertook in 2009, hopefully to affect the Results in 1 above.
3. Events + Sentiments (Thoughts & Feelings)–the thoughts and feelings–positive and negative–you have attached to the events of 2009.

To do this, it sometimes helps to divvy up your assessment of your one life into categories. I call these categories Life Aspects–different windows through which you can view the one thing called your life. Create your own categories if you like, but here are 11 that are a good starting point.

Life Aspects:

1. Physical health
2. Emotional health
3. Mental development
4. Spiritual development
5. Family Relationships
6. Friend Relationships
7. Community Service
8. Fun / creativity / recreation
9. Living Environment
10. Financial security
11. Career/Business

If you are doing this solely for your work and leaving your personal life out of it, then use the functional areas of your business as the categories you consider. For example, functions might include executive, product design, sales, marketing, implementation, client/account management, operations, HR, finance and IS/IT/Technology.

Completing and Remembering 2009

Do the following:

Preparation.

1. Fetch two standard-sized blank pieces of paper, some clear tape and a pen(cil). Tape the two pages together down the long sides, on the backside of the pages. (If you are in the USA, you’ll end up with a sheet 11 inches hight and 17 inches wide.) At the top of the page write “2009 Reflection.” Draw a line down the middle (the seam of the two pages). Then draw horizontal lines that divide your big sheet into thirds vertically. You should be looking at six quadrants on one really big sheet of paper–two quadrants at the top, two in the middle and two at the bottom. We are working on one really big sheet because I want you to see the big picture of 2009 without having to flip a page.

2. Information. If you track results on a scorecard, get it. If you had goals and a plan for 2009, grab them. If you need your financial statements from 2008 and 2009, ditto. Gather what you will think you need before starting your “first pass complete come hell or high water in 60 minutes or less in one sitting” work session. Otherwise you will end up here, there and everywhere during the 60 minutes.

Recommendations:

• Write in bullet points.

• Use a brainstorm/download approach.

• Don’t capture trivial and drown out the important: don’t stifle or marginalize the things that are important by telling yourself they are trivial.

• Do not get sidetracked hunting down or calculating Results. What brought with you (per Preparation instructions above), insert. What you didn’t bring to the 60 minute first pass session, write the name (for example, “change in investments value” or “revenues”) on the big page, put a blank next to it, and keep moving. Come back later, and fill the blanks in. They will love you for it. Nature abhors a vacuum, remember.

• It is very important to complete a first pass of the entire grid in an hour or less in one sitting. After that, revise it all you like. But bring a first pass through to some form of completion (entries in each of the 6 quadrants, if applicable) in 60 minutes. Remember Pareto’s principle–80% of the benefit comes from completing 20% of the work effort. Believe me, if you dawdle you likely won’t complete it. If you do complete it and it is incomplete, you won’t be able to stop the vacuum from filling up, LOL! But there is no vacuum created unless you complete a first pass.

Top Left and Right Quadrants–Results (Outcomes)

1. In the top left quadrant, write the most important, tangible, specific results you produced in 2009 that met or exceeded the targets you had set. (If you didn’t set targets for your results, write the results you were pleased with). Limit yourself to no more than 10 of the most important Results achieved.

2. In the top right quadrant, write the tangible, specific results that fell short of the targets you set for 2009 (or fell short of your expectations, if you did not set a target). Limit yourself to no more than 10 of the most important Results that fell short of target or expectations.

What are results (outcomes)? If you want some definition of that, see Appendix 1: Results Defined, below.

Middle Left and Right Quadrants–Projects (Drivers)

Projects are the multistep initiatives you do–such as expanding into a new market area or putting together a personal financial plan–in order to produce Results. Results are outcomes. Projects are drivers or enablers. For example, the project of expanding into a new market may be to produce the result of producing 50% revenue growth. Or the project of putting together a personal financial plan might be the produce the result of increasing your net worth by $100,000. Projects are not Results. Projects affect the capacity to produce Results.

3. In the middle left quadrant, write the tangible, specific projects you completed. Not half baked. Completed.

4. In the middle right quadrant, write the tangible, specific projects you started but did not complete.

Bottom Left and Right Quadrants–Events + Sentiments (Thoughts and Feelings)

Sentiments are your thoughts and feelings–rational or irrational–about what did or didn’t happen during the year. They may or may not be attached to the Results and Projects you reviewed above. For example, you may have positive feelings about having found the love of your life, and that may have been listed as a Result or a Project (though I have seen people turn finding love into a project plan). You may have negative feelings about a competitor moving into one of your markets, and that might have come out of the blue, and had nothing to do with Results or Projects that did or didn’t happen.

5. In the lower left hand quadrant, write what you are happiest about when you think of 2009-what happened and what didn’t happen.

6. In the lower right hand quadrant, write your regrets or the things that most trouble you when you think of 2009-what happened and didn’t happen.

In doing all the above–reviewing the Results, Projects and Events + Sentiments–keep looking back at the eleven Life Aspects above. I’d recommend you spend no more than 60 minutes completing the six quadrants, and that you do it before bed tonight, or before you begin work tomorrow. Then, as more things come up, add to it.

Once you have completed your first draft of the quadrant sheet above, answer the following questions in writing on a separate page. It should take you 30 minutes or less to complete this step 2 of the two steps.

1. What was your biggest triumph in 2009?
2. What was the smartest decision you made in 2009?
3. What one word best sums up and describes your 2009 experience?
4. What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2009?
5. What was the most loving service you performed in 2009?
6. What is your biggest piece of unfinished business in 2009?
7. What are you most happy about completing in 2009?
8. Who were the three people that had the greatest impact on your life in 2009?
9. What was the biggest risk you took in 2009?
10. What was the biggest surprise in 2009?
11. What important relationship improved the most in 2009?
12. What compliment would you liked to have received in 2009?
13. What compliment would you liked to have given in 2009?
14. What else do you need to do or say to be complete with 2009?

Enjoy your reflection: allow it to work on your perception. In short order, we will get to the next exercise.

Appendix 1: Results Defined

Many individuals and leaders struggle to define results, the measurable outcomes they expect from their efforts. We often launch new projects with no specific end in mind–we just have a feeling to do them. I am all for following a feeling, but more often than not what we think is a feeling is not a feeling but an impulse. One way to separate the two is to pause before acting on what you think is a feeling, and envision the measurable outcome(s) you expect it to produce. Those measurable outcomes are results.

Results are quantifiable, measure outcomes produced from your efforts and various undertakings, including the projects you work on. Projects are not results, by the way. Projects are multistep initiatives you undertake in order to increase your capacity to produce some type of expected result. You can complete every project you start and still never produce the desired result (or even be clear on what the intended result was). Said another way, results are the outcome measures you’d see on a business’ Balanced Scorecard or the measurable outcomes from what you’d see regarding an individual’s set of New Year’s Resolutions.

If you are the owner and leader of your business or the CEO, here are Business Result examples: Revenue, Operating Income, Sales, Cash Flow, Profit, Earnings per Share, Net Present Value of the Business, Quality Metrics, Satisfaction Metrics, Productivity Metrics, Capital Investments, Liquidity Metrics, Sustainability Metrics, Human Capital Metrics, etc.

If you are neither the owner of the organization in which you are a leader nor the CEO, then examples of your Business Results might be your function, business unit or department’s: productivity, performance versus budget, innovations implemented, return on those implementations, employee satisfaction, employee turnover, quality measures, client satisfaction, client turnover, number of accolades, hours donated to service, etc. (Hint: scan your bonus plan and performance review for the outcome measures your boss expects of you.)

If you are completing this exercise solely from a personal standpoint, here are some Individual Result examples: Salary Earned, Expenses, Change in Investment Value, Change in Debt, Change in Net Worth, Weight Gain or Loss, % Change in Body Fat, Change in Blood Pressure or Cholesterol, Number of Exercise Sessions, % of College Costs Funded, Reduction in Carbon Footprint, Number of Picnics, Days of Vacation Taken, Number of Dates with Spouse, Grade Point Average, Hours Donated, % of Income Tithed, etc.

Here is the key thing I want you to get when thinking about results. How much better would 2009 have been if you had been clear on the results you expected to produce? If you had measured along the way? If you had closed the gaps along the way? And, thinking of 2010, how much more powerful will your plan be as a result of getting clear on the results you intend to produce?

Book Recommendation and the Art of Perception

I have clients ask me from time to time for book recommendations. I received a recent inquiry from a very remarkable, up and coming leader I’ll call Jane. Jane is a VP with COO aspirations, and she could well achieve that goal through developing her leadership.

We just took her through a thorough review of her personality style assessments (DISC, Values and Personal Talent Skills Inventory) helping her “mine” for her highest-leverage development areas. She took to it like a fish to water and was very open and non-defensive. Most executives seem to want to use such a review to reinforce what they already believe to be true. Not Jane. She was more like a lioness on a hunt.

At the culmination of her assessment review, she asked for a book recommendation based on what we’d seen in her assessments. Jane’s assessments showed her skills were already very highly developed. Therefore, my response to her was not a specific leadership skill development recommendation: my recommendation was a foundational one.

I am posting my response to Jane here, because the recommendation applies to all leaders. And my response to her was not just a book recommendation, but also a cursory explanation of why learning to work with our our perception is essential if we are to enter the fires of the leadership forge. I hope you find the explanation useful, and that you consider the reading the recommended book. The timing is great as we enter the new year.

Dear Jane,

As Einstein said, ‘we can’t solve problems at the same level of thinking we used in creating them.’ What does that mean, and how does it apply to you and this wonderful question you have about what book to read based on the information we see in your assessments?

First, no matter what dimension of leadership you want to shift, a shift in perception will be required if you are to sustain the change. A lot of leaders don’t get this: they don’t understand why they just can’t change a behavior, an approach or add a skill and get the effect they desire. That is logical, right? Yes. And no. It is logical, but the sourceof our doings is not logical, logic or the mind. For that reason, changing the “doing” without changing the underlying source is temporary at best.

What is the source our doing? Who knows. Who can know? But there is a linkage you can work with between the source of your doing and the doing itself. That is your perception. And while we cannot know how perception operates, we can learn to work with it. The advantage to that is that whatever change we want to make in our leadership, it is supported by learning to actively work with our own perception.

For the reasons I outline above, the greatest power you can have is the power to shift your own perception. When you do that, four things happen.

One, you begin to see that life is not what it appears to be.

Two, you see that your own beliefs are assembling your current reality (including the things you want to “fix” or “improve”).

Three, you see that there are aspects of life that you have not been aware of and are therefore handicapped.

Four, you begin to see that working with your perception has the power to change anything in very specific, tangible and practical ways.

The above is a more direct, cut to the chase version of what some of the well-known business writers are saying when they, in each their own way, say, “If you want to change the world around you, change your self–it’s an inside-out job.” They say that, but they either skirt around (or don’t fully understand) why. Well, there you have it. Your capacity as a leader and your ability to learn new approaches and apply new tools are all predicated on your capacity to learn to shift your own perception.

There are a number of tools you can use to begin to master the art of perception. And there are some good books as well. Most of them are incomplete, most take too long to get to the point, and most do not make the information very actionable. One day I’d like to write a book about that, as there clearly is a needed book on the subject, written for business people.

In the meantime, a good book available now is a recent book called Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. It is on my list of books I recommend because learning to work with perception is foundational for everything else, and they offer a practical approach to learning how to work with your own perception, and how to fuse together insight and action. (Both, in my opinion as well as the authors, are essential in equal doses concurrently.)

Thanks for the question. If there is some specific aspect of your leadership you want to shift, I’d be glad to point you toward a specific book for that purpose. But based on what I know about leadership, where I feel you are, and where the organization you are proud to be a part of is at, I’d start with this book.

Best,

Otis

Turning Lead Into Gold

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

My friend Chris gave me quite a gift, the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. It’s got me thinking about my life purpose, and for all the longing I have to know it, just how ardently I try to avoid doing so for the fear of what I’d have to give up to lay it all down on the line to actually go for it.

The Alchemist reminded me of what I already know… that each of us already knows enough to get started (so long as we are willing to act on that), and that most will not because it isn’t possible to know the whole magilla up front. So we wistfully say, “I just wish I knew my purpose so I could do it and end this ceaseless longing in my heart” rather than telling ourselves the truth by saying, “I have a feeling to just try this, which would give me unequivocal feedback as to whether that is the right direction, but until I am certain that moving in that direction will put me in a situation that is at least as good as the mediocre but tenable one I’m in, I’m not going to do it.”

(Then, there are the minority who are constantly striking off in some direction, but who refuse the unequivocal feedback they receive from the universe, thus giving them the freedom to keep striking off whereever they like, believing they are living their purpose but for all the intentions and the striking it really doesn’t amount to much at all.)

As you can tell, Chris’ recommendation has kicked off within me a “taking stock” of sorts. He gave me quite a gift. I’ve recommended the book to several people, including Michelle and Scott, and the timing, for them, was perfect, too.

In the past when I’ve “taken stock”, it has been primarily about my work. This time, its more broad based. My wife and I have moved to 11 acres in the country. She’s given up her very successful career as a psychologist. We’ve found out the house on the property has mold. It’s a 20 year old manufactured home we’d hoped to live in for 3-5 years until we saved enough to pay cash for a eco-savvy house. Now waiting isn’t an option: building a house is a priority as we are living in a rented 31 foot travel trailer I affectionately call Plan B.

The whole scenario has been very stressful. I was talking to my parents about that, and my Mom said to me, “Please take good care of your self.” That struck me as so odd. What I realized is that my old working definition of “taking care of my self” isn’t relevant any longer.

“Taking care of my self” used to primarily mean to me getting to the gym, eating right, taking nutritional supplements, getting enough sleep, spending time each week outdoors, meditating/praying, etc. And I am not saying those things aren’t important. But for me, I am clear that you can do all those things and not take good care of your self.

“Taking care of my self” now means to me to work with my inner state of being so that the inner state is not harming my body. Sure, all those things I listed above (and more) can temporarily change the inner state while I am doing them. Perhaps doing all those things could even have some form of residual effect. But the feeling I am getting is that for me–for Otis–taking care of the self means seating the soul in the body, and then maintaining an inner state that enables the soul to do its work through the body.

I no longer equivacate “doing” all those things as taking good care of myself. Even if I cannot do all (or some) of those things, I can work with my inner state of being directly and, and, that is more important than doing all the other things which take time and it becomes easy to think that just doing them is to take care of the self. I think that is off the mark.

The net? It has dawned on me that doing is not tantamount to taking care of. If my inner state of being is out of synch with my soul’s work and with what is beneficial to my body, I can do all the external things in the world I want to do, and they won’t mean that much.

So there you have it. Right now, I’m dialed in on working with where I am at with living my life purpose and what it means to “take care of my self.” No answers. But a feeling. And I am remembering one of my favorite songs of all time.

“Even my best friends, even my best friends, they don’t know.

That my job is turning lead, into gold.

And I’m search for, I’m searching for–

The Philosopher’s Stone.”

Van Morrison, The Philosopher’s Stone

Addictions and Free Will

Last week I recommended the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know” to my friend, Chris. We were having dinner at the Roaring Fork in San Antonio, TX, and discussing things I enjoy discussing–like waking up. Chris hadn’t seen the movie, so I strongly encouraged him to do so. Chris watched it that night.

We had an interesting email exchange about it. (Not hard with Chris: he is exceptionally bright and articulate and warm.) There is a scene in the movie about addictions that I found quite fascinating. The scene has to do with ‘anything you are not in control of is an addiction: that includes your thoughts and emotions. If you are not in control of your thoughts and emotions, you are addicted to them.’

Chris said this in his email:

“Yes, the conversation about addiction was intriguing; I have been thinking about that and the conversations about how our thoughts are constantly creating at the quantum universe level and if thoughts do that to water, imagine what we are doing to ourselves … you have to wonder why there are addictions to begin with or if they serve some purpose in the larger scope of things …”

Below is my response. I don’t know if it is ‘right’, of course. But if you have some thoughts about this, and it is relevant to what you are seeing in your life half way through this year 2009, please do comment.

Chris,

Finished The Alchemist. Awesome. Thank you for the gift. Just the message I needed just now.

To your point about “you have to wonder why there are addictions to begin with or if they serve some purpose in the larger scope of things …” here’s my hypothesis:

Addictions are necessary because of the principle of free will. I do not know why free will is essential to the grand scheme of things, but it seems to be a very powerful aspect of life. Therefore, I assume it has a purpose.

To me, free will is the opportunity we each have to submit to our soul. When we are in human form, a portion of our soul is used to “light” the form and keep it alive. The other part of the soul stays at the soul level. Let’s call that level mission control. The soul at that point is no longer in full control of the form. Let’s call the human form (mental, emotional and physical bodies)  the lunar landing module.

So, free will is the process of waking up that we are a lunar landing module, of remembering we lost connection with mission control, and in losing that connection (upon birth and the ensuing ‘domestication of the human being’ process, we forgot there even was/is a mission control.

Well, at some point there is the ‘knock of spirit’–some static in the airways we can barely hear through the clicks and beeps of form-life–and we hear a garbled message and recognize it as mission control, and we remember that we once knew there was a mission control… and just forgot. But it is very vague at that point–we don’t fully remember yet, what mission control is–just that there is something familiar about it (that assumes we haven’t soiled our pants when we heard the message and realized that we aren’t alone out there (here).)

Well, in that long time span of forgetfulness of 20, 30, 40, 50 years or more, the little computer in the lunar landing module took on a life of its own, thinking it is THE computer. And we try to get the computer to start honing in on that signal, we have a gosh awful time wresting control away from that lunar landing module computer because it has developed ‘artificial intelligence’–a ‘mind’ and a ‘will’ of it’s own.

That’s where the ‘addictions’ come in. But let’s save that for later…

I suppose–only because I have a prejudice for believing that there is some grand scheme of things–that we have a choice as to what to do when we hear that garbled message. Like one option is to be terrified and to believe that aliens are transmitting on our channel, that we will be annihilated if they find us, and we simply jam that channel and continue bumping along on the moon hitting one lunar rock after another.

Another option is to listen. And to decide to take over the programming of that lunar landing computer and utilize all its wonderful power for a new task–and it is quite sufficient for the task–to hone in on that scary signal and begin to receive it more and more clearly and encounter the reality that we really are not alone out there (here). We can then begin to use it to decide what to do with the message, and to act on the message–to ‘ground’ the message from mission control through our actions.

That’s free will: it is the possibility and potential of making a decision to connect to the signal and to submit to the message, or the decision to not. And, I suppose through the Universal Intelligence watching what happens when one does and when one doesn’t do that, the Universal Intelligence learns something about Itself that it is missing.

That’s the long story. So if following the knock of spirit and submitting to the command of the soul–basically surrendering our human form/vessel (mental, emotional and physical bodies) to the soul is the ‘light’ of the phenomenon known as free will, then the ’shadow’ of that phenomenon is addiction. Addiction is what happens when the ghost in the machine remains in control, and we remain obsessed with anything other than the one thing. The one thing, of course, being to fulfill our destiny, to become Sons of Man. And that requires co-operation between mission control, the lunar landing module, and that mysterious person piloting that fragile and remarkable little vehicle.

With much warmth,

Your friend,

Otis

Leading from Behind

This journey to becoming a leader has taken some unusual twists and turns. It is hard to know where to begin. But the net is, I thought I’d be stepping forward into something. Yet it seems like I am actually stepping backward into something.

Stepping backward is not a bad thing. Particularly if, due to unconsciousness, arrogance or both, you have put your self in a position that is ahead of where you are, where you should be, or both. The net is, in this case it feels right.

Let me make this less obscure by giving you two examples. Mind you, these are just two examples of how my life is changing as I work with One Client, the one client I am on retainer with this year in order to assist myself in the journey to becoming a leader.

For four years I’ve been “leading” this monthly executive team tactical meeting for the CEO. When people gave their progress updates, they’d look to Pamela (my business partner) or me. And typically, I’d be running the meeting, so they’d look primarily to me. This meeting, which should have been one of the most important for the the CEO and his senior leadership team, was seen as “Otis and Pamela’s meeting.” This put us in a unique position in the company–and looking back, a somewhat strange one.

Gary, a C-level executive, handed out a single page at last month’s meeting. It was a quotation by Peter Drucker saying that ‘most of what we call management actually makes it more difficult for people to do their work.’ Gary, a brilliant man, is quite passive-aggressive with equal intensity. This wasn’t unexpected. Gary hates these meetings. In one way or another, he lets everyone know in each meeting. The problem is, Gary won’t tell you why he hates these meeting. He pulls a stunt like that, and the energy bleeds out of the room for 1o minutes.

I’ve known for some time that there is something right about Gary’s reasons for hating the meeting. So, at last month’s meeting, I called his stunt. I told the team–all 15 of ‘em–that Pamela and I would contact each to get their feedback on the meeting… how to improve it, whether to continue it. We told them we’d review the information with the CEO, George, and ask him to make any adjustments he wanted to make. So we did.

There we sat with George last Wednesday, reviewing the findings. We saved Gary’s comments for last. I said to George, “He didn’t straight out say it, but what Gary really feels is that you need to run this meeting.” George looked at Pamela and me over his reading glasses, thinking. And he said, “I think I should. I think when people are giving their updates they should look me in the eyes. That will increase accountability.”

The next day that happened, George led the meeting. Pamela and I shifted into a support role. I stepped backward, and boy was that right. It was their best meeting ever, and given that accountability is actually one of their initiatives this year, the note just got sounded right at the epicenter of the organization… as it should be, as it must be. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work.

It is very important for you to know that this would not have happened had we simply resisted Gary. Gary can be so incredibly annoying that we could have avoided this altogether–no one would have expected us to do what we did. In fact, we likely had the “power” to get one of the two people above him to ask him to back down and fall in line. But my instincts told me to open up and move in to it–to find what was right among all that was wrong about what he was doing and bringing. For example, it was clear to all to see that Gary was actually trying to avoid being accountable for his goals. But I could feel it–and I think everyone else could–that there was something right and he wouldn’t–or couldn’t–speak it.

That one act led to one change that may be a watershed for this organization. The reality is that our role there–at face value–has lessened. We took a step back. In fact, at the end of our retainer, it’s now easier to for them to go one without us. Yet, for me, becoming a leader isn’t about remaining needed. It is about learning and growing and supporting my evolution and the evolution of those around me. So, stepping back was right. Stepping back was powerful. Stepping back was the unknown and the new.

I enjoyed last week immensely, though it was quite exhausting. Which brings me to my second example of how we stepped back last week. But that example will need to wait.

What are you resisting now that–if you were to go in to it by asking what is right about it–would enable you to become a better leader? There are always (and I mean always) the answers we most need stuck right in the middle of what we most resist. Go there. I doubt you will be disappointed. I wasn’t. And if you do go there, please let us know here on this blog. You just might start something. And isn’t that part of what leadership is about?

Where’s Otis?

Where’s Otis? That is a good question. On Friday my wife Sara and I finally, finally closed on our eleven acre farm in Oregon’s wine country. That has taken an amount of time and energy I could not have possibly imagined. But, boy, driving up that driveway for the first time as stewards of, not visitors to, that land and house was a life-altering experience and a celebration of a two year dream.

I chronicled our first day on the farm in words and in photos at www.elevenacrefarm.wordpress.com. You might find that interesting. I will be posting more here, now, on my journey of becoming a leader.