Month: July 2021

We’re desperate for leadership.

All leadership begins with self-leadership.

Self-leadership is a function of self-discipline. 

We need self-discipline about our eating, sleep, exercise, and nourishing our minds and hearts.  You already know what is best.  Do that.

Today, at least in the US, we face a combination of trends which will require a new level of discipline:

• Infatuation with style over substance.  Style matters, but increasingly passes as a substitute for substance. 
• Ascending post-modern worldviews are dominant in education, corporate leadership, governments.  Fewer people accept the idea of absolute truth.  Dialog about truth is swiftly converted into arguments about power.  Opinion is frequently honored above truth.
• Diminished context.  Social media largely operates outside complex context.  Subject lines, headlines, text messages, and soundbites are sufficient to reinforce mindsets.
• Declining trust in most institutions.  This is understandable — many institutions are recognizably corrupt.
• Large percentage of the population spends hours every day immersed in information streams, weirdly compelled to “keep up.”
• We swim in abundance of stuff, food, sanitized environments, and information.  Many of us are not handling abundance well. This is proving to be unhealthy.
• Far more remote work, less time at the work-site.  Distractions abound, peer pressure is physically absent, the benefits of face-to-face social interaction are missed.  

T.S. Eliot captured it well in his “Four Quartets” poems:

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Filled with fancies and empty of meaning

Tumid apathy with no concentration

Men and bits of paper whirled by the cold wind

You might be saying, “But not me, Glenn, no, I’m different!”  Are you sure?  Let’s test it out:

• How do you feel if you sit perfectly still, no sound, no flickering images, for 5 minutes?
• If you searched and couldn’t find your smartphone for 15 minutes, what’s your panic level?
• When was the last time you turned off your phone for any length of time while you were awake?
• If I demanded that you read nothing but books more than 400 years old for a week – no news, no social media, no podcasts – what’s your first reaction?

Full candor: I fail these tests, too.  

I’m not trying to make a political commentary – these are the trends in our cultural environment, which is where we must exercise our leadership work.

We’re deeply in this reality.  Yet we have agency.  We can make choices.

I challenge you to be an intentional leader rather than passively absorbing every aspect of cultural trends.  I challenge you to be a free man or a free woman, rather than a slave to circumstances and circumstantial evidence.  We desperately need leaders who think for themselves, who speak outside echo chambers, who call out bullshit, who love fiercely, who rally people without manipulating them, who command respect from others even as they wrestle with constructive disagreements.

This level of leadership comes at a price, beginning with your self-discipline.  Practice stepping up and out of the swirls of information and emotion which captivate most people.  Recognize that the statement “Your truth” is actually “truth and your opinion.”  Fast from incessant mindless activity and task completion.  Do something which makes you physically uncomfortable every day – a cold shower, fasting from a meal, sitting in a hard chair, exercising in a new way, studying a difficult subject, talking with people who hold a completely different worldview. Select for quality and depth of information and insights. Invest time in measured reflection and meditation on events; Experience is not the best teacher – evaluated experience is.  Demand context and alternative perspectives.  Demand evidence of truth statements.  Live more generously with people than they might deserve.  Don’t fall in love with the idea of “the people” and then fail to interact with actual flesh-and-blood messy people.

98% of the people around you may be slaves to their inbox, smart phone, and information as someone-with-an-agenda presents it to them, but purpose to be in the 2% who strive for freedom.  It’s a both-and situation – understand the reality of where the 98% are living, and live differently.

Pursue this self-discipline and you’ll become the leader that the people in your sphere of influence actually need. Model this self-discipline, and your sphere of influence will increase.

Provocation for leaders thinking about strategies to improve the culture of their congregation, community, nation, and business: What if our strategy is to focus on the fruit of the Spirit? (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – see Galatians 5:22-23)

Years of studying systems has demonstrated that you get what you optimize for, so choose your optimization angle wisely. Businesses which are optimized exclusively for near-term profit will always struggle with human issues and long-term sustainability. An organization optimized to increase size (or budget) will inevitably become an ineffective bureaucracy. An organism hyper-optimized for a specific ecological niche is likely to go extinct when the world changes. A man or woman who optimizes for sensual pleasures will end in a sorry state of regret.

Select what you optimize for carefully, for the long game.

People are looking to you for clues and signals, not just facts.  The human species is highly evolved to pick up on subtleties and implicit information as we communicate  Therefore, how you relay information can dwarf the message you intend to deliver. 

When the good folks at Manager Tools say “Communication is what the listener does” they mean that the bulk of the information received is on the listener – their mental frameworks, worldviews, attention/distraction ratio, and specific effort to comprehend.  You can’t control all this but should be mindful of the reality.  

Focus on what you can control.  

Leaders need to strive for consistency as they communicate.  Pair up frank statements about uncertainty and change with confident statements that are true for you and your team.  Clearly distinguish hypothesis and speculation from facts, and hard trends which aren’t going to change from soft trends which could be adjusted.  State “I’m thinking out loud here” to make sure people know your position might change with additional information.   

Inconsistent signaling is quickly interpreted as waffling and weakness.  It’s difficult to recover from that situation.  Therefore stay out of that ditch rather than drift into it.  

You’re probably aware of the failed Antarctic expedition, led by Ernest Shackleton, told in detail in the fantastic book “Endurance.” Shackleton’s leadership saved all 28 men under incredibly inhuman weather conditions.  

This supposed advertisement is apocryphal: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”

But Shackleton did pick these 28 men from over 5,000 applicants – and this is a key reason why any of them returned home at all. A randomly selected group of men would simply not have survived. Every expedition member knew the risks and challenges, had deep skills, and was well-prepared for suffering necessary for success.

Lesson here: Be selective about who is on your team if you have a difficult objective.

Sharing a personal observation, suspecting you might resonate with this…

I’m most likely to be unproductive and waste precious time when I sit down to “work” but don’t have a specific plan for the work I need to do. 

This situation invariably prompts to do things like defragment my hard drive (again), sort through old emails, check the latest on LinkedIn, and rewatch a fun movie clip I’ve seen a dozen times before.

Develop a plan for your working time.  Know what needs to be delivered, done, created, edited, reviewed, and imagined.  Decide what needs to be done next. Don’t miss the opportunity to make progress on the important-not-urgent projects. Assign working times accordingly. 

The key is to make these decisions early, so I have a plan and a schedule.  It’s a mistake to think “I’ll decide at 1:30pm what I work on next” because it’s a low-energy part of my day.

Discipline yourself to do what you planned to do, when you planned to do it.

This is my best antidote to wasting time.

Yes, interruptions happen and priorities can shift.  Adjustments need to be made.  Sometimes I’ll fail to do what I planned to do.  This is life.  But this approach means I am still largely productive and effective over days/weeks/months despite the flux of the real world.

A friend asked for my thoughts on virtual mastermind groups vs. meeting in person.

Key elements to a successful mastermind: 

• Committed participation 
• Clear objectives and focus areas 
• Diversity of experience  
• Ground rules to foster trust and unity 
• Skilled facilitation (educate comes from the Latin educare which means ‘to draw out’) 

We can be grateful for video sharing technology for the connections that it can and does enable.  Video enables geographically separated people to participate.  Virtual experiences can make it easier for some people to participate.   Video can be recorded – but I would discourage recording a virtual mastermind.  People are less likely to be transparent and open.   

A mixed physical + virtual meetings is inherently more difficult to do well than an all-virtual or all-physical meeting. 

Let’s review the limitations of a virtual gathering:  

• It’s difficult to quantify how much communication occurs in ways that you don’t see in a Zoom call.  There are things you can’t see in a typical headshot Zoom session – body posture, finger and foot tapping, are they leaning forward or backward slightly?
   
•  We unconsciously pick up on smells and tastes.  Even the sound of a conversation is different in a 3D environment than on microphone and speakers.  Compare the experience of being at a music concert to watching a video of the same concert.   

• Physical meetings have a different “after the meeting” experience which aren’t replicated virtually.  Think about all the follow-on conversations you’ve had, sometimes trailing out to lobby and parking lot.   

• It’s much more difficult for the facilitator to monitor the sense of a virtual gathering, picking up on cues and subtleties.  A leader or presenter also have a more limited range of feedback to gauge how the information is coming across.  

It’s certainly possible to manage a virtual mastermind, but I think it’s going to miss elements (including “compression”) of a physical gathering.  We can’t fully quantify the biological and spiritual intangibles that come with physical presence with others. It takes skill to facilitate a physical mastermind meeting, too.  It’s a craft (a combination of learned skills and art to create something beautiful and useful).  

There is an 87.3% probability that you are limiting yourself. There is a 59.8% probability that you are letting peer pressure contain you.

Confession: I made up those statistics. But there is a very high likelihood that your performance is well below your full potential.

A man who tried twice to become a Navy SEAL (and quit both times) told me about one of his first days in selection. His cadre leader barked out, “Give me 100”, and he cranked out 100 pushups on the beach. On command, dropped and did it again. Did it 12 more times. No breaks. “Did you know you could do 1400 pushups?”, I asked. “No, but one of the things you learn is that you can do 3 to 10 times what you think you can.”

Exercise physiology researchers put world-class cyclists on stationary bikes, in a room by themselves, and told them to sprint as hard as they could for 10 minutes. Then they put them side by side with a computer racer who raced 1% faster than they had in the first test. In every case, the cyclist kept up with the computer, or beat it.

Roger Bannister broke the 4 min mile “barrier” that all the experts identified…and then others quickly did it, as well. High-school runners run sub-4 minute miles now. How did Bannister do it? He used “rabbit” runners who ran in front of him and set an aggressive pace.

Being capable of more is not just limited to human physical feats. Henry Ford automated car manufacturing and changed the idea of who could afford to own a car. FedEx transformed the conventional limits on package delivery. Amazon demolished the conventional thinking on the size of a bookstore. Alibaba proved that online business did not have to originate in Silicon Valley or only use Western marketing.

The company you keep matters, because they can either shatter or reinforce the limits you put on yourself or your organization. The stories we tell ourselves and others are powerful.

Wrestle with these questions as a leader: Are my ideas limiting what’s possible? Is my self-perception of limits cutting my performance down? What are the mindsets of the people around me? Are they helping me think bigger and think differently, or making me satisfied with the status quo?

Next: act on your answers. Growth begins on the far side of comfortable. Free your mindset, and distance yourself from people who hold you back. This is how you become capable of more. (Note: this was originally published on asmithblog.com)

“Things are going downhill.”

“We need to stop this before it gets worse.”

“Back in my day we never had this mess.”

Embedded in these statements is an implicit “things used to be better.”  Sometimes that is true.  Yet there is there pervasive idea that things are worse now and we need to “return to” something. 

Challenge question: “When were things great for everyone? At what point in history was 99% of the human race experiencing a life free of struggles and corruption and failing?”

When in history were these things — globally, for all peoples — not an issue?

• Lack of accountability
• Partisan news  
• Lying politicians and corrupt rulers
• Ungrateful youth
• Nepotism and favoritism surpassing competence
• Elders resistant to progress
• Racism, sexism, classism
• Elites believing they have the right ideas
• People believing wild rumors and rejecting facts
• Censorship and suppression of information
• Failures of masculinity and femininity
• Unfair employer practices
• Distrust in institutions
• Wealth spent foolishly

We have made enormous progress, and there is still progress needed.   People have experienced “Camelot” moments in time but they didn’t last and certainly didn’t include many people.   Heaven is in the future, not the past.  

Press ahead into your adventure! 

My father used to a tell a story, I’m sure not original to him, about perspectives on wealth.  “A man was sitting with his little boy on the front stoop of their grimy row house.  A rich man drove by in a shiny new car.  ‘See that guy?” the father said. ‘Someday we’re going to get that guy.’  The car drove by another father and son a few doors down.  This father turned to his son and said, ‘See that guy?  Someday we’re going to drive a nice car.’ “

I reflect on this as I hear a growing drumbeat against successful people who have (legally) acquired wealth and income.   “Mr. X paid zero in taxes!”  “We should take more from these millionaires and billionaires and give it to people who deserve it.”  “No one needs that much money when we have poor people around us.”  “They got that money because of their privilege, not because they worked hard!”  “We’ll be better off as a society if people are more equal.”

A few thoughts to consider:

We can leave the judging up to God.   Wealthy individuals will be judged just as you and I will be about how we use our abilities and assets, all of which God enabled us to have.  Let the words of Jesus ring in your heart on this: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48)

Envy and greed and theft and perverse pride are inconsistent with godly relationships.  

Inequality is baked into the physical universe.  There are remarkably few observable situations where something is perfectly evenly distributed.  Even the water level in a cup only appears to us to be level; from another perspective it’s subtly tilted because of the earth’s spin as it orbits the sun.   Every political effort in the 19th and 20th centuries using government power to create “equal outcomes” was a disaster.   It’s true that 400 million people are no longer in poverty in China — but it was economic liberty and trade that helped them, not Communist party dictums.  

Marxists are fond of citing the parable of the workers in the vineyard who were each paid the same even though they worked different lengths of the day (see Matthew 20:1-13), and how the early disciples in Jerusalem after Pentecost shared what they had with one another (see Acts 2:42-47).  They say things like “See, the Bible recommends this!” I remind them to take these passages in context.  The parable is about the phenomenal generosity of God’s grace to everyone, no matter their ‘works.’   There are abundant passages about caring for the poor and the needy throughout the Bible, and giving generously is always praiseworthy. There is no evidence in the rest of the New Testament that what happened in Acts 2 was the prescribed economic or social model for everyone.  

Marxists do not like the parables Jesus told about distributing talents — giving 10 to one, 5 to another, and 1 to another.  Why didn’t he tell a parable about giving each the same amount?  Unsettling.  Marxists also want to skip over Jesus’ statement that we would always have poor people (see Matthew 26:11).  We should remember that poor is a relative measure.   Before 1700 more than 90% of the population was “poor.”  The lowest income strata in the US today have a standard of living far above 1.5B others in the world, and access to better medical and technology capabilities than any king or emperor before 1950.  “Life today is safer, healthier, happier, richer, taller, fitter, longer-lived, less war-torn, less disease-ravaged, and less hunger-filled than at any time in human history.  And it’s only going to get better.”  (Mark Horstman)

Where does wealth come from?  Economics is fundamentally alchemy — creating value from ‘nothing.’  We use our knowledge, imagination, and inspiration to create something new that others value.  I work in the agriculture industry:  DNA, water, minerals, and sunlight are converted into corn.   We build on the assets and systems God has supplied to create additional value.  

We get more of what we celebrate.  Shouldn’t we recognize the value of business models which provide livelihoods for many thousands of people?  Shouldn’t we celebrate innovators like Elon Musk rather than criticizing his wealth?  I can admire the passion and energy of Bernie Sanders, but 100 Elon Musks will advance us (technically and economically) far more than 100 Bernie Sanders focused on redistributing the assets of others.  We have laws to punish people who illegally acquire wealth.  

Let’s distinguish charity and forced distribution.  In one case I reach into my wallet and give to others.   In the other, a government reaches into my wallet and takes money for others.  I am not opposed to taxes, and grateful to live in a country where I have a say in the politicians representing me in decisions about taxation.  It’s telling that very wealthy people who say “I should be taxed more” still only pay what they are legally obligated to pay, and usually fund private foundations with their billions rather than giving to their national government or the UN.  They know which will have greater leverage.

If inequality is a fact of the real world, what should we do?  Every individual is precious, made in the image of God.  The Declaration of Independence begins with the statement that all men are created equal.  Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his brilliant book “Democracy in America” (1835) that this idea of equality coupled with individualism — a word he invented — were the two great forces driving American growth.  He pointed out that the idea of equality goes back to St. Paul: “In Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. All are equal.”  You can scour ancient literature and will not find anything remotely like this. 

Burn this into your mind: equality is a spiritual value. 

Every non-spiritual means of addressing inequality will ultimately fail.  No government policy will ever ‘solve’ poverty by overturning 80/20 reality.  And no amount of legislation will ever ‘solve’ the problems of people who are greedy, self-centered, and wicked.  Charity and the desire to do good must come from the heart, not out of fear or compulsion.  Giving is also good for our hearts.  

I’m with Friedrich Hayek: “There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, a new form of servitude.”

Think of it this way:  Charity and innovation don’t change 80/20 reality, but they push the whole curve upward. 

Another insight from my dad:  “There is always enough to help the bottom 10%.”  During an interval of stress there is enough for the neediest 30%.  There is never enough for the bottom 50%, and not even enough for the bottom third if events stretch out and become chronic.  The math doesn’t work unless there is substantial outside help.

The insidious downside of trying to care for the bottom half is that the truly neediest begin to lose out to those who are simply better positioned or better at playing “the game.”

I encourage you to consider targeting your giving to help the neediest 10%.

Rather than demonizing others, or believing that you’re a victim, use your imagination and effort to build value.  Guard your heart from greed and self-centeredness, in part by giving generously and helping others. 

(I’m indebted to about a dozen mentors and writers who have influenced me on these topics.)