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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.
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
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
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.
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