======

“If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything. You’re a leaf that doesn’t know it’s part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton

—-

“History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims.” – Henry Kissinger

—–

So. Studying history, and using what you have learned, is a tricky challenge. Often we study history, and the past, so that we can “not make the same mistakes.” Well. The attempt is one of valor <and good intentions>, but most actions using historical learning are misused <as they are misguided>.

Henry Kissinger actually said it the best:

“The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically: history teaches by analogy, shedding light on likely consequences of comparable situations. But each generation must determine for itself which circumstances are in fact comparable.”

Let me be clear. Studying history is always good <that is a Bruce postulate>. It is how you use what you learned studying history that is the issue.

Too often people want to use historical “learning” as a literal guide for what to do now or in the future.

You cannot.

Sorry.

But you can’t.

I do not care if we are talking about business, life or economics.

You cannot <I apologize for repeating myself>.

Hank Kissinger, discussing Foreign Policy, actually walks us through a nice way to think about this.

Intellectuals analyze systems & situations while statesmen build them.

And therein lays a vast difference between the analyst and the statesman. The analyst can choose what problem he wishes to study whereas the statesman’s problems are imposed upon him. The analyst can allot whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion while the overwhelming challenge of a statesman is time. The analysts runs no, or little, risk. If the conclusions prove wrong he can rewrite and reanalyze. The statesman is permitted only one guess and his mistakes are irretrievable.

Sure. Typically the future is simply a version of the past. But what makes it challenging is that what appear to be superficial changes, that sometimes make it easily recognizable, are the things that transform situations into unrecognizable changed situations. Yeah. Not all variations are created equal. In addition, we tend to ignore the ‘collection of people’ variable <I will explain later>.

In the end? We use the past, we implement something, and invariably wonder what the hell happened <and why we didn’t learn from history> when it didn’t turn out as planned.

Well. Reminder. History teaches by analogy, not identity.

Unfortunately this means that the lessons of history are never automatically replicable.

This is mostly because the lessons are apprehended only by a standard which admits the significance of a range of experience, that the answers we obtain will never be better than the questions we pose.

Now. I do believe no significant decisions are possible without at least an awareness of the historical context.

For everything exists in time more than they do in a moment in time. What I mean by that is an explanation of ‘context.’ You may not be able to completely replicate the exact time, place, situation and experiences of any & all affecting what you are studying <or even replicate a majority of those variables/variations> however you can gain a sense of choices that were available and choices made. This is contextual learning or what some people call ‘sensemaking.’

Because people forget that what they are studying is a given moment which is simply a situation where it is not only a reflection of a collection of individuals <and their experiences>, but that situation also achieves a unique identity through the consciousness of a common history <those individuals are studying that particular moment colored by,or driven, by perceptions of beliefs of that time. or, the universe shapes us as much as we shape the universe>.

It is not often that we actually learn something ‘to use’ from the past and it is even rarer that we draw the correct conclusions from it.

Why?

The lessons of history <and Life experiences also> are contingent.

That means they teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force a recognition of comparable situations.

Well. That is a BIG thought right there. One that many of us should think about more often.

Let me translate <for my own pea like brain>.

History is contingent upon a series of factors and to make it exponentially more difficult it is contingent upon a continuum <horizontally> as well as simultaneously <vertically>. In other words, patterns move across various layers as well as within a layer.

Yikes.

That means exactly replicating the situation in which you are ‘learning from’ is, well, dubious. The variations and variables almost seem limitless <try pointing that out in your next business meeting when someone says “what did we learn from past experience”>. Oh. Gosh. Doesn’t that kind of make you rethink every business book you have ever read?

Regardless.

History is just that — history. A series of factors & variables all aligned for one moment in time <vertically & horizontally>. Therefore change is not only the constant, but it also possibly represents the only legitimate path to progress. I say that to suggest that change may actually freedom from the past.

And to suggest that history, when one decides to live it and not learn from it, can cage you.

I know.

Learning to break free from the history that holds no value <or decreases value> is difficult. It is easier to simply use it as a handbook of ‘what to do.’ But if we truly seek to learn <and teach> we cannot be subjugated to history. If we truly seek to be better than what we already are, we cannot do simply as history ‘dictates.’

This makes ‘better’ a but tough because most people feel most comfortable mostly remaking things in the image of historical learning.

The corollary to that thought is in order to remake things better we have to be uncomfortable.

I believe what I just wrote will make a boatload of people very uncomfortable. Why? Well. This kind of thinking can drive you crazy particularly if you want to simply study and create conclusions <rather than hypotheses>.

So. The how do most people, and businesses, get around this type of thinking?

They suggest that they have isolated the most important variables and can draw a correlation to the current situation, draw some conclusive conclusions, and isolate the best plan of action <and offer predictive results>.

Well. They are nuts <if not crackpots or liars>. I do not doubt 99% of the intent of these people, but they are still wrong. History provides context not analogy. Now people <in general> do not like that. It makes them feel uncomfortable. They want to know unequivocally that they will not be ‘making the mistakes of the past.’ Sorry. Can’t happen. You may be able to reduce the odds, but cannot unequivocally guarantee it. Oops. Big trouble in the working world if you say shit like that.

But it is Truth. Truth in a business world. Truth in Life.

Another truth? <and something that most people will also feel uncomfortable with>

Studying history will make the in-the-moment decision better. I did not say “using history to make the decision”, but rather “people who have studied history will better be able to CREATE a unique decision in the moment.” Yup. I used the dreaded ‘unique’ word. Most decisions are discreet <unique to the moment>. That makes people feel very very <very> uncomfortable.

** note: “unique” does not have to be in totality but rather the decision will have some unique aspects/features to make it more malleable to the context within which it must exist and thrive.

Regardless. It is a Life truth.

In the end?

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”

Basho

Well.

That is a nice uncomfortable thought to end on. Ponder.

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originally posted March 2013

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“The most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better.”

Lee Iacocca

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

“I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.”

Henry David Thoreau

==========

Ok. Let’s get the harsh truth out upfront. I am a 60something and I believe the older generation, mostly old white men, hollowed out business to the shithole soul-less point we face today. I also believe we are facing the dying rattle of these old white men’s grasp on how business is conducted.

That said. Let me spend a minute on old white men <my generation> to explain why I believe this.

While a generalization, because there are exceptions, old white men have hollowed out the business world in their quest for “winning at any cost”, “efficiency”, and maximize “converting that win-to-cash <making $>” ratio. These men hollowed out business primarily thru extraction and exploitation <of value, values, and resources>. These men have guided business to a level of so-called, self proclaimed, “greatness” through a variety of ‘great’ business acumen thoughts & business culture attitudes which, in reality, were non-great hollow attitudes, were wins which in reality a reflection of hollow behaviors & techniques, and, ultimately, created fantastic looking hollow outcomes and achievements.

In doing so they successfully hollowed out business. I could argue, and will, “hollowing” has been the guiding light into this dark world of money grubbers with questionable moral compasses who deemed resources as infinite and people as finite machines they could plug ‘n play into their money creating machines. You want some specifics? Here you go. This is how they have hollowed out business:

Capitalism

Capitalism is not inherently bad. In fact it is an incredible engine for growth, innovation and increased wealth & standard of living for any and all.

But old white men hollowed capitalism. They took out all the good and added all the greed. I could partially defend old white men and suggest that they were simply participants in the arc of business history, but I will not. Peter Drucker pointed out the beginning of the arc in 1989, as I noted in Salvation by Society, and we old white men could have eyed the arc and, well, stopped it. Instead old white men viewed the arc as an opportunity to not be burdened by morality & soul, but rather an opportunity to build personal wealth.

     Humans

Humans are amazing things. Irrational, unexpected, inconsistent, bundles of untapped potential. Old white men hollowed humans as well as humanity in their total embrace of people as machines of productivity – scientific management was their religion. We cannot blame Frederick Taylor for this because it was these men who made Taylorism into a cult of business. they were creative in their scientific management slotting their little people productivity machines into thinkers and doers, stars and worker bees, right brain versus left brainers. They first wielded carrots & sticks to manipulate desired results and then fully embraced gamification. The intent was always to squeeze out productivity rather than let people potential emerge. It is within that last point in which old white men propagated their most insidious myth – humans are lazy and left to their own devices will do nothing. This became the underpinning to everything with regard to their treatment of humans as machines. Needless to say, business without humans and humanity is simply a machine. Old white men got exactly what they wanted to the detriment of business and humans, hollow widgets producing exactly what they are told to produce.

Branding

Brands are fabulous creatures and not inherently bad. They offer us every day schmucks a nice heuristic way to make decisions and isolate differentiation in which we can make true choices.

Old white men hollowed brands. The easiest way to point this out is that we stopped talking about brands and started talking about branding. Old white men started looking at brands as vehicles of wealth and not vehicles of differentiation. Brands should evolve and not be constructed or built like some building of cold steel and cheap Styrofoam ceiling tiles. Focusing on brands permitted old white men to hollow out the substantive work of creating products & services of substance. The whole concept of ‘building a brand’ is one of the most insidious concepts to infiltrate good and meaningful marketing and communications.

Profit

Profit is not inherently bad. Used wisely it contributes not only to personal, or individual wealth, but spurs on business growth in terms of innovation and employee development AND social involvement. But old white men hollowed the soul out of each dollar as they squeezed every cent of profit it of it. Profit is good only if it is not tainted by <a> greed or  <b> created at the expense of giving back <in terms of true societal salvation type things>. Businesses represent an important weave in the fabric of society and the moment a business ignores that weave and focuses solely on the profits of the entity itself the opportunity arises to let the soul of each dollar made bleed out into the ether. And, yes, dollars can have a soul. Making money shouldn’t feed stock holders, it should a business that feeds society.

Wealth dispersion

Making money and creating wealth is inherently a double positive: proof of the value for your efforts and increased standard of living <not just in materialistic comforts but in real living>. This is a good thing for individuals, society and the world.

Old white men hollowed out the middle and carved out the good aspects.. This is more a byproduct of their business acumen more than anything else because I cannot really point out any specific behavior they consciously took to do this, but, suffice it to say that more went to the old white men and less to the ones who actually made the money for them. Possibly worse is that crafty old white men crafted a tier of wealth creation in which they had to do nothing, but use other people’s wealth to, exponentially, create their own wealth. Basically, they hollowed out the value in wealth.

Communication

Effective communication has been, and always will be, complex and complicated. Effective communication inevitably feeds into the minds and enlightenment of the listeners. If you dumb down communication, inevitably you dumb down the listeners.

Old white men hollowed out communication. I imagine as they hollowed out everything else they found it inherently more productive to gain their objectives by also hollowing out communication. Everything became soundbites, powerpoint bullet points and ‘elevator speeches.’ Effectively communicating complexity took on less importance than a quick sharp stab of “here is all you need to know” <and then walking away>. Old white men mastered the art of emptying communication to a point where businesses end up walking on the slippery surface of irrelevance <cloaked in a beautiful robe called “what is important for you to know.”> Heinously, they hollowed out the value of words all the while replacing them with bullshit buzzwords <hollow shells of words> all under the guise of “simplicity.”

ROI

ROI <return on investment> is a fabulous tool. It offers us every day unimaginative pragmatic schmucks an almost heuristic way to judge some fairly complex and complicated things in business.

Old white men hollowed ROI of anything intangible and along the way scraped away some of the most meaningful things associated with investment in their desire for simplistic “this led to that.” Certainly some investments have linear outcomes and results. But not all. And these hollow men in their black & white pursuit of profit, efficiency and outcomes became color blind.  Old white men started looking at people as equal to numbers & dollars and not organic organisms of less than linear productivity <in terms of Life actualization as well as business actualization>. These hollow men fell in love with cause & effect, numbers and began diminishing the value of humanity and complexity <dynamics of business & Life>. They saw people as investments, like manufacturing robots, rather than, well, people.

Racism

Racism in the workplace is a stealthy virus invading the organism in ways that can create an unhealthy organism which sometimes seems to never attain its full potential despite producing results.

Old white men enable this virus to exist by hollowing out the meaning in any racism discussion, and real substantive actions, in business.

These old white men rose through the ranks of business surrounded by other white people, & few minorities, simply believing it was so because it was a reflection of those “who deserved to be here” (assuming everyone COULD be here if they worked hard enough). When in leadership positions & told about racism issues they didn’t really believe it, reluctantly doing things they were told they should do all the while thinking “it’s just political correctness”. The times old white men got trapped in diversity meetings & shared 5 things they did & were told were racist, in their heads they said “they can’t handle truth, they are too sensitive.” What this all led to was hollow efforts at addressing racism. They grudgingly implemented some initiatives, while publicly espousing their enlightenment, but privately thinking it was a waste of time, energy & monies. Underlying this purposeful ignorance was an ongoing belief white people never got any more breaks than anyone else or that there was never any inherent ‘privileges’ bestowed upon white skinned people.

What the business world ended up with was a generation of old white men who are the worst of racism ,and some real racists> – racism convinced it isn’t racism and racists convinced they are not racist. Ultimately, any substantive efforts to address racism in business were hollowed out by old white men who didn’t really believe in them.

Behavior

I hesitated to call this “the hollowing out of morality” mostly because that sounded a little harsh and I tend to believe the reality within this particular hollowness is more pragmatic. That said … it doesn’t make it any better just that I didn’t really want to get into a morality & ethical finger pointing game.

Leadership is a complex mix of personal, professional and pragmatic. When wielded well it is a beautiful tapestry of effectiveness, however, beauty is often in the eyes of the beholder when actual effectiveness becomes the measuring stick. As a reminder, old white men leadership grew up in a business of dictatorship leadership behavior or, at its best, benevolent dictatorship.

Old white men grew up in the hallowed halls of hollowed leadership management. This means that their ‘management twitch muscles’ inevitably provide reflexive business decision making based on this.

The easiest way to point this out is that businesses have developed a myriad of cultural initiatives and, yet, old white men leadership tends to simply treat them as “feel good politically correct” initiatives. They view them as “society dictated” thinking and not “business dictated” thinking. Therefore, a hollowness was inherent in the organization between how the old white men leaders attitudinally approached the business, how they viewed behavior and how the organization actually behaved. In other words, a hollow mindset affected expectations of attitudes and behaviors.

Old white men began talking longingly of straight talk, when people knew their place in business and ‘carrot & sticks.’  Old white men started looking at businesses in disdain as vehicles of political correctness and not stark effectiveness. The truth is that many of the old white men simply didn’t buy in to a better way of doing business and, therefore, when put in a corner & challenged revert back to the hollow management style of “do what I tell you to do and shut up.”

To be fair, old white men did not create this hollowness, they simply propagated it.

Pretty damning evidence of their hollowing, no?

All that said. These old white men, in their heart of hearts, inherently do not care about a ‘better world’ or even “a better way of conducting business” from a soul perspective nor do they care about any aspect of ‘being a better person’. Despite the fact we read headlines about business people embracing “Purpose” or creating panels to create a better business, it’s all words, no actions. Or maybe better said, there are actions but they are hollow actions. The truth is that for the most part they are indifferent to the bigger, more important, issues and solely attach ‘better’ with wealth, importance and wins and their own interests.

I get angry. I get angry because I do not believe ‘hollowness’ is the path to a better business world and society <let alone the world>. It certainly has not helped us reach greatness up to this point. And I am angry because I have believed this, and known this, for decades.

Look. This can be solved. And it can be solved by, well, old guys/people like me.

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

“At any other time it’s better. You can do the things you feel you should; you’re an expert at going through the motions. Your handshakes with strangers are firm and your gaze never wavers; you think of steel and diamonds when you stare. In monotone you repeat the legendary words of long-dead lovers to those you claim to love; you take them into bed with you, and you mimic the rhythmic motions you’ve read of in manuals. When protocol demands it you dutifully drop to your knees and pray to a god who no longer exists. But in this hour you must admit to yourself that this is not enough, that you are not good enough. And when you knock your fist against your chest you hear a hollow ringing echo, and all your thoughts are accompanied by the ticks of clockwork spinning behind your eyes, and everything you eat and drink has the aftertaste of rust.”

Dexter Palmer

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Old white men created the problems and as so well said in the movie The Return of the Pink Panther: “you set a thief to catch a thief.”

Older people can reverse the hollowness problem in one fell swoop. I could do it with a small merry band of contrarian older people (women & men), who have chafed in this hollow existence, and could bring some good healthy substance back into this wretched hollowness. To be clear, to fix this it isn’t about attacking one of these issues and working on it, it is coming up with a business model, and a way of doing business, that resolves all these issues. In systems thinking vernacular, the system in its entirety needs to regain robustness and substance because a substantive non-hollow part, alone, will not improve the system.

This is a unique time in history in which business, country and politics have intersected. This is a unique time for older business people to right the wrongs of all they have wrought up to this point. I certainly hope this happens, as an old white man myself, simply for the sake of redemption for all of us old white men. Ponder.

………. if your efforts suck … the universe will configure around your suckedness …

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“Happiness makes time move too fast.

Unhappiness makes time move too slow.

Yet, time, is indifferent to what you want and moves the same pace all the time.”

Me

======

‘How long do projects take’ and ‘is that enough time to get something done’ are possibly the most discussed topics in business conference rooms around the world. “More time” is possibly the most used phrase in those meeting rooms. Which gets me to “100” and what was known as Napoleon’s Hundred Days campaign to point out how much shit can be done in 100 days as well as how precarious effective doing can be.

Oh. First. History. After kicking the crap out of almost every country and general for over a decade or so Napoleon abdicates his throne and on May 4, 1814 Napoleon is exiled to an island no sane person had ever heard of <Elba>. After kicking around on this miserable little island for a while Napoleon realizes that retirement ain’t as cracked up as people made it out to be and in February 1815 he says “the heck with retirement … I miss the whole leadership thing <that I was pretty darn good at>” and scrams off the island.

March 1, 1815: Escapes Elba, Napoleon returns in South France

March 7, 1815: Napoleon rallies the French army

March 20, 1815: King of France, Louis XVIII flees, Napoleon takes control, begins “Hundred Days” campaign.

What happened in the 100 days <the cliff notes version>:

Napoleon did what he always did when he was in trouble and what he was <frankly> great at, he went on the offensive. With his newly raised army of around 75000 troops, he attacked Belgium, where the British and Prussian armies were camped. His hope was that he could separately destroy these armies before the Russians and Austrians arrived. The British army was commanded by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army was commanded by Marshal Gebhard Blucher. The French army engaged the Prussians first at Ligny, on June 16, 1815. The battle was either a slight win for Napoleon or just relatively indecisive <although imminently winnable by Napoleon should a domino or two fallen his way> and both sides regrouped.

Napoleon decided next to attack the English, then at Waterloo, a village near Brussels.

On June 18 1815, the British and the Prussians defeated Napoleon. The British/Prussian victory signaled the end of a more-than-ten- year period filled with war <and a boatload of Napoleon victories>. At Waterloo, Napoleon had 72,000 troops, Wellington commanded 68,000 troops, and Blucher 45,000 <this becomes relevant later when I point out that “they” had more resources than “he”>. Suffice it to say there were a boatload of good and iffy decisions made by both sides, but maybe the biggest was because the ground was muddy on the day of the battle Napoleon made the critical decision of waiting for the ground to dry before attacking Wellington’s forces in the afternoon. This delay allowed Blucher’s forces to reach Waterloo in time to make a difference in the outcome of the battle. While the French made assault after assault on the British, they were slow to make progress, and Blucher’s Prussians advanced against the French army’s eastern flank.

Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon’s best commanders <called ‘the bravest of the brave’ although, in general, he wasn’t the most thoughtful general>, orchestrated a combined attack of soldiers and artillery, and came very close to breaking Wellington’s line. However, Napoleon could not reinforce Ney’s attack, since he was forced to divert a large number of troops from fighting the British, including his crack Imperial Guard, in order to face the Prussians.

Now. Second. Let me try and make several points relevant to business and projects.

100 days.

A shitload can happen in 100 days if you know what you are doing, are a good leader and have a great support <management> team. In fact you can gather almost 100,000 personnel and the materials needed to sustain them and move them hundreds of miles and get them to perform at the highest level if you really have your shit together.

My first point. 100 days is a lifetime if you use it well. Businesses can dither around and make excuses, but if you cannot get something done in 100 days you should probably be looking for some other business to conduct. If someone <Napoleon> can swing almost 100,000 men into action and in a span of three or four days of battle at the end of 100 days almost win a victory when outnumbered and outresourced, it seems pretty logical that we in business can certainly make a widget in 100 days.

My second point. 100 days doesn’t have a huge margin for error when doing something big and important.

Everything has to happen fairly efficiently and everyone has to be aligned. It helps when you have a tried & true team in place. The right people at the right place at the right time. Not just the workers,  but the management too.

In today’s business this is the trickiest.

100 days is a lifetime if you have the right team.

100 days and you can still have victory <not just show up or ‘get it done’> if you have the right team.

100 days never seems like enough if you lose … ponder that … because I see too many times when it doesn’t end well that a business will sit around and say “if we only had more time!” and suggest 100 days was not enough.

Bullshit. It wasn’t the time. It was the team <or the system or a combination thereof>.

Which leads me to maybe my most important point.

The importance of the <management> team:

It seems rarely mentioned but Napoleon not only glimpsed victory at Waterloo … it was his to be had. I will let all the military experts tear apart the minutiae in the decisions made that day. From a business perspective the key to the loss <to me> was simple. Napoleon didn’t have his tried & true chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, on this campaign. Napoleon sorely missed the legendary Marshal Berthier as chief of staff, and Marshal Soult <his replacement> was a good, but not as good, substitute.

Oh. And there was a domino effect on the entire management team as people shifted to assume slightly new roles.

Napoleon was the master at making on field decisions and yet permitting independent decisionmaking — empowering his best to do their best. And, let’s be clear, Napoleon possibly built the greatest team outside of the 1927 New York Yankees <murderers Row>. By Waterloo several stood on the sidelines, were dead or were managing from a different role than they were accustomed to. But. Napoleon’s management team, his marshals and generals below the marshals, were the best of the best.

Now. It is possible Napoleon should have shifted his management style to accommodate the shift in the personnel, but that is speculative thinking <because if he shifted his style who knows how that would have affected everything else>.

100 days would have been nothing if the team was in place.

Whoa. So I am suggesting one person … and not even ‘the leader’ can make that big a difference?

You bet. In business this chief of staff person is:

<a> reviled by the young employees as old, conservative and an order taker for the leader,

<b> loved & hated by middle management as they love the fact this person deciphers the vague, but inspirational thinking of the leader and gives them the specifics on what to do, but hates that this person is not the most creative thinker in the room and is always bitching about why you cannot have the resources you claim you need to do the job you are being given, and

<c> appreciated by the leader because this person can decipher what you are really thinking, get people to do it and while maddeningly conservative <versus the leader> they have a tendency to stop the leader from doing something too incredibly stupid <or risky>.

This person is key to the success of a great leader and an organization. Napoleon saw things on a battlefield that no one else could ever see. He could see things before they happened. But that kind of person <as a general or in business> needs someone to coordinate and corral the incredibly talented independent thinkers & managers who will actually implement the vision. And it takes a while to learn how to decipher a truly visionary leader.

Soult was a good general, but probably a novice decipherer. In addition by shifting Soult into chief of staff all the other marshals began assuming different roles & responsibilities.

You get it. You need someone to decipher as well as you need someone to implement and in a 100 days it helps if the people who know what to do are in familiar roles.

How a leader is judged:

Yes. This matters in getting things done because, well, if you lose you are a loser and are inevitably second guessed.

Napoleon was arguably the greatest general in history <if you want to be nitpicky you could say the greatest offensive general in history>. I am probably wrong, but I struggle to think of one battle in his history that Napoleon had more resources <men & artillery> than his enemy and yet he constantly drove on the offensive … and won.

No leader has ever done more with less than Napoleon.

At Waterloo he had just won a phenomenal battle at Ligny two days before, after one of the greatest blitzkriegs ever mounted. During his lightning advance, he had managed to separate two major armies who knew he was coming, and inflict simultaneous defeats on both of them. At Waterloo two of the greatest commanders in all of history faced each other. Wellington, master of defense, was in an entrenched position that he had chosen, and counted on the arrival of Blucher. Napoleon considered the Prussians under control by Grouchy, and had von Bulow not arrived in Napoleon’s flank and rear, the French would undoubtedly have won, and we’d be reading about Napoleon’s finest victory, Ney’s brilliant attacks etc.

Oh. But he lost.

Winning and losing is often defined by the slimmest of margins. Sometimes even by chance. But most likely it is defined somewhere within the organization and how the organization, and its people, take action.

That is somewhere within the dependence upon solid visionary direction and independence to react to the situation.

101 days wouldn’t have given Napoleon a victory. It wasn’t time <or the lack of it>. It was more likely the management team <or possibly his lack of effectiveness in communicating what he wanted to a new management team>.

Napoleon is typically judged by his two historical losses … Russia and Waterloo. Geez. Can’t a great general <leader> get a break?

Answer: Nope.

Leaders typically get defined by how they end and not all the good <or not so good> done inbetween. If you want to get things done, this is the burden in doing so.

Anyway.

100 days is a good reminder of what a great leader can do in 100 days as well as how slim a margin moving quickly gives you between victory and loss. But, please, please don’t tell me something can’t get done in a 100 days.

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obfuscate

This is the word to use when evasion is achieved by clouding the issue.

Creating a smoke-screen.

prevaricate, evade, dodge

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“When shrouded meanings and grim intentions are nicely polished up and pokerfaced personae are generously palming off their fantasy constructs, caution is the watchword, since rimpling water on the well of truth swiftly obscures our vision and perception.

(“Trompe le pied/wrong foot.”)”

Erik Pevernagie

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

So. There is possibly nothing more aggravating in business than someone not answering “the” question. To be clear on what I am speaking about. The person answers a question just not the one you asked.

I am not going to argue that some questions are not easy to answer. I won’t even argue that we get asked questions we don’t know the answers to, but the situation dictates we make something up <yes … that happens in business>. But abandoning the question completely is complete bullshit.

But you know what?

I think the main reason it is so aggravating is because it is truly a reflection of intentions. There is even a book called The Anthropology of Intentions by a professor, Alessandro Duranti, who kind of tackles this whole discussion of intentions and words. He offers us the thought of ‘intentional discourse’ wherein an individual filters words through their beliefs & desires and their plans & goals to guide the discourse <regardless of whether the rest of the people want it guided that way>. In other words, using another phrase he offers us, by engaging in an intentional continuum people ponder their use of words through self-interest motivations <some good & some bad>.

By the way I am fairly sure I mangled his academic masterpiece, but you get the point.

Ah. “You get the point.” I share that again because while we sit there aggravated at someone who completely avoided answering the question asked we almost always also sit there wanting to invest a little of our own energy trying to assess why they did it. Because, in our aggravated minds, in its most simplistic viewing, avoiding the question is solely about shifting attention – away from something and toward something else.

…………… question deflection …………

Sure. It could be something as simple as steering you away from their lack of knowledge and steering you toward something they may actually know. But, in most cases, a full abandonment of a specific question is complete & utter deflection.

In the intelligence community they call this effort to shift attention as deflection or misdirection. Magicians do something similar getting people to focus on one thing and away from the trick itself. Completely avoiding the question is the business version of a distract-the-audience approach. It is this weird moment in which someone pretends to answer the question by actually answering some other question that magically appeared to replace the question really asked. It’s almost like entering an alternative universe for a while.

Sadly, aggravated or not, the more practiced the deception <the more practiced the business magician is> the more likely you hesitate to step in <and the more you get aggravated as you hesitate> and correspondingly … the more many of these people actually believe deception works.

It is maddening.

Worse? If they are good at it, when someone responds to a question by not addressing the points of the question, thereby avoiding the issue itself, it doesn’t create unrelated discussion to the issue … it simply avoids the issue in totality.

Well. I am fairly sure we have all sat there in a meeting and watched something like this unfolding right before our eyes. The visceral response, the aggravation, we have to this ‘answer evasion’ situation is most likely found in the revelation it is occurring (watching it unfold before our eyes). Philosophically, we can see that through some internal conviction to retain something they feel like they should own <their reputation, their title, their perceived intelligence, their whatever> they justify evading the question.

Conviction. Yeah. I just used ‘internal conviction.’ This means their intentions reflect they are more important than not only the question itself … but you. You are not even dignified with an answer.

It is irksome <at its least worst>.

It is loathsome <at its most worst>.

Look. I give a partial pass to the asshats you can see who have some answer they want to give everyone, regardless of what question is asked, and blurt it out when given the opportunity. They haven’t deflected the question they just ignored it as unimportant to what they want to say and have been planning to say no matter what has been said up to that point. It’s the ones you know heard the question and just ignored it. Or avoided it. Or just didn’t answer it despite the fact they heard every word, every syllable and every intention from the question giver. In other words, they intentionally do not answer the question.

<envision a deep sigh here>

I want people to face questions head on. And what makes this even more aggravating is that you know these people are quite capable of taking things head on.

How do I know that? These are the same people who will attack, or ‘aggressively question’, the intentions of the question giver themselves. It is a common tactic for the answer avoiders. The natural instinct is to ‘defend’; to answer the attack. Fuck that. I want to say “just answer the fucking question asked.”

How else do I know these people are quite capable of taking questions head on? These are the same people who will attack, or ‘aggressively question’, the question itself. This is not a deflection tactic. This is a ‘turn the question back on itself’ tactic. And, once again, your natural instinct is to defend or, well, answer the question you are asked.  Aggravating. I want to say “just answer the fucking question asked, you shithead.”

And maybe what makes this ‘not answering the question asked’ so maddening is that we, most sane pragmatic business people, tend to sit back <after saying “WTF”> and try and unravel why it happened and what the hell just happened. Unless you are in an interview scenario <in which you always have an opportunity, one-to-one, to hunker down and hammer out a clear answer> you are most likely in a room with other people and the non-answer has sent at least some of the people careening down a completely different road.

That makes it even MORE aggravating.

One intentional non answer to a question can completely derail a meeting or a discussion. That is intentional discourse. Or how about the other phrase from that academic’s book: engaging in an intentional continuum.

Oh. One last way you know these asshats are intentionally not answering the question is when they cleverly decline to answer the question with the infamous head fake answer: “I don’t know the answer to that question. I’ll work on finding the information for you and then get back to you with an answer” <and they have no intention of ever getting back to you>.

Yeah. You know … sure as shit … they have no plans to work on it and will never ‘get back to you’ unless you call them on it. They are intentionally refusing to answer the question assuming the conversation will move on and, in a laundry list of other shit to do, that this one will either never make the list or be so low on the list they can stiff arm you on answering based on “working on things more important.”

Its bullshit. You know its bullshit. They know its bullshit.

Well.

Fuck you.

Fuck you and the non-answering horse you rode in on.

In my mind a good well-articulated question demands some accountability. The one given the question is now accountable for the answer. They may try and deflect and they may just answer a completely different question, but a question asked exists, it does not disappear. You cannot get away from it.

Let me share a graphic example of why accountability remains whether the question dodger likes it or not.

You open your front door in the morning and there is a nice pile of dog shit squarely in the middle of your front door opening. You either clean it up or you avoid it. The question dodger never acknowledges the pile and steps over it moving on to something else. The shit stays at the front door and over time the smell increases and the flies crowd around. A good question unanswered is just like that. And a question dodger cannot avoid the smell in the end.

All that said. My message to the asshats who completely do not answer the question asked:  You will be accountable to the question and to cleaning up the mess … now … or later <and quit aggravating me by not answering the question, you shithead>.

====

Author note:

When I reread this, which took me less than a ½ hour to write, I was a little surprised by how … well … aggravated the tone was.

Some ‘fucks’ and ‘asshats’.

I left it as is because as a 50something business guy who has always attempted to take on what needs to be taken on regardless of how painful it may have been <and career wise possibly less than prudent> I get a little angry about how the business world has become incredibly unkind to the risk takers & truth tellers and seems to reward the less-than-competent and ‘political maneuverers’ more often than it should. That’s my excuse for why I let this one stand as it does.

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

———————

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

James Russell Lowell

———————-

“I would rather die right then live wrong.”

———————–

“Winners win.” This is a popular theme across LinkedIn, twitter and, well, social media in general. Every time it pops up at the end of some thought I cringe. Not all of those who win are created equal. Shitbags win, too. Which leads me to say not all who win really ‘winners.’

In fact. It is a self-evident phrase, a backwards looking results phrase, which emits a slightly odious taint:

• • A caste system: where winners rule over losers

  • A system of winning: an emphasis on being a winner tends to beget a ‘win at all cost’ mentality

  • An implied system: anything other than winning is of less value (it could have some value but never as much as a win) and anyone who wins has something that a loser does not have (it doesn’t have to be good, just something)

Let me begin with winning is a finite game pursuit – someone wins, someone loses. Bluntly, the only way to win is to end something and in that end, one arises as alive and another, or others, lie dead in the winner’s wake.  This has a number of problems but from a people perspective, with business outcome perspective, the visionaries, long term strategists or ‘future proof’ performers tend to be Infinite players. Infinite players do not seek wins, they seek progress, new beginnings and new iterations. In fact. They create games for winners to win. I begin with that thought with an understanding that most of the world, and business, operates in a zero-sum game universe where we compete for wins, victories and what would be taken away from us if we didn’t approach it this way.

Regardless.

Let’s talk about winning.

Let me begin with Roberto Duran – “a loser.”

 

“No mas, no mas,” Roberto told the referee.

“No more box.”

And he walked to his corner.

 

Now. As a boxer Roberto Duran was known as an intense warrior in the ring. His nickname was Hands of Stone <Manos de Piedra>. He was the lightweight champ and had lost only one decision in 72 bouts <or something close to that>. It was said that he never thought he could ever lose. And, yet, in possibly the biggest fight in his career, he walked away, he ‘quit’. A big check in the win/loss column <on a number of levels>.

But.

Here’s the deal.

“No mas” didn’t mean ‘I quit.’ It just meant ‘fuck this.’ It was purely a comment made in disgust.

Yup.

Duran wasn’t hurt. He was disgusted.

Once Duran realized Leonard wouldn’t play ‘quien es mas macho’ he just walked away. Winning, if he couldn’t fight the way he thought a fight should be fought … well … it just wasn’t a fight to him.

Was he right or wrong?

Shit. I do not know.

In his head he was right.

In many other people’s heads? He was wrong – it made him a quitter in their eyes, you know, “winners win” no matter what.

But maybe it’s not as simple as that. Maybe this is all about winning the way you want to win. Remember his words: “Getting hit motivates me. It makes me punish the guy more. A fighter takes a punch, hits back with three punches.” Look. Duran was the champ. He probably was smart enough to figure out a way to win the way Sugar Ray was fighting the fight <which wasn’t fighting that evening, it was avoiding>, but that wasn’t the win he wanted.

He wanted to know who the best fighter was.

He wanted to be hit and see if he could take it.

He wanted to see if Sugar Ray could take his best hits.

When Sugar Ray decided he wasn’t going to allow that to happen Duran just said ‘not only do I not want to play this game but I don’t want to win this way.’ In other words: “no mas.”

To be clear. Other people who think winning is all that matters will think he was full of shit and I am full of shit. It doesn’t really matter because, well, that’s my point.

My point is we will all, at some point, have to make this same type of decision – in sports, in Life, in relationships, in business. We all have to decide how important how we win is to us.

How you win, or play the game, is a very personal decision. It really ends up being your choice with regard to your attitude <which ultimately influences your own behavior … even when that behavior is within a group or business organization>.

Conversely, when it isn’t your choice how to play <i.e., someone else is dictating how you play> and you really do not want to play that way, well, there is trouble <in River City my friends>.

Ok. Please note I am going to make some generalizations soon to make some points and I fully understand there are degrees within each generalization.

Regardless. Let’s say there are three types of wins and winners:

–          A ‘whatever it takes to win’ win

–          An intellectual win

–          An ability win

And while this is probably relevant to Life, in general, as well as sports <obviously> and personal, I am going to discuss this idea in a business environment. 

Why? Because I tend to believe this is one of the most difficult attitude & behavior decisions someone has to make in business. Organizations ask, and demand, many things of you and you have to reconcile all of it with your own attitude and inevitably your actions <behavior>.

As a junior person this is very difficult to manage, but my suggestion is that you get things set <with the best knowledge you have> in your own head and then look to the leaders behavior. Watch the senior people and how they treat going after a win, the process in win decision making and then how they define & evaluate the win.

Make sure it matches up with what you have decided attitudinally.

If you do not, you run the risk of being constantly put in positions where you do not like what you are not only being asked to do, but what you are doing.

Senior business people have no excuses.

No if, ands or buts. How they win defines them as a business person.

All I can say to them is accept it <whichever type you are> and know that others may view ‘winning’ in a different way.

The only point I have to really make to leaders is that once you accept how you go after a win then begin recruiting people who think as you do. If you do not, then you will be forcing your attitudes & behavior upon others who probably do not want to, let alone like to, do it that way. And I can also promise you when it comes to evaluation time, as a leader, you will be continuously disappointed in their performance.

** note: I am aware that this advice, on occasion, breeds some fairly toxic business cultures but I would suggest that this keeps the ‘win at all cost people’ in their own pasture so that the other types of winners can foster their own business cultures. In addition, it is my personal belief that, in the end, the ‘win at all cost people’ will lose to the others.

Anyway.

The three wins <my perspective> and how they are different aspects of ‘adept, adapt & adopt.”

A whatever it takes to win.

I actually refer to this as an empty win. This is typically the type of win done by someone who says afterwards “all that matters is the result” or “it’s not the journey it is the destination” or “winning is everything.” It is empty because the person runs a very large risk that how you actually got to the win is ignored and everything gets measured <in their personal character measurement> on a scorecard.

I admit. I don’t like these types of wins.

But there is a personality type out there, and some very successful people, who take pride in how many checks are in the win column and could care less how they got to them.

To these people all wins are quality wins because, well, it is a win.

Typically, really competitive people fall into this group.

I call this “adept” winning. You compete because you are adept at reading what it takes to win and doing it.

“Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people.”

This person isn’t adapting because they understand winning is about lining up the necessary variables each time. So, they aren’t adapting, but rather simply building each time to win. And they aren’t adopting anything because while some things can be reused it is mostly one time usage, transactional, winning. These types of winners are very difficult to replicate through training. And these types of winners have to be very careful in how far they will go to win.

They have bigger boundaries of accepted behavior because of the adept attitude and because of that they can stray to the boundary margins of character, laws, principles and dignity. 

But it is the win numbers in this group that is most satisfying.

Just to put things into perspective. Out of all three groups I have listed this one probably will chalk up the most quantity of wins in the end.

The intellectual win.

You truly outsmart someone <or outsmart the problem or situation>. You out think or tear apart the challenge in such an innovative way that your competition can just look afterwards and say … “wow … that was smart.” Heck. It doesn’t even have to be innovative. It could simply be effective navigation of a complex system and dynamic situation. This is as good as a physical <ability> win, but unfortunately many people do not evaluate it that way.

In fact many of the intellectual winners kind of wish they had some other tangible contribution because thinking is intangible.

This type of winning is ‘adapt & adopt” winning. You compete by adapting your thinking to the situation and adopting new ideas/thinking <it’s a contextual win>.

These types of winners I tend to believe are just born this way. Yes. Some aspects can be trained, but these types of winners just seem to have an innate ability to see things, have excellent situational awareness skills, assess what matters versus what doesn’t matter and assimilate the “what matters” information into either unique, or refreshingly different, useful ideas and thoughts. 

This is a very satisfying win because you out thought someone AND the situation.

An ability win.

This is ‘mano y mano.’ You bring your best and I will bring my best and let the best win.

Here is the deal. Sometimes your best isn’t the better. And you lose. Oh. But what a loss. 

This one is near & dear to my heart.

I admit that I got really really lucky early in my career in that I was encouraged to go for this kind of ‘no frills’ winning and use losses to make my best better so that each consecutive ‘game’ I was able to stay true to what I was good at and it got better and better. Maybe it was partially I was stubborn on my definition of best or maybe I figured out what I was good at <even if it wasn’t the best of the best … just good while still being my personal best> early on and figured that if this was what I was good at, well, then I would only rise as high as my ‘best’ would take me. To be clear. As I pointed out in the ‘whatever it takes’ win, I imagine my win scorecard would be less full than theirs. They, I imagine, have a higher quantity of wins.

Anyway. This type of continuous winning is “adopt & adapt” winning. You compete … learn … adopt some new skills <skill level or new skill> and then adapt within your existing skill set to the next challenge. This means your muscle group gets stronger and stronger. This type of win is extremely satisfying. I also envision this group has the lowest actual total wins. They are the highest quality wins just not a shitload of them.

Well. 

I would argue that is the real differentiator in quality wins, how good you really are. And I guess that is going to be my point having used one of the best boxers of all time. He was one of the best.

“Manos de Piedra”, is true, Hands of Stone. Every punch, and I’m not exaggerating, every punch that he hit me with, from the body to the head, felt like bricks, stone, rocks”.

Sugar Ray Leonard

And not all of us are of that level of ‘best.’ In fact, not many people are. So, you have to figure what is most important to you in the win.

The numbers?

The intellectual win?

The ability win?

Choose and embrace that is what makes you … well … you … in the business world.

Know when to say “no mas.”

Know when to say ‘fuck this.’

Know that ‘winners win’ is bullshit.

Look.

Do I give Sugar Ray credit for figuring out how to win by avoiding the Hands of Stone? Sure.

Would I have done it that way? Nope <and I probably would have lost>.

Do I give Duran credit for just saying ‘no mas’ after 8 frustrating rounds? Yup.

He was the champ. He cared more about how he won the championship than the championship itself.

Now that, my friends, is a lesson that many of us should take to heart in business.

Figure out what you want, and how you want to do it, and find your place in the business world doing it because, in the end, your wins will define what type of winner you are.

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“The life so short, the craft so long to learn.”

Hippocrates

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“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”

John Derbyshire

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

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

How many times have we sat back and said “I can do that job”?

Now. To be clear. I am going to talk about this from a business-to-business perspective and not the corner of the bar-to-‘some job’ perspective because from the corner of the bar, after a couple of beers, any of us can do any job better than the person who is currently doing it.

This is an “I have been in the workplace, I feel like I have had some success and … well … shit … I can do that job” perspective.

OK. I am chuckling a little, c’mon, let’s face it, I don’t care who you are and where you have worked, you have eyed what another person is doing and thought you could do it. At some point, if you have had some success, all jobs start having some commodity-like characteristics which tease you into believing shifting from one to another just isn’t that difficult.

Ok. To be fair. I have never lacked in business confidence. I do not believe there is a business problem that cannot be solved and I also believe <with some realistic pragmatic goggles on> that there is not a problem I cannot solve if I hunker down and get all the information I need. This can make me aggravating to work with on occasion because, well, I make no apologies for “how I may repair things”.

But that shouldn’t be confused with believing I can do any job.

Ok.

Yeah.

I admit.

I am certainly guilty at points in my career where I have certainly thought “I could do that job” over a wide array of responsibilities and unrelated industries.

** Note. I rarely thought I could do it better … just that I could do it.

……….. my MBA at Wake Forest experience ………..

I would say that my MBA experience, a great experience with great professors at Wake Forest, encouraged me to think this way. It was a case study program which inherently encouraged thinking skills over black & white discipline skills. I tend to believe a good MBA program insures you know enough about a specific discipline to be dangerous if you overestimate your own knowledge, but effective enough to be able to understand the discipline to apply it in a general management scope.

Now.

In general, I think this attitude, on the positive side, permits you to make the leaps you have to make to jump into new jobs, new responsibilities and new positions.

In general, I think this attitude, on the negative side, can make you overlook some skills other people have as well as … at its worst … can put you in positions in which you will fail in a spectacular fashion.

I imagine as someone gets promoted, as I did, every step up showed me that there was a shitload I didn’t know overall, as well as about the responsibilities of a specific job, but at the same time it also continuously reinforced that I could “do that job.”

Success in business is a double edged sword.

Conversely.

………. what you know versus what you do not know ………

As someone gets promoted they also can see that some people got their jobs not because they necessarily had the experience or skills for the job, but simply because they had the appearance they could do the job.

You watched as these people invested gobs of energy trying to “fake it until they actually make it” or, worse, they realized they were in over their heads and invested even more energy simply maintaining a facade of bullshit to hide their hollowness.

I would also note that given your experience on the last thing I just shared that also encourages someone to believe they could, well, “do that job.”

The higher I got and the broader my experiences, my sense of “I cannot really do that job” increased with regard toward the jobs I really shouldn’t do. It didn’t diminish my sense of ability to handle increased responsibility, it simply made me more reflective of other skill sets and the reality of certain jobs.

To be clear. There is a certain group of people who never reach this realization. They tend to be either sociopaths or oblivious narcissists, but they do exist.

Anyway. My real realization on this topic came when I reached a general management position <and did some consulting>.

It was there that I recognized jobs are like icebergs. 90% of a job you never see until you actually do the job. And to successfully do the part you don’t see needs a couple of things beyond the obvious ‘I need to be competent with regard to the specific skill itself’ aspect:

Attitude alignment

source: Tom Graves, Services and Disservices

This attitude goes way beyond the simplistic “I can do the job.” This attitude is more with regard to what you are actually good at.

As I have stated before I am more a renovator than a builder.  That is a mindset. My attitude is just put me in a room with all the puzzle pieces and I can rearrange them, maybe polish off a couple, maybe smooth out some edges that no longer fit well and put a different puzzle together that works better than the one that exists.

And then there are people who say ‘I envision a puzzle and build the pieces.”

Those are two different attitudes that, certainly, have some overlap but also, certainly, drive a different type of style and ability to succeed in one type of job versus another type of job. I believe many people are successful in their jobs, and new jobs, because they have the proper insight into themselves and position themselves well to take advantage of this insight.

I would also add that a leader who can see within a person’s ‘skill set’ to recognize this attitude will also be the type who can hire incredibly effectively. Not all leaders and hirers can. Some simply see the façade and surface abilities and believe they are easily transferable and hire them believing anyone can do the job if they have that appearance of a type of surface skill set.

The less-than-obvious skill set

… example of under the radar understanding (Juran Institute) …

Each skill, each specialty, has layers to its depth & breadth. Let’s say this is the “art” of the skill <I sometimes refer to it as “the shadow of your skill”>.

When you are a junior person you are demanded day in and day out to craft your pragmatic ‘non-artistic’ skills. You learn how to screw screws into holes efficiently and hammer nails into their proper places effectively.

As you gain seniority you are demanded to start incorporating the art aspects of your craft. I like to explain this as you have to learn to be more of an architect of your department, skill and specialty. By the way, not everyone can do his and not every department head is good at this and it tends to start filtering out those who move on to the next level … general management.

And if you move up even more into general management you are demanded to gain some skills in the “art” of combining all the skills into the overall progress of a company beyond the simplistic “are each department doing their fricking job.”

Ponder this.

In general the biggest difference between thinking you can do a job and actually being able to do the job is your less than obvious skill set. For example … I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a conference room with a CFO who has displayed a skill set that made me think “shit, this company is lucky to have them” not because they knew all the accounting mumbo jumbo, but because they knew how to wield account skills in ways that  the company benefited beyond accounting.

Pick your C-level title and I would say the same thing.

At the corner of the bar you have no clue whether you have this ‘less than obvious skill set’ and if you actually have the experience you may only have a sense of whether this skill set exists. This is an intangible, however, 90% of the time this intangible arises from some relevant experience <maybe not within that specific discipline but a discipline nonetheless> … so your experience does matter.

So.

I decided to write about this today because, frankly, as a business guy I know you cannot do a job simply because you say “I can do that job” and that experience really does matter and that simply because you believe something … <sigh> … does not make it so.

I will say that I have learned this lesson the hard way and it permits me to be able to call a bullshitter a bullshitter and to be able to point out that some roles & responsibilities dictate at least some relevant experience in order to be effective & efficient. Just because you think you can “do that job” does not mean you can actually “do that job.” It takes some self-awareness to know that.

The lack of self-awareness has a ripple effect.

In a bar your lack of self-awareness can create a range of responses – some chuckles, out right laughter of disbelief and maybe even some aggravation if it inches into what some of the people actually do sitting at the table.

In a business your lack of self-awareness can create some real business repercussions. Not only may you be out of your depth, but you may actually start making some poor hires who are also out of their depth and that kind of shit gathers negative momentum <down the slippery slope of less-than-competent results>.

In business you get fired for that shit.

In business that kind of shit gets the entire business in trouble.

Anyway. Not everyone can do a job. That’s the message of the day.

Going back into the ‘wayback machine’ because Trump never really seems to go away – he is kind of like ‘the gift that keeps giving’ (gonorrhea). Here is the quote of the day from 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump:

“What do I know?” Trump replied. “All I know is what’s on the internet.”

Well.

This actually explains a lot.

Credible sources track Trump comments/claims he made in 2015/16 running at about 75% false (it never stopped for 5 years). But maybe we know why. He clicks on Wikipedia or urban dictionary or instagram <scanning an image with some quote or factoid> or Fox or Newsmaxx and then tweets it out or parrots it in on-air interviews.

He has no credible sources, he never has, and he just makes shit up or maybe even worse, he doesn’t truly think about what he believes.

Ok.

Now ponder this Trump wisdom oldie, but goodie.

 

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. My primary consultant is myself and I have – you know, I have a good instinct for this stuff.”

Well, Donald, that sounds quite reasonable. It’s not as if the world, let alone the Middle East, Ukraine, the South China Sea, is particularly complex or that there are nuanced delicate diplomatic situations or even that it is important to get it right. I imagine just going on instinct makes sense. Or maybe go on the internet because there you will surely find all the answers you will need.

<note some heavy sarcasm there>

When I read what he said at that time I thought of a Samuel Adams quote:

—-

“If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

Samuel Adams

——

With Trump we faced a vain man, maybe the vainest of vain, maybe even one with Narcissistic Disorder, and an aspiring man – one who aspires with no rules, no boundaries, seemingly no moral imperative, or any trivial nuisance that could get in the way of a win.

Back in March 2016 I stated it this way:

He appears, alarmingly so, to be free of any actual solutions.

He appears to be free, alarmingly so, of any real policy <beyond his ‘good instincts for this stuff.”

He appears to be free,  alarmingly so, to offer frighteningly hollow rhetoric.

He is the ruin, not of the country <we will still be standing despite him>, but he is the ruin of what makes the country great <which is not simply ‘winning’ as he suggests it is>.

In my little corner of the world I did everything in my power to convince everyone of the sham Trump is and what he offered.

Why?

I will refer to Samuel Adams again <and let everyone who has not spoken out yet think about these words>:

—

“… the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.”

Samuel Adams in The Boston Gazette 14 October 1771

—

Speak out now. For what we say, and do, today has an impact, an impact that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

We seek to circumvent the miserableness for the millions yet unborn.

Well. I wrote the original of this in March 2016. One could suggest, given Trump’s resilient fan base, that I failed in my efforts to make people understand what a sham he is, and was. I say that because while I had hoped the exhausting 5 year Trump episode of stupid West Wing was cancelled, it has not and I forge on discussing Trump, trying to make people understand one by one, and walking people through how a grifter is not only what they want but what America needs. I share this today because silence is not an option and simply ignoring him will not make him, or his believers, go away. Festering wounds do not go away on their own. I am not asking everyone to walk the same path I am, just ponder.

========

Toby Ziegler <West Wing>:

“We don’t know what the next president is going to face. If we choose someone with vision, someone with guts, someone with gravitas, who’s connected to other people’s lives and cares about making them better; if we choose someone to inspire us then we’ll be able to face what comes our way and achieve things we can’t imagine yet.”

———-

——–

“Interestingly, Koi, when put in a fish bowl, will only grow up to three inches. When this same fish is placed in a large tank, it will grow to about nine inches long. In a pond koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world. “

Vince Poscente

———

So. I almost called this ‘lost and found.’ 

———

“We all get lost once in a while, sometimes by choice, sometimes due to forces beyond our control. When we learn what it is our soul needs to learn, the path presents itself.  Sometimes we see the way out but wander further and deeper despite ourselves; the fear, the anger or the sadness preventing us returning. Sometimes we prefer to be lost and wandering, sometimes it’s easier.  

Sometimes we find our own way out.

But regardless, always, we are found.”

Cecelia Ahern

——–

 Life, and understanding ourselves, is very often found in uncovering the obvious. This is the stuff that is so damn obvious and yet seems to get lost among all the other shit we have to do on our to do lists and what people tell us we should be thinking about <and sometimes even how we should think>.

And then … once in a while … we get a little lucky … and that which is lost among the blindingly obvious … is found.

We learn what it is we need to learn about ourselves and, well, ‘the path presents itself.’

Now. Let me be clear on two things.

First. This is nothing like uncovering the obvious in business. Business is where the idiots attempt to make the obvious extraordinary.

In personal life we are oblivious as to how the obvious is our extraordinary.

** note: this should make people think about how often we confuse what is important in Life and important in business

I find it painfully funny that in business we strive to make the obvious ordinary extraordinary <going to some relatively absurd levels to do so> and in personal life we strive to make the obvious so extraordinarily ordinary <going to some relatively absurd levels to do so>.

Second. This is not about all those studies and videos where they have a frickin’ gorilla walk thru a bunch of people playing basketball and you ask people to tell you how many passes were made and a majority of people do not even see the gorilla.

That is about seeing what you expect to see.

This is about ignoring, or dismissing, the obvious.

All that said.

I do not know one person who has not felt lost at some point in their Life. They may only glimpse ‘lostness’, they may be stuck in ‘lostness’, they may visit the vast array of ‘lost options’ in between, but everyone has visited some version of ‘lost.

It is the most visited vacation spot in the world.

And while visiting this hellacious vacation spot you invariably start looking anywhere and everywhere for clues on how to get out of this self defined hellhole.

And therein we find ourselves discussing the obvious and the overlooked.

We tend to seek out the details and pay attention to the small <if not minute> details and nurture these details in our heads <sometimes nurturing them to a point which enables them to grow to some disproportionate huge size> seeking something which could be regarded as “what makes us unique” and simply disregard the obvious.

—

It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

Mae West

—

Regardless.

Yes.

Details matter.

Yes.

When staring at your navel seeking inner truth there are a bunch of little things that can matter.

Yes.

In reality major changes can most often be found by discovering the most obvious and accepting the obvious as meaningful.

Yes.

It’s amazing how often we miss what’s right in front of us, the things we just don’t notice, even when they’re staring us in the face.

So.

How does his happen?

Our brains take in millions of bits of information every minute and we have this filtering system which attempts to make reason of everything without making us insane and, yet, that filtering system seems to work a little too well with regard to some of the most obvious things. Our brains have a built in innate ability to overlook the obvious as so obvious it must be meaningless < with regard to ‘why I think the things I do or why I do the things I do’>.

The obvious is simply the expected. And maybe think of ‘the expected’ in two ways:

–          Expected as unremarkable.

I begin with his because if we believe the expected is unremarkable, we naturally zoom by them delving deeper or at least somewhere else for ‘the remarkable.’ Our brains tell us the obvious things about us CAN”T be remarkable so there has to be something else! <most people say pleadingly>.

–          Expected things are flaws.

Oddly we almost always look at the obvious as our imperfections — the flaws and weaknesses that make us ‘lesser than’ in some form or fashion.

We do this instead of looking at the obvious, the sometimes seemingly ‘blah’ aspects of ourselves or the surface imperfections, as the things that make us distinct, maybe unique, and often remarkable in our own way.

All that said.

Suffice it to say self awareness is tricky.

Tricky in that while we may have good intentions we can tend to focus on the wrong things.

Or maybe worse?

Simply remain oblivious to the right things.

And the right things?

Sometimes they are simple.

The obvious stuff.

Maybe we should be taking a closer look at the obvious to better gain some self awareness.

Maybe we don’t need to invest so much energy delving any further than the obvious.

Maybe we should practice thinking about ‘what haven’t I noticed that might be worth noticing?’

Maybe we just need to take a look at some of the most obvious things right in front of you.

Look. I am not a betting man, but you can bet your ass there’s at least one that you’ve been oblivious to.

It is a Life truth that the most obvious things can disappear in front of our eyes and the most obscure seems to so often step into the spotlight.

We seem to prioritize obscure over obvious.

Uh oh.

Prioritizing one thing and neglecting everything else are two sides of the same coin.

===

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”

S.E. Hinton

===

The main example in everyday life is the grind. The grind is overlooked, but obvious. In the digital age of ‘overnight’, often obscure, but obvious, success stories in the grind are easily overlooked.

Yes.

We are constantly overlooking much of the world around us and no, there is nothing mysterious about it. The key is to realize that this is just what attention is – selectivity. For a brain has a relatively infinite computing power, but we tend to put a telescope focus on one thing which means picking up less information about everything else. That’s how we are able to concentrate on anything at all and shut out distractions.

Oddly, uncovering the obvious may simply come down to discerning intent versus reality. When seeking self awareness we tend to have some idealized intentions which demeans reality. And by demeaning <or diminishing the importance of> reality it often makes personal insights seem impossible to find in obvious things <i.e., it cannot be insightful if it is obvious>.

Well.

That is just damn silly.

Whole truths and actionable insights are more often found in the obvious.

The most obvious windows will provide the best views.

We learn what we learn about ourselves through not ignoring the obvious, but seeing the obvious as it really is and by doing so the path presents itself.

And circling back to the opening thought, maybe the most important thought is that which is lost can be found in the most obvious.

Ponder.

===

“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too.

Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it.

Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”

Gore Vidal

===

“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.”

George Orwell

===

Well.  I thought it was time to pull out my thoughts on political correctness. Let me begin with the poster child of political correctness – Merry Christmas. Well. I am not really sure when Merry Christmas got hijacked by Happy Holidays, but I wish I had been there to repulse the hijackers. Look. I am clearly sensitive to responses to Merry Christmas and am more than happy to pull my Happy Holidays greeting out of my seasonal greeting joy bag when appropriate but, in general, most people recognize that I like Christmas in spirit, not spiritually, and I am simply wishing everyone a little bit of the magic we call Christmas during this time of the year. But, frankly, political correctness has made it significantly harder to authentically spread joy by demanding people to actually think about what they will say (I imagine this could be good – be thoughtful before you speak – or it could be bad – takes the spontaneous out of the joy wish). In the end. Where political correctness got us during the holidays is either spew soft joyful platitudes or defiantly stabbing people with a Merry Christmas.

That is where political correctness has taken us. To be clear. I think everyone believes the idea of political correctness has gone too far.

That said. My thoughts today are about that political correctness has beget an even more heinous idea – ‘anti-political correctness’. It has become the flag bearer for anything that anyone wants to say which can span from tactless ignorance to blind ignorance to, at its best, true common sense clarity <called “talking simply” by many people>.

The trouble we are running into is all three of those are amalgamating into one big blob of things being said.

Basically, anti-political correctness is becoming the go-to answer for anything people may object to. What I mean by that is you can now say the stupidest thing known to mankind, someone can point out that it is stupid <even in a tactful way>, and the answer is almost always “I am tired of political correctness standing in the way of truth.”

Basically, we are now facing the backlash to an overextended political correctness from people sick of being told that they have to admit things that they don’t really believe <or think>.

Individuals are realizing they are individuals and that they don’t have to play by the same rules as a large corporation or the ‘pretentious few who try and speak for the many.’ Speaking out has become independent of anything other than “I”, i.e., what is in MY mind, and feel like they will say whatever the fuck they feel like saying. In other words, many people are standing up and saying “I am society so why can’t I speak for society” <as if that was as easy as I just typed>.

Well. Let state the obvious point. Among the many cases in “the problems in the world today”, political correctness isn’t standing in the way of truth; stupidity <or irresponsible thinking & speaking> is. But, and this is a big ‘But’, overreaching political correctness does create a problem and it HAS created a problem in some people’s minds and it is now being released <and some of our leaders are taking advantage of it>.

Look. I am absolutely with many people who suggest political correctness has become a bigger problem than the problem it was intended to try and address. However … maybe … just maybe … instead of ignoring the original good intent of political correctness <encourage tact and sensitivity to others’ feelings around issues of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, physical abilities/disabilities … among other things> maybe we go back to its original intent and just keep the ground rules a little simpler and stop its invasion into the minutiae of Life and what we say.

We need to keep the ground rules simple because this effort to not offend has spiraled into a type of verbal censorship, certainly has generated conflict and sometimes seems to infringe upon some fundamental freedoms.

We need to take a close look at this <without completely rejecting it> because what constitutes offensive or unacceptable speech has bled into the minutiae in everyday Life approaching simple everyday actions bludgeoning Life into a … well … wussified world.

We need to “fix” political correctness because we do need some harsh truths. We need some ‘edges’ in the world view. We need to discuss them, express them and debate them. We need a little, well, enlightened conflict.

All that said that doesn’t mean that under the guise of some sense of individual sincerity <“I truly feel this way”> that good taste and respectful of what others think & feel has to be sacrificed <this is the balancing act> – everyone should show respect for your audience and any audience you are speaking about.

Words carry some responsibility beyond “what I feel.”

Yet. Political correctness has become a nomenclature for “not being able to speak what you feel” so words start getting thrown around without any thought beyond … ‘this is what I feel.’ Well. Sometimes what we feel is not what we know <knowledge is different than feeling> and what we feel may seem like truth, to us, but it is tainted by everything we do not know <therefore is nothing more than an opinion> and, frankly, sometimes what we feel should be kept to ourselves.

Let’s be clear. We got to this point because many of us were afraid to speak something for fear it offends someone rather than for fear it may actually be stupid, ignorance or just wrong <I say this because this creates misguided thoughts in one’s head on how to correct the situation>. Therefore, by overcoming our fear of offensiveness we simply roar our way into stupidity, ignorance or wrongness under the guise of simple speak or simply speaking our mind.

This also translates into the belief that all of a sudden those who decide to eschew being politically correct have decided they are smart or smarter than everyone else or , at minimum, as smart as everyone else. So smart that they can say whatever they believe and simply point to ‘I refuse to be politically correct’ when challenged over any stupidity they may be spewing.

====

Commenter: JoeAmerica • 4 hours ago

Get off my back libtard, you can’t control my speech.

====

It becomes words of stark harshness because there is no version of modesty, respect or dignity in the harsh backlash to political correctness.  And why should there be any concern for those things when you are simply stating common sense? <that is the logic>. And you get the added bonus of sticking it up the pretentiousness of, well, everyone who has even a tinge of respect for decorum or what someone may truly be offended by.

====

“Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.”

Jacques Barzun

===

We now have organized hatred, anger and frustration. And these organizations <and some leaders words feeding on those organizations> use words that can shame, ridicule, and humiliate … delivered not with the intent to  deliver the shame or ridicule, but to show “my point of view & thoughts should be heard!”

Anti-political correctness has simply tapped into a pent up sense of relief that people can debate and talk in simple terms. Corporate speak and political language and marketing bullshit sayings and even tmotivational speak is dying.

No. It is being killed.

To be clear. All this ‘non political correctness bullshit is not just ‘simple talk’ <therefore the path to solving this issue isn’t simplicity or ‘dumbed down’> it is simply monologue stripped of political correctness.

It is addition by subtraction.

Do I like it? Of course not.

Do I understand it? Yes, I surely do.

It needs to be addressed for the good of society and what is going on in our heads.

Someone can get a grip on this without having to be plain-spoken <which implies ‘dumbing down’>, it can be managed intellectually and smartly because, frankly, the people who are most frustrated with political correctness ain’t dumb.

=====

“Democracy was supposed to champion freedom of speech, and yet the simple rules of table decorum could clamp down on the rights their forefathers had fought and died for.”

E.A. Bucchianeri

=====

Here is why they aren’t dumb.

This is what they see. They see that we are in a bad place with political correctness because if we have to constantly censor any conversation pertaining to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or physical ability/disability, then it seems like we will simply bury the issues and perpetuate that what exists in the minds of people without taking the opportunity to confront them. This means in the effort to protect everyone’s feelings we have essentially lost, or willingly sacrificed, the edges and imposed the wretched middle on everyone.

This wretched vacuous middle hinders progress with regard to understanding different perspectives, viewpoints, feelings, and doesn’t really permit the discussion of real life experiences in the harsh light of reality but instead in muted thoughts of what should be discussed.

Anyway. Here is my real fear about this whole political correctness shitstorm.

Inclusiveness versus exclusiveness.

While the intent of political correctness was to make a more inclusive society and rhetoric it is now creating divisive rhetoric in which society is splintering.

While I could argue that it was pious arrogant intellectuals who created the overblown political correct environment we are chafing against, it is the everyday mostly white middle aged people who are now clearly anti-political correct.

=====

The angriest and most pessimistic people in America are the people we used to call Middle Americans. Middle-class and middle-aged; not rich and not poor; people who are irked when asked to press 1 for English, and who wonder how white male became an accusation rather than a description. You can measure their pessimism in polls that ask about their expectations for their lives—and for those of their children.

On both counts, whites without a college degree express the bleakest view. You can see the effects of their despair in the new statistics describing horrifying rates of suicide and substance-abuse fatality among this same group, in middle age.

The Atlantic

======

Regardless what you read about the anti-political correctness crowd <mostly embodied it seems by those who follow Trump around these days> they are not stupid, dumb nor ignorant. Some may have less education than the population median, but since when has education always been a reflection of true smarts <never>.

Yes. It is a mainly white population that is making up the anti-political correctness crowd, but we shouldn’t ignore what they are saying or feeling because of their skin color. Why? Because they have a point.

They are angry & frustrated with how political correctness has infringed upon their lives.

Now … when people get angry or frustrated they say things that they regret <or more likely they just don’t get articulated in the best possible way>.

I think this is pretty much a Life truth.

A lot of today’s frustration with what seems to be overreaching political correctness is being captured in a loud voice fighting back without any debate wordsmithing training other than what you may get sitting at the bar with a group of your friends yelling at each other.

That said. I think it is the responsibility of those in leadership positions to recognize the frustration with political correctness and permit frustrations and anger to be heard and respectfully listened to — the frustrated masses deserve that.

What they do not deserve is to have their anger flame fanned and encouraged. People deserve to be heard and offered solutions not someone simply agreeing with them and offering platitudes.

I think the leaders who will end up being the most successful in this ugly stage of political correctness will be the one who leads us to the proper respectful place – where we respect the fact that not all people believe in the same things, that all people have the right to believe in different things and say different things, that simply having a different point of view doesn’t mean you are an outcast, ignorant or stupid just that you view things differently and, finally, that there is balance.

It will be within balance that we will finally encounter inclusiveness and not divisiveness.

Let’s handle this discourse with some respect & dignity. Everyone deserves that. I don’t need a leader talking down to me and, frankly, I don’t need some leader suggesting my frustrations are the source of the problems of the world or my country.

Political correctness hasn’t created shit for problems other than it makes discussing things more difficult. Simply pointing that out isn’t a leader’s job. A leader offers solutions in a respectful way. They offer solutions to a group of people no matter what point of view they have. They speak TO the people without demeaning the larger view of ‘what we should be’ as people.

In the end. Political correctness has created some problems, but it is not a problem (despite what some politicians suggest). It hasn’t directly created what some idiots call “the cancel culture”, but, indirectly, anti-political correctness yahoos are actually canceling out voices. The intent behind political correctness actually does have good merit – forcing society to face some harsh truths. What I would now suggest is we talk about some of those harsh truths rather than cancel them out.

** note: This does not mean everyone can say whatever they want wherever they want. Lies or, worse, heinous activity, shut not be permitted a platform. Eliminating their platforms is not political correctness nor is it censor, it is consequences for bad behavior.

This is not censorship. This is consequences.

==========

updated from December 2015

—

“You have to break rules to break free.”

Tinker Bell

===

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Alan Kay

—

A new year is always a reflective moment and a pandemic certainly does amplify the urge to reflect. Coincidentally, whenever asked about the effect of Covid on, well, everything, I say one word: amplify. It has simply amplified everything – uncertainty, change, technology (some people call it ‘digital transformation), existing business vulnerabilities, Life vulnerabilities as well as business strengths, opportunities & risks, etc., as well as certainty.

Yeah. It has also amplified both uncertainty and certainty.

The pandemic shone a spotlight on the fact uncertainty is not the sole owner of fear & risk that even certainty contains aspects of fear. And a lot of fear.

I can know exactly what I want to do, I can know exactly what certain steps I need to take, I can even know with certainty what my quest looks like, and fear will still dog you every step of the way.

Let’s be honest. Certainty was not supposed to feel this way.

While we like to say ‘change is my constant companion and friend’ it is quite possible fear will shed its superficially bad perception cloak and take its place in public vernacular as “fear is my constant companion and friend.”

Look. I am not suggesting everyone curl up in a fetal position overcome with fear, but what I am suggesting is 2021 will be the acceptance of the fear of the known; the fear of certainty.

We are certain we will survive (because what is the alternative?) or, as my friend Murray Calder is teaching me, we will not survive and, yet, the quest goes on. Why? Because what is the alternative? And maybe that is the biggest lesson of 2020. The quest goes on, despite the fear, whether you are staring at certainty or uncertainty.

** note: Please note I am not suggesting one can become fearless, in fact, I think a fearless person is a lie. I am also not suggesting becoming ‘unfeared.’ I believe we have learned un-anything, let alone unfearing, takes a lot of energy and some sometimes-absurd contortionist reasoning.

I do not suggest embracing fear just as I am not suggesting ‘not fearing’ nor am I suggesting uncertainty is better, or worse, than certainty, but rather maybe just accept it all. Why? Because as a corollary to ‘the quest goes on despite the fear’; 99% of us have a 100% daily survival rate.

If a pandemic year has taught us anything, that last sentence & thought may be it.

Which leads me to Tinkerbell and moving forward and how people should accept fear is a valuable companion.

Peter Pan and Tinkerbell are volatile companions. They fight, they scoff at each other – maybe even show a little contempt for each other -, they make each other angry and jealous, but when it comes right down to it, they would each die for the other.

** note: The book version of TinkerBell, one of the most recognized characters in children’s literature, was certainly one of the feisty imperfect spectacular ‘doer’ type of people.

Considerably different than the Disney version.

Considerably more interesting than the Disney version and, more importantly, a reflection of the fact the world is not a Disney version.

They recognize they aren’t always perfect; the world isn’t always perfect and while sometimes they drive each other crazy they also realize those very characteristics that make each other crazy are also often the ones that make the other love them so much. They also recognize that the combination of their characteristics increases their likelihood of survival.

And while Peter Pan may have embraced not growing up, TinkerBell embraced “you have to break rules if you want to break free.”

The pandemic put a spotlight on rules, boundaries and norms. Some were needed and, well, some that existed before the pandemic simply became useless within the pandemic. We reflected on so many rules, so many things society tells you to do, so many things business tells you to do, and began to realize if you want to break free, if you wanted to find some success, shit, if you wanted to survive, you have to decide what you want to do – and be. In some way 2020 encouraged us to find our inner Tinkerbell.

The rules of the status quo, the rules of what we viewed as ‘certainties’, became silly cages to stand in. In fact, many of us began to realize fear was a silly cage. We saw uncertainty was actually the norm and certainty was also to be feared. What do I mean?

We stood in March and we knew, with certainty, it would be shit.

We stood in March and knew, with certainty, we would survive (we just didn’t know how).

We stood in March and we knew, with certainty, we would have to do different things.

There were a lot of knowns and, yet, many of us were shaken; even some fear. On other words. Fear was a certainty. And. Certainty was fear.

Uncertainty wasn’t the cage, certainty was. This, upon reflection, freaked us out. It freaked us out because the certainty cage has always been a comfortable cage for us. It has always barred us against the nastiness of the outside world. All of a sudden, the cage we accepted as a comfortable cage (or maybe not recognized we were in), the way it was supposed to be, some of the ‘certainties’ in Life, shit, even the uncertainties we normally accepted (including “life cannot be planned”) became simply wisps of smoke from the dumpster fire of 2020.

Suddenly we were free.

It may not have looked like freedom in March , but freedom it was.

And maybe, just maybe, we learned to think like a bit TinkerBell with this freedom.

She wasn’t always nice. She was feisty. She was willing to break rules. She had an imagination. I am not suggesting you shouldn’t be nice, but freedom does mean some shaking up of things, some discomfort and some conflict. Look. I am suggesting we need to ‘break some norms’, break some of the Life rules of emergent living (and, no, I do not mean not social distancing or wearing masks, etc.; but rather break some of our expectations of how Life is supposed to be lived), and break out with fear in hand.

Maybe break out our inner Tinkerbell.

It’s about flying.

It’s about finding and embracing the magic in Life.

It’s about recognizing the world has dark places, but still be willing to venture out

It’s about being nimble where evil <or ‘the bad’> tends to win thru stolid unmoving sturdiness.

It’s about not always being nice, but being true of heart.

It’s about being smart, not strong.

It’s about breaking some norms in order to be free.

It’s about using your pixie dust.

Far too many of us see a dark world and instead of imagining what could be simply hold on to something in the past because it <a> seems better and <b> seems safer (as known). It is our way of ‘unfearing certainty.’  I would argue we do not seek certainty, but rather seek unfearing aspects of our lives and, as a consequence, miss out on the magic in life.

Now. In the absence of a pandemic, in and of itself that seems like a good idea, but as everyone is doing it and as everyone decides to hold on to their ‘own thing’ we simply stay in our own little NeverLand.

** note: Peter Pan’s author made Neverland these places that are found in the minds of children and each is “always more or less an island” not the same from one child to the next.

Its not a good idea for two reasons.

• The pandemic pretty much blew up anything we had been holding onto that could possibly be ‘unfearing’ life
• That kind of thinking actually encourages is to become islands, avoiding adventure <except in our own mind> and not sharing adventure, and a pandemic clearly showed us to survive this ‘adventure’ you need others. Your Tinkerbell needed Peter Pan and Pater Pan needed Tinkerbell.

Anyway.

I think more of us need to seek our inner Tinker Bell in 2021. And in doing so we have a chance to refind the magic in Life and embrace fear and guide ourselves to new and better adventures not alone but together. Maybe in 2021 we stop valuing certainty over uncertainty, stop embracing uncertainty, and simply grab our fears, place them in pocket, and get up and go.

Aw.

This may sound silly.  This may sound Disneyesque <mostly if you haven’t actually read Peter Pan and only know the Disney Tinker Bell>.

But do not disregard the thought.

Tinker Bell sought something better even when faced with reality. She desired to create the future. She guided from adventure to adventure. She may not have liked all her companions, but she never desired less for them at the expense of something more for the ones who mattered most to her.

Oh. And she had pixie dust.

Metaphorically, I could argue we all have pixie dust it just seems irrational to think so in our rational brains.

Seek your pixie dust. Tap into your inner Tinker Bell. Have faith and maybe find a Peter Pan or two to trust on your quest. And maybe reflect on the fact the fear of the known, the certainty, is equal to the fear of the unknown/uncertainty, and that 2021 will be where norms are redefined, adventures will abound and Life’s value is found in valuing the fact 99% of us have a 100% daily survival rate.

====

“There’s a place they can go if they’re tired of chains,

And our roads may be golden, or broken, or lost,

But we’ll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost –

We won’t take our place on the shelves.

It’s better to fly and it’s better to die

Say the wicked girls saving ourselves.”

“Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves”>

—–