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“Authenticity will be the buzzword of the twenty-first century. And what is authentic? Anything that is not devised and structured to make a profit. Anything that is not controlled by corporations. Anything that exists for its own sake, that assumes its own shape. But of course nothing in the modern world is allowed to assume its own shape. The modern world is the corporate equivalent of a formal garden, where everything is planted and arranged for effect. Where nothing is untouched, where nothing is authentic. 

“Where, then, will people turn for the rare and desirable experience of authenticity? They will turn to the past.

“The past is unarguably authentic. The past is a world that already existed before all the other shapers of the present day shaped today’s world. The past was here before they were. The past rose and fell before their intrusion and molding and selling. The past is real. It’s authentic. And this will make the past unbelievably attractive.”

Michael Crichton

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Well.

I am not a past guy and I believe “authentic” is one of those words that is currently being abused in a variety of definition-type ways, but, I would offer a reminder to everyone that if you want something authentic it is actually the past <I will expound on that in a minute>.

Let’s just say that it always surprises me a little when people start bitching about the other people who seem to be yearning for the past. While I am certainly not a past-yearner lets’ see what a past yearner sees:

Everything is uncertain in today’s world.

You have no idea who to trust.

There is a struggle to trust anything.

Facts seem to no longer be black & white

Truth now has an alternative version.

Common sense doesn’t seem common.

Opinions look much like facts & facts get confused with opinions.

Simple, or simplification, doesn’t seem that simple anymore.

Add in that all of those things are occurring in a world in which we are increasingly encouraging people to think of everything as “all or nothing” <a zero-sum world>.

This all drives a lot of people to find any fucking semi-solid lily pad to stand on that they can find. And what seems solid, seems certain, and seems authentic, well, is the past.

Ok. That said. On to my ‘expounding’ comment.

No. We may not remember the past well or correctly. In fact <research> we typically do not remember it correctly <choosing to remember the things we like & discarding the things we don’t want to remember>. Yet, in our minds, how we do remember it is as certain as anything can be in this world.

*** note: Daniel Kahneman discusses this in “the riddle of experience versus memory.”

And, yeah, aspects of this can be skewed into a generational/age thing if you wanted. In a world of increasing uncertainty the young, who have less to hold on to with ragged claws & look forward to ditching a lot of the existing shit so they can develop their own shit, leave the past behind <sometimes flippantly> .

In a world of increasing uncertainty the old, well, they hang on with ragged claws to the only thing they know to be true, certain & authentic. i.e., the past.

But, suffice it to say, how we view the past goes beyond age <although age can exacerbate the issue>.

There is seeing and … well … seeing. And there is a vast difference between the two. Frederick Franck in “Zen Seeing/Zen Drawing” argues:

“The glaring contrast between seeing and looking-at the world around us is immense; it is fateful. Everything in our society seems to conspire against our inborn human gift of seeing. We have become addicted to merely looking-at things and beings. The more we regress from seeing to looking at the world — through the ever-more-perfected machinery of viewfinders, TV tubes, VCRs, microscopes, spectroscopes — the less we see. The less we see, the more numbed we become to the joy and the pain of being alive, and the further estranged we become from ourselves and all others.”

Well.

That is a discouraging thought. He is basically suggesting that once we get on the slippery slope of ‘not seeing’ we very quickly enter, and stay, in this miserable abyss of blindness.

He may be right. But I would rather believe he is not. I would prefer to believe seeing, really seeing, is a discriminating decision made by you and not the world around you. I would like to believe if we chose we could see the past with open eyes, open mind, open heart, with open to unapologetic attention.

This is about not really looking for something in particular just being ready and receptive to whatever happens around you and in front of you. And by not seeking anything in particular <because that inhibits true seeing> you end up, as someone wrote somewhere ‘… by your own eyes you will see, and there will be a conclusion.’ What that means is you don’t see based on your own ideas <or belief system>, but rather you see based on … well … what you see.

Hey. I am not suggesting this is easy. I am simply suggesting that you can do it if you elect to. If it helps, we partially have evolution to blame on why I can say what I am saying to you:

…. evolution’s problem-solving left us modern humans with two kinds of attention: vigilance, which allows us to have a quick and life-saving fight-or-flight response to an immediate threat, be it a leaping lion or a deranged boss, and selective attention, which unconsciously curates the few stimuli to attend to amidst the flurry bombarding us, enabling us to block out everything except what we’re interested in ingesting. (Selective attention, of course, can mutate to dangerous degrees, producing such cultural atrocities as the filter bubble.)

Ah. The ‘filter bubble.’

the filter bubble — by definition, it’s populated by the things that most compel you to click. But it’s also a real problem: the set of things we’re likely to click on (sex, gossip, things that are highly personally relevant) isn’t the same as the set of things we need to know. – Eli Pariser

Evolution and Life experience has created this filter bubble for each of us. And, by the way, each of our filter bubbles are different <because our Life experiences have been different in creating it>.

This filter bubble idea also suggests that you can manage, if not actually change your filter bubble.

Yup. You can change the way you see things.

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“To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

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I love that one thought: ‘allow things to come to it.’ Allow what you see to come to your eye and ultimately your mind. In other words, seeing is in the mind; not in the eyes. Mentally we need to stop focusing on a specific destination, but rather watch during the journey.

All that said.

While the past may be authentic it may not be truthful <or a reflection of truth>. There are certainly some problems with the past ‘truth.’  We are really sure about how we remember the past “… to some extent he is saying all the correct things. But he is not correct.”

 And maybe that is the most important is lesson that lies within.

We say all the correct things … but aren’t really correct. Context and perspective is needed to share “real & absolute truth” and Truth, with regard to the past, is the sum of accurate information; not just some of the accurate information.

Now.

More research.

Just to make everyone feel better, beyond evolution, there is a real reason we do this. It is called ‘adaptive ignorance.’ This is no excuse and this ‘adaptive ignorance’ gets driven by an out of whack barometer of what is important <kind of> to us crazy people, but at least there is a psychological reason:

This adaptive ignorance is there for a reason — we celebrate it as “concentration” and welcome its way of easing our cognitive overload by allowing us to conserve our precious mental resources only for the stimuli of immediate and vital importance, and to dismiss or entirely miss all else.

Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that. But while this might make us more efficient in our goal-oriented day-to-day, it also makes us inhabit a largely unlived — and unremembered — life, day in and day out.

Not only does Life make ‘seeing’ difficult, our minds do. Our minds adapt more and more <which ultimately constrains seeing> because of a couple of things:

• • productivity <just getting shit done or out of the way or solved>

  • the ways we learn to see the world

All this adaptation <or I imagine we can call it ‘coping’> creates something researchers call ‘search images.’ These are things all of us employ when we need to narrow our attention in a goal-oriented task. Unfortunately, this is only helpful or even possible if we know what to look for.

And that, my friends, is ultimately the point about seeing — and really seeing.

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“… more is missed by not looking than not knowing.”

Thomas McCrae

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We don’t see because we don’t “look.” What a shame. Because by not looking … really looking … we miss seeing some really valuable things, like, what is authentic.

We all need truth goggles. Because we all want to hear what we all want to hear & see what we want to see & remember what we want to remember.

But all truth, even “the past,” takes a discerning mind.

Because what happens when the past says all the correct things, but is not correct? <i.e., you have a misguided view of what is true>

Truth takes work.

Shit.

Seeing things as they truly are takes work.

And that which appears authentic is often not what it appears to be. Just think about this whenever someone seems to be longing for the past. They are partially correct and partially not correct. Be careful with what you believe you see.

Ok. So what the hell is investing energy in life?

Let’s call it being able to discern between ‘resting’ versus ‘being stagnant.’ And, possibly, add in being able to discern when to use energy and when to not use it. By the way.  All of that translates into making choices.

Anyway. Let me use a quote to begin the discussion.

“As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Ah. Now. Be careful when reading this. Lucy isn’t suggesting people not be original or seek to have some ‘depth.’ Nope. She is suggesting investing energy at the appropriate times is a choice. A choice for when energy invested won’t be wasted.

Look. Haven’t we seen those people who go 110% all the time on everything? And they get tired. And often frustrated. And they often don’t seem to get as far in life as you would expect for all the energy they have invested. While they may debate with me (because they feel like they are making the choice that has to be made, i.e., I am ‘working at being successful in life’), the reality is they aren’t making any real choice.  Anytime you do something 100% of the time you haven’t made the tough choice. Shit. You actually haven’t made any choice at all. The switch is simply flipped into a default mode.

The choice truth? There is a time to rest. And. There is a time for energy.

Oh, and yes, you do have to invest energy in life to get something out of it.

Because being lazy doesn’t get you shit.

In fact.

Being apathetic doesn’t get you shit.

Once again. That doesn’t mean 24/7 energy and pushing and shoving and being passionate and trying to kick ass 172,800 seconds (if I did my math correctly that is the amount of seconds in a day).  It’s about making choices. When and where type choices.

So.

What I am saying is you cannot have enough energy to kick ass every second of every day.

(and if you have someone suggesting you should? … ignore them)

But.

You also cannot be passive every second either.

There is resting (before investing energy).

There is stagnant (before never investing energy).

(former good; latter bad)

And they are significantly different because living a successful (happy) life takes energy. And life is a struggle that takes energy to manage and deal with. And frankly happiness doesn’t always come easily.

By the way. This ‘struggle’ isn’t a day-to-day get-things-done struggle.  I mean it is a mental and physical struggle.

Describing this struggle is interesting. Good ole Winston C. suggested Life is the struggle between energy and indolence:

“Life is a struggle between vitality and decay, energy and indolence”

Winston Churchill

Whew.  Good stuff.

Life is all about either growing or diminishing. You are either active or passive. And life is the struggle within the two. At all times.

Some people would simply suggest that an active life is better than a passive one. Oh. If only the solution were that simple (because it isn’t that one sided).  Sure. Embracing adventure or some activity you are passionate about (or believe will make you better) is important to what makes many of us happy and feel like we are being productive within our life. But it isn’t just about going out and doing a bunch of stuff.  It’s about going out and doing the right stuff. And, to be happiest, the right stuff at the right time.

So be careful.

You may elect to ignore people who tell you to “slow down and take it easy” because you feel like you are being productive and ‘doing.’ But be sure you are aware of what you are doing and how you are investing your energy. Because energy is not limitless.

Life is about balance. Balancing rest and energy. But this is where stagnancy or indolence issue steps up to the plate. Because happiness can be such a struggle and ‘doing nothing’ sometimes seems the easiest thing to do. It isn’t (no matter how it may look or feel at the time).  You HAVE to invest some energy at some point. If not for you then you have to for those around you. Because in the end we see that the energetic displaces the passive. Even if the passive is “good” (intentions or in heart). Because evil is restless.  And energetic.

“In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.”

Bill Bernbach

Ok. My fear is when people read this last quote they begin to dedicate all their energies to … well … doing.  With good intentions, but not seeing the forest because of the trees.

Remember. We are not Ever-Ready bunnies who can go and go and go.  Because all that “going” means investing energy.

And the people who you see going 110% all the time? Well.  The reason they do is because they haven’t figured it out.  They haven’t figured out when to rest and when to invest energy. And having already decided mentally that they need to invest energy to win the struggle they just invest.

And invest.  And invest (I would like to point out … with diminishing returns).

Please.  Everyone.  This isn’t about time management.

If you read my “time according to Lucy” post you know I am skeptical of the whole managing time concept. The closest suggestion I can make to clarify what I am trying to say in this post can maybe be found in the book Power of Full Engagement. The book suggests that instead of trying to manage time we should be conscious of managing our energy.

I am not talking as literally as the book author suggests (they suggest at different points in the day we have more energy than others as well as more motivated to do certain things at certain moments). I don’t think this is about planning your work times around when you expect to have creative energy (like the book suggests).

This is just about investing energy at the right times.

Yes.

Investing energy at the right time in the right place.

This is not about motivation or creative energy or any of that.  This is simply about recognizing ‘influential moments’ (moments that can swing your day or life) and acting upon them by investing energy.

And that, my friends, is a choice.

A choice to invest what energy you have available, no holding back, when the opportunity arises.

Yes. That is a choice.

And not investing energy at some times (when people look at you and worry if you are lazy).

And, yes, that is a choice.

Choices based on understanding the difference between rest and stagnancy.

Maybe that is “the” choice.

Yeah.  Life is a struggle. And a struggle of choices. But mostly it is a struggle of energy. When to invest and when to not invest.

Ponder. Ponder because it matters.

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“It is pretty to be in love. It’s magical, I’m sure. But it’s also wonderful to stop for ice cream in your prom dress with six other girls. It’s also wonderful to go visit the world with nothing but a bunch of buddies who are really excited about learning. The problem is: we’ve made everything about “the one”.

But maybe “the one” is just you, loving yourself, having fun, and being happy. Maybe instead of looking for our other halves, we should be piecing ourselves together.

Maybe I wasn’t born unfinished. Maybe I am the one who makes myself better.”

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This piece today isn’t about love, it about:

“maybe I wasn’t born unfinished”

When I read that line I stopped. Reread it. And challenged almost everything I have ever written and said about self and sense of self.

I love the thought.

I do think far far too often we find ourselves through others. It is kind of natural because comparisons tend to offer some outlines. It’s not that we shouldn’t look around us and find things we like, and dislike, and assess, but emulate? Yikes. I hesitate. At least a little.

I would much rather we see, think and assess and rather than simply emulate we evaluate who and what we are already. Maybe use the external to invigorate and energize the internal.

And maybe I suggest this because far far too often we think we are a reflection of our experiences rather than a reflection of who we are simply coming to life.

Is this a chicken or egg discussion? Maybe. But in one aspect you can suggest you are built by the external and in another aspect you can be suggesting you are simply blooming as you weather life.

Semantics? Sure. But an important one in my eyes.

Look.

I don’t want this to sound like it is an either or discussion. But I do love the thought of believing you are not born unfinished. I love the thought that everything you need resides within and all you need to do is figure out how to let it out, and shine, and grow.   It is kind of like the latin thought of “luctor et emergo” <I struggle and emerge>.

I do love the thought that maybe it is not who you are that could hold you back from what you could be ,but more often than not the challenge is who you think you are not. Ponder that for a second or two.

I say that because if you focus on the ‘think’ aspect you end up seeking external to validate, or as a corollary the external invalidates <voids, annuls>, that which resides within you and who you are.

That is a very very dangerous Life game.

It is dangerous because instead of piecing yourself together you steal or borrow pieces from others to shape yourself and you become, well, a Frankenstein <maybe not that bad but you get the point>. Or maybe you end up sacrificing parts of yourself to please the external.

All that said. I am sure the reality of a healthy self is somewhere in between. Sometimes uncovering that which exists within and sometimes finding a piece you see and borrowing it as you piece yourself together <although I could argue that any piece you see, and borrow, more often than not is something you already have within and that external piece simply brought your own finished, but unseen, piece to the forefront>.

Anyway.

I am a huge hope guy. I believe the biggest hope of all is the one we all carry within us, a hope we are born with, the one which is a hope to be the best person we can be.

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“I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation.”

Stanislaw Lem

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It is a hope of all that can be and, yet, ‘nothing’ in that it has yet to be.

It is a hopeful contradiction — to live in expectation of something and yet tempered with aspects of nothing. I love the hope found in the thought of being born finished and we don’t need others to piece us together and that each of us is strong enough, and born good enough. The thought that all we have is within us.

I certainly believe, and know, Life is significantly better not lived alone. But what an incredibly empowering thought … “maybe I wasn’t born unfinished and I am the one who makes me better.”

But maybe “the one” is just you.

What a fucking beautiful thought.

I wish I had written it.

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“Her sentences were icebergs, with just the tip of her thought coming out of her mouth, and the rest kept up in her head.”

Gregory Galloway

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“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ok. I can honestly say that I have few friends who I know the full thinking, i.e., everything they truly think, about a thought.

Very few.

This includes even my best friends.

Uhm.

I don’t think this is unusual.

More often we only see the tip of the iceberg.

Some words to open a thought.

A sentence or two which offer a preface to a bigger story.

The rest is kept up in their heads.

The ones we know the best may give us some cues, assuming we are paying attention enough, as to where to go next.

The ones we know the least may give us only the tip of the iceberg thinking we may not deserve the rest or maybe the rest is none of our business.

Not to mix metaphors <but I will> but people are like books we peruse at a bookstore. We scan the covers, maybe read the back and sometimes even open it up and read the inside sleeve to get a sense of what is inside. 90% of the time that is what we end up knowing about the book.

<kind of the same as an iceberg … just inside instead>

Now.

In business this is a little different.

In business, assuming you ever want to get some decisions and get something done, far more often you are exposed to a full iceberg, with regard to a thought, because business demands it. About the only way you can ever get an idea from insight to real action is to figure out a way to lift the bottom of the iceberg up & out from the ocean of ignorance and into the conference room light. And even then the business world does everything it can to encourage you to only show “what is important” … as in … “just show me the tops of the icebergs … that is all I have time for”. The misguided assumption being (1) that is all that really matters & (2) if you are good enough you will show the tip of the iceberg well enough we will get a sense of what is under the water>.

That last thought is kind of bullshit and why this iceberg metaphor is so appropriate. The majority of any idea and thought is found below water, not above, and 99% of the time what is above water gives very little indication of what is truly below the water.

Compounding this issue is, well, more often than not if you bring an iceberg into a meeting you will have to discuss the fact there are a bunch of other icebergs, also with tips people can see and bottoms one can only imagine, floating around the iceberg you are discussing.

The shallowest of people in the room will scan the tips floating around and assess that way.

The more thoughtful want to know at least something about the parts they cannot obviously see.

The most thoughtful are interested in everything they cannot see even if it takes a lot of time and it is less than simple.

All that said.

I could argue that in Life or in business what is important is the part most often not seen or heard.

I could argue that in Life or in business what we actually do is spend a shitload of time focused solely on the tips of icebergs.

I could argue that the latter point is the foolish consistency of the hobgoblin of foolish little minds.

To be clear, you cannot chase all icebergs. Attitudinally you would benefit by always being curious with regard to what you can’t see, but behaviorally there is just not enough time to chase down everything beneath the surface if you ever want to get anything done. All this to say chasing icebergs is not easy.

Look.

I could conclude my thought today pounding away on the importance of using curiosity to avoid bad business decisions, but I will not.

Instead I will use a personal thought to make a business point.

If you think about the moments you took a moment and stopped after hearing a sentence from a friend, the tip of an iceberg as it were, and followed up with some curiosity with regard the rest of the thought that you assume was kept in the mind and how much you were rewarded in terms of enlightenment by doing so, well, I kind of think that makes my point. It is typically a rewarding effort in terms of your friendship and connection.

We can spend our lives skating along the icy surface of irrelevance focused on the tips of icebergs or we can decide to dive down and see the larger portions of thoughts, ideas and minds hidden from sight.

That is your choice. Choose wisely.

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“The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

Thomas Merton

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“At any given point you have the power to say, this is not how the story is going to end.”

Anonymous

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Well. I sometimes believe one of the toughest games we play in life is the tug of war between reaching and settling.

Ponder. We do it in business all the time.

“What is our reach goal? … okay … let’s make it a little more realistic.”

Uhm. Is that a reach goal … or a settling goal?

Every day and in almost every situation not only are you mentally, as an individual, assessing ‘reach’ versus ‘more certain attainment’ <which is an evil version of settling>, but everyone around you is sending conflicting signals – “we want to reach a little farther than we think we are capable of … oh … but not too far“.

WTF. This is enough to confuse anyone.

You either reach far or you don’t.

You either set a settling goal or you don’t.

But, for fuck’s sake, don’t make my head hurt more than it has to on some decisions and choices because you want to feel like ‘we have pushed the limits’ in some false way.

Look. I’m not suggesting this is easy. Our natural temptation is to settle for a little less than a true reach because then we are more likely to meet expectations and less likely to be disappointed. I would guess <no research to back this up> we settle in some form or fashion 90% of the time. I really cannot argue with doing shit this way.

It is simply a tactic to maintain our sanity as we attempt, in reaching our desires & dreams, to limit the roll of the dice between chance & choice. We do so because we know disappointment lurks around every corner of every choice we ever make. And, let’s be honest, the disappointment can show up in so many frickin’ ways it almost seems like meeting a reach expectation comes only in black & white … while disappointments can show up in a myriad of colors <a reverse of how it should and actually is>.

I would like to note here that it really doesn’t help that we constantly get crap advice like this: ‘I encourage people to create something that ONLY you understand. That ONLY you get, because that can make you feel like you have some sort of purpose.’ Look. I absolutely buy the fact a reach goal should be personal or at least contain some aspect of personal so that it just isn’t some bland milestone objective someone else has pointed you at.

But. Well. If you are gonna reach for something, truly reach, part of the prize at the end of the reaching isn’t holding something that only you ‘get’, but rather something you gain that others also see value in. In poetic terms, you want something that covers you in colors that others can see. 

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“And now I’m covered in the colors”

Halsey

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And maybe that is where settling really screws us.

We don’t reach far enough to access the true colors to cover our achievements in to make it worth looking at over and over again.

Regardless. We live in a black & white achievement and outcomes world, not a color world.

While we talk a good game with regard to good character and humanity and ‘purpose driven’ passions almost within the first 5 minutes of any discussion you are gonna get “what do you do” and “what have you done.” If all you can do is talk about “reaching shit” then … well … you are useless as a non-achieving dreamer.

But.

If you can point out a string of specific outcomes and achievements most people don’t ask or wonder if they were easily attainable or the fact you attained them was because you had ‘settled for something less than a reach’, all they do is think of you as a useful achieving productive person.

And therein lies the horrible fate of ‘reaching.’ While we hate the fact that meeting the expectations of others means something, well, it means something. We can try to live a Life not worrying about other people and their expectations but unless our ‘doing compass’ miraculously always points us in the right direction and unless our ‘reach’ is impeccably judged correctly every time and unless the cat’s cradle web of choice & chance happens to fall into perfect symmetry we are doomed to have to face someone’s expectations at some point.

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“It’s time for you to live your own life without worrying about the expectations of others.”

Unknown

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Every day we get tugged side to side … reach or settle.

Every.

Frickin.

Day.

Here is what I know. If you settle for everything, your story will be illustrated in the blacks & whites of certainties, achievements and outcomes. You will try and color the black & whites in some odd colors to spruce them up, but (sigh), they are black & white.

If you never reach for anything, you will end you story with chapters of regrets and ‘’what ifs.’ You will have touched only grays and your access to ‘colors’ will be limited. If you reach for something and fall short, your story will have two key chapters:

the first is one filled with the failure to reach & the disappointments

the second is written by how you react to the reach disappointment – avoid future disappointment or seek to try & do better.

If you reach for something, and get it, you will never be the same again. You will have touched colors and seen that life is much more than black and white.

Please. Don’t anyone read anything too much into the ‘what I know’ portion because while the last one I wrote sounds exactly like what everyone wants, there are no guarantees in Life.

Reaching comes with a cost.

Settling comes with a cost.

And sometimes the cost is not dictated by you but rather by some choice & chance metric <which you have little control over>. And sometimes the prize, the benefit, can only be seen by you <a different version of cost>.

I imagine all I really know for sure is that, in general, we settle for far too little far too often. Ponder.

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“For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others.”

–

Eleanor Roosevelt

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“The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first.”

Iyanla Vanzant

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Business, as businesses should, think about how to improve their business. The good ones balance effectiveness and efficiency, the poor ones triple down on efficiency. But. 95% (I made that # up) of businesses focus on customers, service, process, systems and “best practices” — in their pursuit of efficiency (with head nods to effectiveness). This means 95% typically think of people as interchangeable pieces who can deliver all the service, process and outputs. All the systems are designed to ‘output’ and people simply make the systems ‘go.’

I would argue this is at the root of why organizations begrudgingly train employees. I would argue this is not only a bad ‘grudge’ if you really want to improve your business, but it is also stupid.

I always made a promise to anyone who ever worked for me – “if you ever leave this job I promise you will be well prepared to do well at your next job.” I’m not sure I was particularly good at preparing people for life, but I always said if you had a title/job responsibility with me you would be able to do that title/job responsibility wherever you went.

3 reasons:

• I knew people outgrew jobs & organizations and often organizations sucked at meeting peoples ‘grow’ needs. In other words, there is an incredibly high likelihood a current employee would become an ex-employee. I felt a responsibility to prepare them for their next job believing I/we would benefit for as long as they stayed where they were.
• Word of mouth is the most powerful recruiter. If you give, you get. The more people I sent out to build successful careers of their own, the more people recommended new employees to me or past co-workers sent people to me.
• I didn’t care about training per se, I cared about preparation to do jobs well. That may sound like semantics, but I think its important semantics. I believe businesses get hung up on “training people and receiving benefit.” And they may be right because, if you view training as simply training, you will most likely will not reap any meaningful benefits. On the other hand. If you look at maximizing an individual and enabling someone to do their job well, you will not only build individual strengths & potential, but also receive the direct benefit of them doing the job well. Choose wisely.

Regardless of your own view on this topic, the bottom line is a decision to invest in a person. Not some nebulous, often vapid, “invest in your people”, but rather ‘a person.’

I, honestly, can’t figure out why this is so difficult for businesses to grasp.

Is it lack of trust in people?

Is it a leadership ego thing?

Is it simply a misunderstanding of culture as a ‘we’ thing .. that you can enable & empower individuals and still be a ‘we’ culture?

I don’t know, but I do know any lasting change or effect in a business is not organizational or on systems or even on some broader cultural narrative. People leave, therefore, if your modus operandi is to enforce or impose (this includes ‘best practices’) systems, I can guarantee you that enforcing or imposing is not motivating nor long term effective (nor even optimizing short term effectiveness).

Truly lasting change & organization effect is within people themselves. Effectiveness is emergent. And because it is emergent it is something they not only embody when within the business, but also take with them outside the business (in life, family, community and other jobs). Therefore. To effectively lead people you actually need to view people beyond the limits of the organizational boundaries. This may sound odd, even inefficient. Its not. It doesn’t ignore the job that existing responsibilities demand, but it also enables individual potential to cross and bridge normal divides & barriers. Or, as Peter Drucker said, ‘business is of the community and the community is of the business.” And that is where true benefits reside. We far too often discuss ‘getting out of your comfort zone’ when instead we should suggest there is no zone or even if there is you should just push out on the limits and boundaries and give people the freedom to grow (and the business will grow). When a person is engaged as part of who & what they are they have the ability to engage to their fullest potential.

“Why do you, or they, or anyone get to determine my limits?”

Veronica Roth

Simplistically this is investing in people, not an organization. This leads me to the eternal question in business: “why train employees (people) if all they are going to do is leave? (and someone else will benefit by my investment).”

This is a valid, and important, topic.

At its core is, well, business’s decision to make business better. It’s like believing if you plant healthy seeds they will bloom here, there and everywhere and the entire forest grows.

Believing this demands we view a business in a non traditional way – you don’t ‘push down’ beliefs, behavior, responsibilities, etc. because, honestly, any time anything is ‘pushed down’ the world shudders to a halt as the people who are actually doing the work take the round peg senior leadership has created and try to figure out how to put it in the square hole of reality. In order to do so, most times, instead of convincing leadership they actually need a square peg, the teams design a mish mash version of a round peg that will fit into the square hole.

“In our consumer culture, we are encouraged to assume roles that aren’t truly authentic to who we are. In a way, this culture is its own kind of simulation, one that requires us to make more and more purchases to maintain the integrity of the illusion.”

Stowe Boyd

To be clear. I am not suggesting a ‘bossless’ organization. And while I do believe business has become more complex than in the past, I have always believed maximizing an individual maximizes the business. What was true then is exponentially true as business becomes more complex.

Stowe Boyd said “We’re in a time of rapidly expanding insights about human motivation and connection, but meanwhile our companies continue to be run with a perspective on human psychology and sociology circa 1970.” I slightly disagree. While, as a generalization, it may be true, I would suggest some people have always known this is the best way to maximize an organization — its just that leadership doesn’t trust it to be done that way.

Of course I believe discussing new organizational models is important and, in some cases, a business should have a new business model. But at the core of any organizational discussion it really isn’t about models but rather “how do you think about individuals?”

Because until you answer that question autonomy, empowerment, self management, is all irrelevant. If you do not believe in people, than you do believe in control. Period. Full stop.

If you do believe in people, than you will stop talking about leaders, and what makes great leaders, but instead talk about resource management – how can we get the proper resources into the proper hands at the proper times to maximize each individual and group of individuals.

This expands the business by expanding the individual. Therefore leadership isn’t about direction or control, but rather managing/optimizing expansion. Ponder.

=====================

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

John Green

===========

“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal.

 When you’re good, bad things can still happen.

And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”

Barbara Kingsolver

=========================

Whew.

We score everything.

People.

Games.

Performance.

Life.

We almost treat Life as a balance sheet.

Heck.

We almost treat people as a balance sheet.

We most certainly attempt to make life, a specific event or time, a mathematical problem. And we then proceed to analyze that Life or event or time with some unequivocal mathematical solution in mind with the intent to measure it.  In addition, we have a nasty habit of doing this in particular when we want to discuss “improving”, i..e, wanting a person to be more than a person <or the person gthey are today>.

That said.

Ponder this Life math conundrum.

• Balance sheets are assessed by zeroing it out. Pluses equal minuses.
• Scoring usually goes 1 to 10. 10 being the best.

Uhm.

If the best people are the ones who balance out <they would then be a zero … oops … or are they then a 10?>, then wouldn’t they, uh oh, they don’t even show up as being worthwhile on the 1 to 10 scale.

Or how about this <if you want to ignore the balance sheet idea>.

What happens if someone’s 10 version is an 8?

What a treacherous thing to demand a 10 on an 8 score when they are truly a 10 as is.

What a treacherous thing to demand that a person be more than the person they are simply because you have a formula to attach to that person.

Unfortunately, society almost seems to encourage us to not only make Life mathematical, not only to label mathematically, but also to judge mathematically.

And, to be clear, the whole positive and encouragement and “think good things” industry certainly ain’t helping us in accepting a person as a person.

Yeah.

The whole “Secret” & positive thing can far too quickly translate into some wacky life mathematical problem people can solve in making a ‘better Life.’

You can do better!

If you are at 7 you should always be striving for 8!

Personally I believe we have bastardized real encouragement in combination with ‘numberizing’ people <a bad combination>.

People are not numbers, nor should they be assessed as numbers and, surely, they cannot simplistically be represented as something as simple as a number.

And what makes this even more treacherous?

There is rarely such a thing as a good or bad person in isolation.

What I mean by that is what may be good at one moment is bad at another. And what that means is, well, a number can trap someone in the past or being measured for but a moment. Therefore, not only does it become treacherous to believe a person is more than a person, but treacherous to believe a person is less than a person.

And, yeah, I know about 360degree reviews and measuring shit by tracking over time, but inevitably the math works out one of two ways:

• • An average of highs and lows <which diminishes true learning on how high is up and how low is low>

  • A snapshot in time <in which the person gets screwed if they are having a bad time and benefit if it is their one truly good time>

When I took a moment and really thought about this, I kind of thought this was related to the whole ‘perfect person and imperfections’ thing. We have a nasty habit of looking at the people who we dislike and immediately assess, judge what could and should be improved, and think “they could be a 10 if only …”

We have an even nastier habit of looking at the people we like, yes, actually like, judge how close they are to a ‘perfect person’ and think “gosh, they would be absolutely perfect <a 10> if only …”

That’s silly.

No.

That’s unhealthy.

No.

It’s just fucking stupid.

People are people.

On their best day and at their best they are … well … their best. And judging someone as if they can be, and should be, their best – or a “10” – every day is just fucking stupid.

A person is no more than a person.

And no matter how much we want to make a person a number and make Life a mathematical formula or equation we cannot.

And because we cannot we actually should not.

Yeah.

It is a treacherous thing to believe a person is more than a person.

Just as it is treacherous thing to believe a person is less than a person.

Don’t try and make life, or a person, a mathematical equation.

People are not numbers, they are people. And the risk we run is, well, this:

“We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.”

Kenneth E. Boulding

=========

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

Jean de La Fontaine

===================

“But I live elsewhere; it is only that the attraction of the human world is so immense, in an instant it can make one forget everything. Yet the attraction of my world too is strong.”

Franz Kafka

============

So. We talk a lot about the fact you cannot run away from things and far less about avoiding.

Yeah.

We talk about procrastination, which is a version of avoiding, but avoiding, in this piece’s case, is more along the lines of ‘ignoring’. Ignoring meant by that you see the world that you want to live in and conduct yourself in and go about ignoring the rest of the world doing your own thing. That is simply a different version of ignoring the real world. Simplistically you are assuming that the world & Life, in general, is indifferent to you therefore you will go unnoticed and just be able to do what you want to do <in  a less unfettered way than if you actually remained engaged in the ‘other world’>.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I will say that avoiding some of the more undesirable aspects of Life and the world is pretty appealing. I would also suggest that avoiding some of the more undesirable aspects of Life and the world is pretty unrealistic.

There are a number of reasons I say that, but suffice it to say the overwhelming amount of information, even within the narrower walls of a business, is stunning. In the good old days even the worst of things worth avoiding <lies, conspiracies & implications> needed a little time to grow to some size that they became unavoidable. In today’s world those same things need seconds to gain some traction and minutes to grow to some size that they are unavoidable.

Today Google processes 61,000+ search queries a second. That’s something like over 5 billion+ queries a day. This means information is everywhere — regardless whether it is good information or bad information.

Today 99% of all employees in business are online and nearly 50% of the entire world is online and with 5.27 billion people have a mobile device <which, depressingly, means more people have a mobile device than have running water>.

My point here is not about the challenges of being interconnected with so much information driven by technology, but rather avoiding the world is just not a viable option <no matter how attractive it may seem>.

But please do not focus on technology. Technology is simply a means. Without people technology is simply an unused ancient aqueduct. It is people which make avoiding impossible <technology just enables their ability to not be avoided more>.

My version of this is office politics. I hate office politics. Ok. Not just hate … I believe it is people wasting energy and all I want to do is to focus on getting the good shit done.

In a perfect world you can decide to avoid the real world of the office intrigue and just do what you believe is the right thing to do for the business and ‘do.’

It isn’t avoiding by ignoring it is more like avoiding by deciding to ride the parallel rail on a train track.

Unfortunately the business world, and the world in general, doesn’t work that way. No matter how much I may have wished to run on a parallel track it actually works more like an atom in which we all circle the business at some maddening speed in which you crisscross with even the shit you want to avoid.

This gets compounded in several ways … two of which would be:

• Someone will always make what you are doing political even if it is not.

Office politics always contain people who play politics to meet their own ends. That is their means to do so. I believe these people can only see the world through the eyes of palace intrigue and political maneuvering therefore they filter everything done by everyone through a filter of “what do they have to gain by doing that.” That is their first filter level. Yeah. Eventually they may get to the more important “what does the business have to gain by doing that”, but they almost always judge everything being done on a ‘who is a winner and loser’ scale.

• Someone will always find something nefarious in what you are doing.

I will not call this conspiracy thinking but, in general, a business culture more often than not breeds a sense that <a> everyone is out for themselves and <b> there is no such thing as a truly altruistic business motivation.

And while it would be naïve of me to suggest that avoiding those two thoughts as ‘stupid & untrue’ it is a little sad that those beliefs pretty much are somewhere in every organization.

Please note, once again, the people aspect in everything I have noted. You may want to avoid things, but you will find your destiny along the path you have chosen strewn with a shitload of people crossing your path — many uninvited and many unwelcome.

I would suggest that Life is best lived by not ignoring shit and avoiding shit, but rather stepping into the world and deal with it. Sometimes that may mean side stepping some of the shit you don’t want to deal with and sometimes that may mean bludgeoning your way over and through some of the shit you don’t want to deal with, but if you do this you actually have some control over your own destiny. I say that because the problem with trying to maintain your Life on a parallel track, and knowing that inevitably it will be crossed by people & shit you had been purposefully avoiding, is that you will always be reacting to the bullshit rather than proactively facing it.

Look.

While you may not care about business or business politics my point is my point — you cannot avoid the world to conduct yourself in the ways & means you want to conduct yourself. You are stuck with the world, and in the world, whether you like it or not.

Oh.

The other thing you are stuck with is the fact whether you stay on the road engaged with the world or take another road to try and avoid it, well, you will meet your destiny no matter which way you go. Ponder that.

====

“Uncertainty is a bitch.”

Anonymous

=============

 “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Charles Darwin

=================

On November 18^th 2009 I wrote these words:

Welcome to Enlightened Conflict.

It was my 1st post. I suggested the site would do 3 things for readers:

• make you think
• communicate the effectiveness, and power, of words
• may learn, and unlearn, some things

All I really believe I have done is write about uncertainty and uncertain things <albeit couched in a variety of topics and opinions>.

Over time, writing and thinking, I have learned one thing for sure — uncertainty truly is a real bastard. It encourages an inability to choose, a lack of clarity or evidence to a foreseeable outcome and throws in a nice dose of ‘little to be hopeful for’ because of that indiscernible future and some shit to fear the possibility of.

In other words. It creates a suspicion that the future just may not be the one you were hoping for.

That said.

Today I will talk a little about what I perceive as a unique time, at least in our lifetime. It is a point in which general uncertainty is colliding with personal uncertainty which is colliding with leadership uncertainty.

Why is this unique?

Well.

This uncomfortable alignment rarely happens.

We may have some personal uncertainty, but we look to our leaders and they offer some sense of certainty. Or maybe we have some leadership uncertainty, but we feel good about ourselves and have a sense of certainty just do what you know is right.

You get the point.

Now. Far too often, I included, we suggest that uncertainty is just about a test in character. But today, in the present, this is becoming a test in skill, competency, abilities and, yes, character. We will be tested on all fronts – inside ourselves as well as outside ourselves. We will need to decide what we are truly good, if not great, at and either stand aside and let someone else do what needs to be done or permit ourselves to accept that it just ain’t gonna happen the way we wish it would happen. That is a test on all fronts not just character.

Regardless. I truly believe this is a moment. A moment in which uncertainty reigns. A moment within the ‘tide of the affairs of men. ‘

 Within my 1^st 5 posts, on December 5^th 2009, I shared this:

—————

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

William Shakespeare

========

This quote is a reminder that opportunities in life are fleeting, but there are many — if you pay attention. And, yes, I do think it is nice to remind yourself there are many opportunities ebbing and flowing in front of us <because then you stop dwelling on regrets>. But I imagine my point today is that while we should seek these tides and be aware they exist and be aware that sometimes the tide in the affairs is thrust upon us.

I feel like that last thought better reflects the uncertain moment we live in presently.

To help me I pulled out my battered copy of Hayakawa’s “Use the Right Word” trying to find the right words and on page 550 there it was – significant. Synonyms for significant are listed as  consequential, grave, important, momentous, serious, vital and weighty.

These are the words we use to refer to factors, and moments, that are outstanding, crucial or that have considerable force or effect. The word ‘significant’ itself suggests something that is outstanding because it is especially meaningful or excellent; no urgency or forcefulness is necessarily suggested by the word — its impact is set in stone and solid. The power of the individual word is that it contains, and retains, each aspect of the synonym words.

So, yes, what makes this moment so solidly significant is its less than solid uncertainty.

And maybe that is why this particular uncertainty in the present seems a little more agonizing.

=====

“Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.”

William James

=====

I am not a ‘glass is half empty’ view of Life and living Life guy, yet, James has a point here. Almost everything we do, certainly anything good, is built on the shambles of something. Therefore, our existence is challenged by the threat of some helpless agony … in our pursuit of being happier with some unknown certainty.

In this case the shambles we are trying to build upon is ‘uncertainty.’

And while some may suggest “how the hell can you build something out of nothing” I would suggest that is what we do when we are at our best.

When we use our skills, whatever capabilities we have and work together, actually cooperate, while being the best people we can be. In other words, we build something out of the nothingness uncertainty.

Here is what I know.

We all seek to make some positive impact on the world whether that world be our immediate circle or some grand global circle or somewhere inbetween.

Combine that with a thought I read somewhere that to live nobly is to avert one’s eyes from the bad and seek that which can be found in the light of good. And I think that is what James hints at — averting one’s eyes is … well … not easy.

Tell someone to not look at something and the temptation to look increases exponentially. And, let’s be absolutely clear, while uncertainty resides mostly in nothingness, and nothing tangible, we place that uncertainty in tangible things <events or people> so that we can stare at it as a prime example of uncertainty. It is not that we seek the agony and sadness of Life its just that I tend to believe we want some tangibleness because then it seems more easily conquered. And then this uncertainty alignment agony takes on a whole new level — our inevitable desire to create some plans to make things certain.

Yikes. That is a horrible objective.

Yet. Doing this is natural because we are taught almost from day one that planning, and a plan, is the key to success and happiness. In other words this suggests we can … uhm … plan for certainty.

That seems kinda crazy.

Shit.

It sounds like certain agony.

In fact.

It sounds like we are constantly sifting through the shambles of plans made and broken as we seek to make some meaningful progress in Life.

===

“The detective thinks he is investigating a murder. But truly he is investigating something else altogether, something he cannot grasp hold of directly. Satisfaction will be rare. Uncertainty will be your natural state. Much of your life will be spent in the dark woods, no path visible, with fear and loneliness your only companions.

But answers exist. Solutions wait for you, trembling, pulling you to them, calling your name, even if you cannot hear.

I believe that someday, perhaps many lifetimes from now, all will be explained, and all mysteries will be solved. All knowledge will be free for the taking, including the biggest mystery of all – who we really are. But for now, each detective, alone in the woods, must take the clues and solve mysteries alone.”

Jacque Silette

<fictional detective>

====

Look. Uncertainty is a bastard. It certainly makes us question ourselves — who we are as an individual and what we are truly capable of.  Today’s version of uncertainty is just our own version to the nth degree as it encompasses all things in our lives.

Here is the good news.

We all know answers exist and we all know they await us even if we cannot hear them, but we all know some certainty of some things exists somewhere.

This means we are constantly investigating who we really are and what we are really good at often desperately grabbing at clues or proof to provide some comfort that we have either solved the mystery, or, at least are on the path to solving it.

I will note that at all times I tend to find the “who you really are” as a silly, if not stupid, self-question.  Mostly because who I am today is not who I will necessarily be tomorrow. But, in particular, in this time and place I tend to think it sells the moment short. It encourages us to find our inner strength and inner core of who we are and suggest we will be able to walk the bridge from uncertainty to more certain things & places.

That is wrong.

And dangerously wrong.

We are going to be judged for this moment in time.

That I can guarantee.

And it will not solely be on character. It will be on skills, abilities, capabilities and how well we identified what we could do and whether we did it or not.

This may sound harsh, but the only people who will know who we truly are today are not us, but someone somewhere in a future yet to be defined. So looking for that kind of validation today is a fool’s errand. Yet. It should not stop us from being detectives, in fact, it will most likely be our continuous search for clues and solve what mysteries we can today that will guide us from uncertainty to some certainty of something better than what exists today.

In the end.

Sometimes we call it uncertainty.

Sometimes we call it ‘the unknown.’

But you know what? It doesn’t matter what name you put on it.

It’s fear.

In this case, in this time and place, it is an alignment of fears of whether we will be good enough as people, good enough in skills, good enough in leadership, good enough in abilities and good enough to meet whatever challenges exist in today’s existing uncertainty.

Oh.

To be clear.

Sometimes I believe we associate fear with weakness or possibly too often associated with ‘not enough positive thinking.’

That is wrong to do so.

I tend to believe we would be much better off, particularly in the here & now, to cut through the bullshit and just call fear by its name and face it — in all its black & white glory and the uncertainty and the fear associated with it — and step into it as my friend David Amerland suggests, with intentionality.

I am not suggesting you to not feel some fear of uncertainty or even that I don’t feel fear because, of course, I feel fear.

Who the hell doesn’t? <and if they say they don’t … they are lying>

I believe it helps to just face it.

And I am not saying this because I believe “fear is a great motivator” <because I would suggest that it is really survival that is a great motivator … not fear>. I suggest these things because fear, more often than not, actually freezes us … makes us do nothing. If we face it, we name it, we say ‘fuck you’ to it, we will do what it takes and needs to be done — try things in trying times.

To be clear.

I do not believe we are at a cross roads.

I believe we are on a road and we have an obstacle, one that we just cannot see and one that no one has articulated or shown us yet. It just exists in our minds and, yet, we know it exists as much as the thought of Santa Claus in the hearts of children. That is kind of what uncertainty is.

I do know I feel uncertainty and I am fairly sure I am not in a minority. I feel like most people, if asked, would just say something like “I am not sure what is going to happen” which means uncertainty resides at the core of what is in the here & now.

What I know for sure is that we will build something out of his nothingness. We will look back, or the generations yet to come will look back, and they will see something.

This I know.

Something will be built from the scraps of uncertainty and it will be built upon a foundation of what is the best of us.

The structure will showcase the strengths of our better skills, capabilities and abilities.

The skyline of the future will be a reflection of the best of us having worked together to create a better version of what exists.

Why do I know this?

Anything less is not the best version of who and what we are.

Anything less means uncertainty won.

This is our test.

This is our time.

This is our certainty.

That I know.

Yeah.

On November 18^th 2009 I wrote these words: Welcome to Enlightened Conflict.

I have never stopped believing that the best version of us is better than most of us think it is and that everyone just needs to be reminded of their ‘better version’ in order to permit it to stand up and speak out and ‘do.’

It is time for us to prove me right.

But uncertainty certainly is a real bastard, ain’t it?

It takes some intentionality to actually be the best version of who and what we are and can be.

Make your choice. Choose wisely.

=====

a version of this was posted in late 2016

=========

“The world is too big and too intricate to conform to our ideas of what it should be like.

Just because we invent myths and theories to explain away the chaos we’re still going to live in a world that’s older and more complicated than we’ll ever understand.”

Moby

===========

“The World is a very complex system.

It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better.”

Kenneth Boulding

==========

Well. Today, while reading some trite business fortune cookie wisdom pulled from some gazzillion selling business book, I thought of the day I said “I worry we are killing the next generation of business thinkers with simplistic tripe” to a famous internationally renowned business book author. I did it at while on a panel at some convention in the early 2000’s. I said it <after holding my thoughts for too long> as I listened to simplistic soundbite advice being shared under the guise of “sage wisdom to enhance everyone’s success.”

I followed my statement with:

“Business is messy. Business is complex. It seems to me that those of us who have navigated the messiness have a responsibility to not undersell the messiness & complexity nor oversell simplicity.”

Needless to say it wasn’t one of my more popular moments.

Needless to say it was one of my better professional moments.

Ok. Business is made up of a mixture of skills, personalities and attitudes. Success is most often dictated by alignment of skills, personalities and attitudes, or, some special mix of all. It is that mix, or blend, of all those things which is well, frankly, an absolute bitch to make happen. That said. Let me point out three reasons why business is such a difficult complex unwieldy thing and trite soundbite wisdom rarely helps:

• Building a successful business is rarely about some wide open “white space” awaiting your arrival.

• People. You need people. You almost always have to incorporate people into your evil plan for success <and those who most desperately desire to help most often have their own evil plans for success>

• Dealing with what you have is significantly different than creating what you want <and how the initial recipe is different than the ongoing recipe>

Let me explain each.

• The white space myth:

Business success, generally speaking, comes down to one of two things (a) am I going to build a market for my idea, or (b) am I going to steal some of the existing market for my idea. Needless to say neither of those sits in some dormant white space awaiting your presence.

You either create white space by elbowing some asshats out of your way or simply walk through the front door of the homes of others and steal all their shit <that was a metaphor … you do not really do that>. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and be different or offer some unique aspects <if you can> but more often than not it is all about being sure you are distinct, be relentlessly persistent in communicating your distinctness and offer something that delivers value after it is purchased.

Uhm. No trite soundbites there and I have pretty much told you everything you need to know. Ponder.

• People who want to help <but you shouldn’t let them>:

Help is always available. And self proclaimed ‘disruptive/innovative’ help almost even more so. Pick a topic and go online. I can almost guarantee you will get over a million results <you actually get 31.8 million in .59 seconds> of people discussing “disruptive” ideas to facilitate progress. Many of those people are for hire. The majority are smart, articulate and have boundless energy, uhm, for their version of progress.

Finding people who assist in forwarding the progress of your idea is, frankly, not easy <although it seems like it should be>. Even more difficult is incorporating change agents or what we far too often call disrupters. It is challenging … tempting for sure … but challenging.

Soundbite experts will throw out a gazillion people management thoughts on ‘center everyone on the purpose’ and a shitload of ‘horizon direction focus’ thinking, but I gotta tell ya, I can put the biggest fucking beautiful target up on the wall to aim for but if the people I got cannot, and will not, shoot arrows at it — the target is a beautiful piece of art on the wall and nothin’ else. Ponder.

• Deals with reality and creation:

Soundbite advisors spend a shitload of their energy on ‘bringing your idea to life.’ Not a whole shitload of them invest a lot of energy discussing “what do I do once it is actually breathing.” In other words: what the hell do I do with this Frankenstein?

Huh? What experts neglect to tell you is that all that fine planning and smart implementation rarely ends up creating exactly what you intended creating in the beginning. You will naturally adapt to some things and course correct the best you can as you navigate survival <and that dynamic marketplace which doesn’t have any static white space – see my 1st point>.

At its most basic creating is about making some deals, and dealing with, reality as it gets thrown in your face and at your feet <this means you can trip over a shitload of things>. Some people call this “adapting”, I do not, I call it deal making with the world. Maybe think of creating business like striking a nuclear arms-control agreement. Simplistically the deal is the means, not the end itself, and success simply means everyone keeps their nukes they just don’t use them. But the real point is that business is rarely developed with “dealing” central to success. It is more often the idea <which motivates the energy and company/business>. Deals are simply the way you protect the business idea. What soundbite is there for how to navigate the typical business idea of “mutually beneficial transactions?”

There is none.

You deal with dealing one by one the best you can all the while trying to not lose sight of the desired objective <which can be covered in a deep fog on occasion>. Ponder that one a bit longer than the first 2.

Anyway.

The next generation of business leaders deserve experienced people who attempt to explain complexity rather than serve up trite simplistic soundbites which over time simply amount to a steaming pile of bullshit. While I have a bunch of concerns with regard to what we are, and are not, teaching the next generation of business thinkers the one I am mostly concerned with resides in the simplistic shit shared by multimillion dollar business authors and the hundreds of books you can buy which all offer “simplistic advice for business success.”

There is absolutely nothing simple about business. Misrepresenting reality, the business truth, should be called out and chastised even if it is some high falutin’ author of famous business books. We owe it to the next generation of thinkers to teach the complex and not some trite soundbites. That is, as I mentioned earlier, the deal we need to make with the reality of the business future. All that said. I worry we are killing the next generation of business thinkers.