John Renesch: Exploring the Better Future

The Inverted Corporation: Shameful Organizational Citizenship

I read an article in Businessweek* the other day and learned more in detail about how U.S. corporations are avoiding federal taxes by a process called “inversion” – essentially having a post office box in a low-tax foreign nation as their “legal address” which subsequently means they needn’t pay taxes until they bring the funds back into the U.S.  

According to Americans for Tax Fairness, an estimated $90 billion a year in federal taxes are being avoided due to this manipulation. They further estimate that U.S. corporations are presently holding $2.1 trillion in untaxed profits offshore.

This deferral process can be delayed indefinitely as long as the earned profits remain offshore. Architects of the tax evasion scheme have called it “Flip Flop,” the “Panama Scoot” and other nicknames taking pride in the work they have done in both designing the scheme and defending it against IRS challenges over the past thirty years.

This year, according to Businessweek, “inversions have received more attention than ever, as well-known companies such as Burger King and Pfizer announced plans to change their addresses (Pfizer didn’t follow through).” According to Americans for Tax Fairness, “Burger King’s planned ‘inversion’ will allow the company and its leading shareholders to avoid an estimated $400 million to $1.2 billion in U.S. taxes between 2015 and 2018.”

If this practice is to be made illegal it must be done by Congress. In July, President Obama called the practice ‘an unpatriotic tax loophole’ and urged Congress to put a stop to it.” Businessweek quotes the President: “’My attitude is, I don’t care if it’s legal,’ he said earlier in 2014, ‘it’s wrong.’”

As far back as the 1980s, shortly after the first inversion deal was tested, a congressional committee called the scheme a “mockery” of the tax code. Despite this, corporate lawyers have succeeded in defending this practice year after year against the IRS lawsuits, resulting in more regulations, more laws and more complexity, “each permutation more complicated than the last,” according to Businessweek.

So Congress, can’t you go against all the lobbyists to whom you feel beholding and act in the best interest of your country, and close the loopholes that keep these trillions of unpaid tax dollars offshore? Any good citizen of this country pays their share of taxes to support all the services from which they benefit. This needs to include corporations, who are much bigger lobbyists than any individuals.

Shareholders in these corporations must approve these tax dodges. So, shareholders, if you own stock in a company that is planning one of these inversions consider disapproving it as a good deed of a responsible citizen.

Taxpayers, you are the ones being negatively impacted by this huge loss of tax revenue. Can’t you demand that your Congressmen and Congresswomen take a stand against this unfair evasion of taxes – this wrongful dodge of responsible corporate citizenry? Corporations have lobbied their way into having plenty of advantages already, including “personhood.” Let us require them to pay their share at least in this regard and deliver significant revenue to the federal coffers as well as returning a much needed multi-trillion dollar infusion of capital into our domestic economy.

*Bloomberg Businessweek, December 22-28, 2014, p. 50-53

Wealth Gap Unsustainable: Duh!

A friend of mine with a wonderful sense of humor is planning to publish a book whose working title is The Tao of Duh which will include examples of glaringly obvious, slap-myself-on-the-forehead “ahas” along with many personal witticisms of her own. I love the title (and the author, Leslie Eveland) and am urging her to get it to press ASAP. Meanwhile, I am amazed at how many glaring “duhs” there are out there and how we devour them as if they were not already obvious.

One example: In September 2014, Harvard published a study* declaring that the wealth gap is not only unsustainable but is growing worse. Why does it take a university like Harvard no less to publish something so obvious to anyone who is paying attention to current trends? Why do nearly 2,000 Harvard Business School alumni around the world need to be surveyed on this subject when anyone who is awake and observant of global developments already knows the trends and doesn’t need to read an expensive study to confirm it?

In a 2011 post to this blogsite I wrote about the growing wealth gap since Egypt’s Tahrir Square protests were fresh in our memories. I included the 2007 graph below to illustrate my point:

Even in this seven year old graph, the wealth gap had been widening for nearly thirty years. With the Harvard study just out, I looked for some more current stats and found this Federal Reserve comparison that brings us into 2014:

According to the St. Louis Fed, this graph shows that:

    U.S. economic growth is not translating into higher median family incomes. Real GDP per capita has     increased since the year 2000 [blue line here] while the real median income per household [red line     here] has not, indicating a trend of greater income inequality.

So the gap continues to widen. And like any widening crevasse it will eventually fracture or erupt, leading to a revolt of the disenfranchised, those who wake up to the reality that the scales are tipped to create more wealth for those who already have it. Anyone who has been paying attention to this multi-generational trend knows this and anyone who knows how people respond to mass injustice knows what is possible.

Can this really be news for anyone? Isn’t this obvious – the biggest duh of them all?

As Eveland likes to say, “A duh is not a duh when you don't get it.”

The Harvard study, which received tons of publicity in all major media outlets, was treated as big news. So apparently the media thought it was real news and they weren’t stating the obvious. Clearly, they didn’t “get it” yet either.

What happens when something is “unsustainable”? What happens when something cannot continue? Exploring potential scenarios about what it means is often avoided, possibly because such implications may not only be speculative, but also get really messy. What happens when an established powerful system grinds to a halt? My best guess is chaos of some sort – global system collapse, stock market crash, widespread depression, public demonstrations and rioting, and martial law, to name a few possibilities, come to mind.

Hopefully, there will be a political transformation whereby the injustices will be seen not only as unsustainable but grossly unfair and conscious thought leaders “who get it” will stand tall for large scale reform of the system before mass chaos breaks out.

For my conservative friends, I am not talking wealth distribution; I am talking about restoring our economic system to one that is truly a free market. I am talking about removing all the systemic advantages that have been put in place over the generations by those with power. The supposed “free market” isn’t really free anymore. It has been rigged. People know this; they may be pretending they don’t know this, but they do.

If this kind of courageous leadership does not emerge soon we might not be able to avoid a revolution of a more violent sort – one that could involve riots and bloodshed.

One way or another, there will be a revolution. It could be hard. Or it could be soft. That is our choice. And we don’t need a Harvard study to tell us that.



*Harvard report: "An Economy Doing Half Its Job"

Red Faced Again: A Writer’s Lesson

                                        William James (1842-1910)

Well, it happened again. I discovered a misattribution in a quote I have been using. For an author, this is a big deal, especially if one has been complicit in perpetuating the error! This is the third time I discovered one of these in twenty years, having been complicit on the first occasion, revealer of the truth on the second, and fully complicit in the most recent case. A quick review.

In the early to mid-1990s I was Editor-in-Chief of The New Leaders, a print based newsletter that published interviews, articles and reported stories for business people who were interested in organizational transformation and conscious business leadership. A colleague and good friend sent me a great quote by the newly-elected President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, supposedly part of his inaugural address. It had been published in another journal, one that I admired greatly.

We published it without checking it out any further. Here’s the quote:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Soon it was showing up everywhere – other periodicals, websites, and email signatures. Obviously, the world wanted to think Mandela had said this.

Shortly after we published the quote, popular U.S. author and spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson wrote the periodical where we first saw the quote and claimed she had written it and that it could be found in her book, A Return to Love. There it was, published a few years earlier than Mandela’s speech.

The rumors went flying! Mandela supposedly had read her quote during his speech. So, that’s how the misattribution occurred! Clearly, people wanted this fabulous quote to be from Mandela’s lips, even if he was quoting someone.

I wrote a letter to Mandela in South Africa. I sent one copy by mail and entrusted another copy of the same letter to a friend who was going to South Africa and assured me he could get into the President’s office. I received two separate replies from Mandela’s office, each stating that “he never uttered those words.”

So it was all a mistake and no one seemed to know how the mix-up occurred. I suspect there are still people who believe Mandela did speak the words but the truth is he did not. In the next issue of The New Leaders we printed a correction and gave credit to Williamson.

I felt somewhat relieved at our relatively rapid response and personally took on the role of “revealer of the truth” about this quote which I still get to perform from time to time today, twenty years later.

In the second case of misattribution, about eleven or twelve years ago I received an email from a friend and loved the quote in the signature of the email. Here’s the quote:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."

The name of the author – one “Harold Thurman Whitman” – was unfamiliar to me. We were in the early years of search engines (the pre-Google era) but I searched for more about this person. The only reference to him was the one quote. No other quotes, writings, books – nothing! However, there were many places where this quote was showing up, almost all of them being executive coaches’ websites.

After playing Sherlock Holmes for a few hours, I discovered the author of this quote – one that has become one of my very favorites – is Reverend Howard Thurman, a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr and one of the first importers of the Gandhi wisdom on nonviolence.  

In this case, I was again the revealer of the truth, not complicit in the misattribution.

A curious thing: the fictional “Harold Thurman Whitman” is still cited on many quote websites and Google gives you over 7,000 references to him!

More recently, in writing an article for a futures journal, I included a quote which I had always believed to be by 19th century philosopher William James. It was one that I had used frequently in the past. Here it is:
"Man alone, of all the creatures on earth, can change his own patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny. The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

Given that this academic journal requires bibliographical notations, I needed to obtain the source for this quote and, lo and behold, after searching dozens of books I discovered this quote is one of the most frequent James misattributions.

According to Wikiquote, a portion of the quote was written by Spencer W. Kimball, twelfth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in his 1969 book Miracle of Forgiveness. But the bulk of the words seem to be fabrications from unknown sources. So clearly in this case I had been complicit in perpetuating the error.

What I am learning as a result of these three experiences is:
1.    People like inspiring quotes and are quick to accept the written word as truth; after all, it wasn’t too long ago when a common belief was that, if it was in print it had to be true; and

2.    Many people (including myself at times) are lazy and don’t bother to check their sources before forwarding or using a quote that reinforces their point-of-view.

Thanks for listening to this self-indulging soliloquy. I know there are writers amongst this blog’s audience so perhaps this may support your own professionalism. I know it has helped mine.

Now where is that humble pie?

Hail the Outsiders for They Could Be Bearing Gold

{This post is a republication of an editorial in my August 2011 monthly newsletter]

The person who discovered it was the Sun, not the Earth, that was the center of our solar system was a mathematician, physician, scholar, translator, artist, cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist who held astronomy as little more than his avocation! The creator of the most effective treatment for alcoholism was not a physician or a member of the medical community. He was a Wall Street stockbroker. The initial inspiration for the Theory of Relativity occurred to a bored bureaucrat working in a Swiss patent office. The inventor of vulcanized rubber was a partner in a failed hardware store. Successful entrepreneurs usually are people who are outside of the prevailing system of thought - outsiders who see what many insiders cannot see, like upstart Apple seeing what giant IBM could not.

Major changes in science and society are often triggered by people who are not limited by what they know to be possible or impossible.  Often, people who make up a community of interest – whether it is science, astronomy, or medicine – get into a common mindset, what some might call “group think” which limits their fields of imagination and, therefore, possibility.

I contend that the primary positive attribute consultants bring to their clients is not necessarily their experience nor their “secret sauce” process or the methods they employ. Perhaps the most valuable asset a consultant brings to the table with a client is their perspective as outsiders. They have not been immersed in the client’s corporate culture nor constrained by “the way things are done around here.”

People who have spent lots of time in a musty building, often don’t notice the odor. It has become part of their everyday experience. But a new person walking into the musty building can notice it immediately!

Similarly, an outsider can notice idiosyncrasies because they have not yet been desensitized. They can imagine different applications for the enterprise that seasoned insiders just don’t pick up. Apple saw a future for affordable personal computers and PCs in school classrooms – a vision that has come true in much of the world. IBM’s worldview was large computer systems only affordable by large organizations. In fact, the founder of IBM, Tom Watson, allegedly quipped in 1943: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Whether Watson actually said this is debated but it was accurate for another ten years. Think how the IBM culture might have looked at the prospects of a computer in every home if they believed only large computers that rented for $15-20 thousand dollars a month were the market. Imagine how their culture may have scoffed at the silly notion of personal computers promulgated by a couple of kids just out of school working out of a garage.

Like Copernicus who discovered that the Earth revolved around the Sun, not vice versa, like Bill Wilson who discovered how to effectively treat alcoholism, like Einstein who created a new theory that has revolutionized physics, like Jobs and Wozniak who changed the world’s relationship with computer technology, and like Charles Goodyear, outsiders may offer fresh perspectives and possibilities.

What’s the moral to this? Pay attention to those people who are outside the system or just hired or perhaps are friends or loved ones of the insiders – those people who don’t know yet that it cannot be done and may have the truly great idea that could radically transform the system.

Is the World Ready?

“How do you know what the world is ready for?” These are the words of actress Anne Heche from her memoir book Call Me Crazy, a conversation she was having about whether the world was ready for a pair of lesbian actors (at the time she was Ellen DeGeneres’ partner) to come out of the closet.

                                                                              Anne Heche

How many times have you heard the expression, “I guess the world isn’t ready for (fill in idea or issue)”? Most often this conclusion is arrived at by someone who is seeking a rational explanation for why an intended outcome hasn’t been achieved. This phrase has long been used widely to explain unsuccessful attempts to change social systems.

Recently I experienced a surprisingly strong reaction upon hearing a friend speak these words, a reaction I cannot recall having all the other times I have heard the words, or even spoken them myself. Suddenly I was wondering if such a conclusion was a cop out, a consolation fabricated by the egoic mind. Like Heche, I was questioning who can determine what the world is ready for. What degree of audacity would be required to come to such a conclusion?

For anyone not familiar with what I do, let me explain why this subject has me so engaged: my work these past several decades has been advocating a new paradigm for how human beings relate to one another and to planet Earth. I envision a new consciousness – a “new story” - that transcends the status quo and demands a more mature approach to the challenges facing humanity today. It is an approach that includes environmental sustainability, spiritual fulfillment and social justice for all.

One expression of my work includes FutureShapers, LLC, a company I co-founded in 2012 whose mission is to “inspire, support, develop and accelerate the consciousness of leaders in executive positions so their organizations become less dysfunctional, more effective, conscious, socially responsible and life affirming.” In our view, the biggest global crisis is not climate change or population or pollution; the biggest crisis in the world today is that of responsible leadership – what we refer to as “conscious leadership.”

Is the world “ready” to embrace conscious leadership? I know large numbers of people realize the existing paradigm isn’t working for them; and they may not think in terms of paradigms. Large numbers of people are hungry for something they are not getting these days, something they may not even know how to talk about. While they may not describe these missing qualities as I would, phrases like “is that all there is?” “lack of meaning,” “unfulfilling work,” “an inner emptiness,” “yearning to make a difference,” “concern about the future their children and grandchildren will inherit” are usually met with spontaneous head nods. These responses tell me that the world – not our current leaders but the people - is not only “ready” for this change but practically starving for it!

Explaining that “the world isn’t ready” takes the pressure off those who are attempting to make change happen and places responsibility on a not-yet-ready society. It diverts responsibility by telling a different story about why the intended outcome failed. This assertion, while reasonable and logical, is egoic audacity in my view.

While we are on the subject of the ego, I suggest that declaring anyone or any group “isn’t ready” for what one might be offering is another expression of the egoic mind, implying that “the other” is less informed, less conscious, less ready or basically “less than” we. It is another way to feel better than those who “aren’t ready.”

Asserting that the world isn’t ready for what you are offering is disempowering, an expression often based on resignation, sometimes cynicism. Once you make this assertion there is no logical sense for trying to make change happen anymore. This reversion to “why-botherism” would be not only foolish but you could appear crazy.
One of my favorite quotes is from George Bernard Shaw who wrote:

The reasonable person adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person.

Logic and reasonableness have gotten us into the mess we’re in. Let’s get unreasonable and rattle things up! 

Many of us know that real social transformations most often occur when relatively small groups of committed citizens take a stand for the change to occur. The founders of the U.S. numbered fewer that sixty delegates to the first continental congress. There was significant opposition to the country becoming independent, and this posed real danger and risk for this small band of committed people. 
    
                        

                          Activist “Mother Jones” (1837-1930); Copernicus (1473-1543)

Often, these stand-takers for change are perceived to be radical, extremists and revolutionaries. Mother Jones, Gandhi, Caesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, Gloria Steinem and Copernicus come to my mind. They were willing to be labeled “fools” or “crazy.” Do you remember Apple’s famous commercial that began with “Here’s to the crazy ones”?  The last line in the ad is:

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So back to my questioning whether anyone of us can determine what the world is ready for, Whether it is voting rights for women, national sovereignty, farm workers rights, civil rights, women’s liberation, demystifying a scientific myth, or a revolution of consciousness - who can claim that they know what the world is ready for?

I believe that the world is ready to consciously evolve and accept our interconnectivity, our collective relatedness, our interdependence, our stewardship of this planet, and a compassionate recognition that the well-being of all of us comes ahead of the selfish wants of any one group of us. This is the stand I need to take, and I make this declaration based on the thousands of conversations I have had with people who know something is amiss.

This animated video, created to accompany a short talk by my mentor and friend, the late social scientist Willis Harman, makes a compelling argument that for any of us to feel secure in today’s world we all need to feel secure. It is time for us to be responsible for everyone on Spaceship Earth.

I have answered the question “Is the world ready?” for myself. I now ask you, dear reader, to answer it for yourself. And, should you agree with me, take your own stand and start acting like it is your stand rather than agreeing with those who have convinced themselves that there’s no sense in trying to change things because “the world isn’t ready.”

Surprise Consequence with National Park Intervention

Thanks to Mac Carter for this film about the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. We never know what the consequences will be when we do an under-thought intervention in an established complex system. This one worked out pretty well. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q. Thanks Mac.

                                                            Yellowstone National Park

But complex system interventions do not always go so well.

I am reminded of Chairman Mao’s eradication of sparrows as part of his Four Pest Campaign (also known as the “Great Sparrow Campaign”) in the late 1950s which resulted in the Great Chinese Famine a couple of years later in which tens of millions of Chinese died of starvation. Some estimates go as high as 36 million deaths!

While no doubt well-intended, Mao’s eradication project was meant to eliminate “pests.” But they had not allowed for the fact that the locust population went unchecked by the now-missing sparrows and thus created a huge ecological imbalance. The locus populations ballooned and came back in swarms, devouring crops and leaving huge masses of people without food. So these types of interventions in complex systems don’t always work out so well.

Intervening in any complex system without tons of thought about possible repercussions, and having a diverse group of people involved in the process, is unpredictable and dangerous. Without these precautions, we could be responsible for large scale unintended consequences such as those experienced by the Chinese almost sixty years ago.

Lesson for system thinkers: Never think you know the eventual outcome when you intervene in a complex system; respect living systems and engage them with humility and curiosity; and stand ready to make corrections if things start running amuck.

As Winston Churchill said decades ago, “We have created more complexity than our thinking can handle.”

Howard Thurman: America’s Unsung Hero

Howard Thurman (1899-1981)

Not everyone will have heard of Howard Thurman but he has had much positive influence in the world, especially in the United States. After his 1935 meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in India, he brought Gandhi’s message of nonviolence to the U.S. In my view, one of his most meaningful legacies was his mentoring Martin Luther King, Jr. on the subject of nonviolent social change. 

Thurman was a former classmate of King’s father and so paid close attention to the young King while he was in graduate school, ultimately becoming his spiritual advisor. It is said that wherever King would travel he would always have a copy of a Thurman book with him. In fact, some believe Thurman was the pastoral leader of the civil rights movement. So who is this man who is possibly one of the least-appreciated visionaries of our time when it comes to social change?

So who is this man who is possibly one of the least-appreciated thought leaders and visionaries of our time when it comes to social change?

Born in Florida and raised in the segregated South, Thurman graduated from Morehouse College as valedictorian in 1923 and was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1925. He served as a church pastor and as an academic, equally comfortable in either the classroom or the sanctuary. He also travelled broadly, which included his trip to India to spend time with Gandhi.  In 1944, in the midst of high racial tensions due to a rapid increase in the African American population in San Francisco Bay Area shipyards during World War II, Thurman left his tenured position at Howard University and co-founded The Church for the Fellowship for All Peoples in San Francisco. It was the first interracial, intercultural church to be established in the United States.

In 1958, Thurman was invited to Boston University (BU) where he became the first black dean of Marsh Chapel and a faculty member of the university. While tenured at BU he continued his pastoral duties in San Francisco, where he died in 1981. During his lifetime Thurman authored 20 books.
Another of his legacies is The Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, located on the campus of Boston University. The Center was founded by Dean Emeritus George K. Makechnie in 1986 “to preserve and share the many legacies of Dr. Thurman, who spent his life working to break barriers of divisiveness that separate people based on race, culture, religion, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity.”
To close, I’d like to share a quote by Thurman. It was my original introduction to the man and has become one of my favorites:

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.


[END NOTE: Last month, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the U.S. – a national holiday celebrating King’s life and legacy. Having just drafted this piece, I watched a two-hour special on King on the History Channel. While I was moved to tears at the inspiration he was and the tragedy that ended King’s life prematurely, I never heard any mention of Thurman and the influence he had on this remarkable man.]

Getting High and Getting Low: The Occupational Hazards of Being a Visionary

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." -  Oscar Wilde

I was recently asked how I was feeling about the future of the world and, in that precise moment, I shared that I was feeling some despair. So I responded honestly. It seemed like a harmless enough comment to me – and quite truthful in the moment. However, the person listening to me interpreted what I told him and concluded that I was deeply depressed – perhaps suicidal - and became very concerned about my well-being. He even called back afterward to “cheer me up” which I assured him was unnecessary. I explained that I was a firm believer in feeling my emotions and, like it or not, despair was a natural human emotion. Avoiding any emotion, even those I don’t enjoy, is not only very unhealthy but leads to denial and all kinds of problems down the road. Besides, emotional repression murders one’s visionary capabilities.

As a futurist who advocates creating a desired future rather than predicting some projected outcome based upon the past, I am used to living with two realities – the one that we’re in and the one I see as possible. I suspect that any visionary knows what I’m talking about here – living with this “delta,” this gap between “what is” and “what can be.”  This would apply not only to people like me who want to shape the future of society but also inventors who are taking on huge undertakings in technology, the creative arts, architecture, community development and other areas of human endeavor.

Anyone who is a serious advocate for major change of any kind needs to feel the emotions that naturally ebb and flow as their expectations go unmet and inevitable reversals occur. This is particularly true in paradigmatic shifts, where old behaviors get really exaggerated as they get close to changing, getting more entrenched than ever as the change appears inevitable.

Depending upon how ambitious the vision may be, a visionary can face public ridicule, peer invalidation, sarcasm, and all sorts of other criticism. We have all heard stories about exceptional visionaries whose ideas were scoffed at in the early stages only to be heralded as mighty inventors or inspirational leaders at a later time – oftentimes after they died.

If one cannot sit with these feelings, in all their intensity, coping mechanisms will usually creep in which can include delusion about the progress being made, rationalization about the status quo, distraction through addictions, or chronic depression. Several people I have worked with in the past hit a wall of despair and chose to retreat to less-challenging tasks. When I asked them why they said it was just too discouraging. In other words, they found it too painful.

Coping mechanisms can poison one’s vision. They relax the tension that provides the energy for maintaining the visionary’s commitment. Or, perhaps better stated, they numb out the unwanted feelings. One needs to know the feelings of disappointment, despair, hopelessness and even powerlessness and be intimately familiar with them if one is going to hold the “space of possibility” for big visions to be manifested. Taking solace in a drink or a stupid TV show might provide some temporary relief from the feelings but it won’t further the vision.

I call these unwelcome feelings “occupational hazards” for the visionary.

Feeling my emotions as deeply as they are in me, neither avoiding their intensity nor wallowing in them for days on end, keeps me in the present – the “now’ – and helps to keep me more authentic. From this place I can be most effective in bringing about the vision I foresee.

Recently, I was asked to describe the future I envisioned if we didn’t choose the “better future” which I write about frequently. I started to describe the future I see humanity headed for unless we make some fundamental changes in how we treat one another and our planet Earth. As I was speaking, I began to sob – feeling a huge wave of despair about what I was describing and another wave of sadness about the collective choices we have made that are leading us to this reality. It was incredibly moving to feel so deeply about one possible scenario for humanity. When I finished, I felt clearer and more energized to continue advocating the positive alternative – the better future which is equally clear to me.

While feeling these “negative” emotions isn’t at all enjoyable, it is absolutely essential if I am to remain empowered about the vision I see as totally possible, despite the course we are on presently. Unlike ‘intellectualized’ emotions (thoughts that sometimes pass for feelings) which cannot be experienced and released, true emotions are part of the human experience. The only unhealthy emotion is an unexpressed one.

Another popular myth about emotions: “expressing” an emotion means dramatizing them or “acting them out.” Wrong! Expressing an emotion simply means feeling it – now, when it comes up - not years later in therapy or exploding inappropriately sometime down the road as something or someone reminds us about it. When one feels rage, it doesn’t mean you have to throw something or hit anyone. It simply means feeling outraged, or fury, or intense anger.

I once told a colleague I was feeling some rage and her face changed noticeably. I asked her what was going on and she confessed that my words put her “on alert” – anticipating that I might be about to have a tantrum of some sort. I explained that feeling outrage was all I was doing and that I had no inclination to act it out. She understood what I told her intellectually but she remained somewhat guarded nonetheless. This was a reminder to me that many people still think “expressing our emotions” means acting them out in some sort of immature or harmful way.

Another myth is that if one allows one’s feelings to surface they may never go away. Contrary to this common belief, fully-experienced emotions can be processed in mere minutes. Once one learns this, and sees how quickly these feelings pass once they are fully-experienced, one cannot help but wonder why we store unexpressed emotions which usually take years to process at later stages in our lives. It is such a waste of energy!

People who claim they don’t allow their feelings to “run them” – who routinely suppress their emotions so they “won’t get the better of them” – are in fact being controlled by their unexpressed emotions. Keeping the wraps on feelings takes energy like storing radioactive rods from a nuclear power plant. Lots of time and restraint is needed to keep the toxicity from leaking out and doing great harm to others.

People who can tolerate big gaps between present-day reality and their vision for the future, without the need to somehow lessen the tension between the two, make good visionaries. Most people won’t deal with this tension and seek to reduce it as a means of feeling “more comfortable” – choosing one of the coping mechanisms I mentioned earlier. Living with this tension between “what can be” and “what is” makes for an interesting life, as well as challenging one, to be sure. But the true visionary wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, it goes with the territory!

While there are the potholes along the road to getting there, the payoffs are incredible when the visions start coming into focus.

Hats off to all you visionaries! May all your dreams be realized.

Twelve Obvious Truths That Were Not Always So Obvious

Recently a group of us were asked to share whatever “obvious truths” we saw in the world. I used this as an opportunity to review my life from this perspective, noting what I had learned over the years and now see as “obvious.” For the most part I was previously oblivious (pun fully intended) to most of these truths, so here are the truths I have learned that now seem quite obvious to me:

1.  Events that I once thought were negative I now see as having a very positive side to them. In the long term, they were very good for me. Not just some of them, but all of them!

2.  I do not have to put up with anything or anyone I find unpleasant; I have a choice in the matter.

3.  The truth really does set you free. It is not just a motto on a building.

4.  Always be current in my communications with anyone I care about; you never know when they may not be around to hear what you have to say. It used to be when someone died there was always something I wished I had said to them. Now all my friends know I love them and we are current with all matters of the heart.

5.  Never pass up an opportunity to give someone a compliment. It costs so little and could make someone’s day.

6.  Worry is a waste of imagination. It is fear of something that hasn’t happened and most probably will never happen anyway.

7.  Forgiveness is a selfish act; failing to forgive only hurts the person holding onto the resentment.  I used to hold onto resentments thinking it would be wrong to forgive, falsely thinking that forgiving them meant making what they did alright. As the recently-passed Nelson Mandela said, "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."

8.  To believe one group can have security while others don’t is pure folly. The world is so interconnected there is no way one group can feel secure while other groups don’t, yet we persist in this folly of believing it can (see this video by Willis Harman).

9.  The loudest voice telling me that I cannot achieve what I dream about is usually my own. Thanks to lots of personal development work that healed much of the trauma from my early years, I realized that I was my own worst enemy.

10. There are always choices - no matter what the circumstances, we always have choices; making no choice is a choice of its own. This was one of the toughest insights I had to accept, letting go of the idea that I never had a choice and that life was forced on me.

11. No one can empower me except myself. This flash came to me after hearing for years how employees need to be empowered. As if anyone has the power to give another person the means to become more powerful.

12. Complaining about something without taking any action to correct it is irresponsible; if a condition deserves criticism, it deserves an honest attempt to change it. There is a companion truth to this one: complaining to anyone who has no control over the problem is dumping on them.

There you have it – twelve truths I learned as I matured in my consciousness over the years, most of them learned since I turned 40.

The Serenity Prayer Unpacked

I have known of “The Serenity Prayer” since I was ten or eleven years old, from when my mother joined Alcoholics Anonymous, which was in its first decade of existence. The prayer still enjoys great popularity with 12 Step groups of all kinds as a tool to help people recover from addictions and achieve serenity in their lives.

For the past nine or ten years, I have made this prayer part of my spiritual practice saying it several times a day, either to myself or out loud. For those who are not familiar with the Prayer, here it is:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

I find this powerful prayer so simple to recite yet so challenging to practice. So I decided to reveal some of my personal challenges by dissecting it a bit and taking a deeper peek into my own challenges in regard to acceptance, change and making the distinctions between what I can do and what I can’t. Perhaps my own experience will evoke some insight for you, dear reader.

First of all, I often have trouble accepting things and labeling them as “unchangeable” – things that I can’t change, that is. I am deeply aware that I have the most control over changing myself and the least control over changing others. Despite this awareness, I feel called to do my best to change the world for the better by writing and speaking publicly and starting ventures that may have some influence in making the world a better place. This is my calling. It could be so easy to think some large social problem is beyond my capacity to influence positively, and therefore either ignore it or deny it exists. Yet those of us who live in democracies* all have some responsibility for things that affect us, don’t we? We are all part of a society that played some role, if not by our deeds then by our inaction or silence in allowing the problem to emerge in the first place.

Examples: For me, I know I myself cannot influence the path of asteroids or the orbit of the Earth and I accept that. I know I cannot change global warming by myself but I can still make an effort to influence people who can change things.

Then, the next challenge in the Prayer: having the ability to make change happen as well as the courage to act. Sometimes we can bring about change by being part of a movement, a crowd or community, each doing our part to make change happen.  Challenges do not require us to have all the skills or even all the courage to take them on. Often, large scale social change comes about from the actions of groups of committed people, not necessarily the bravery of one individual.

Examples: Praying for the courage to stand tall for what I know to be the right thing to do for the sake of all humankind, even if it risks provoking the wrath of those who disagree with me, even if they are friends. I pray for the courage to tell myself the truth and not fall into ego-generated grandiosity or fantasy. I pray for the clarity that brings about wisdom.

When friends used to sarcastically ask me if I was “still trying to save the world?” it hurt sometimes. I recognized they saw me as some sort of modern day Quixote, tilting at my windmills, saving my “damsels.” Clearly, they would not waste their time tilting at these windmills nor did they see any damsels in distress. They put their time to a different use.  As I got clearer about my calling and the need to influence change, however, the hurt diminished and I stopped taking the wisecracks so personally. As time has passed, more and more people seem to be recognizing these windmills and seeing that perhaps they are problems.

So now having looked at all of these things – things I can and cannot change - how do I make the distinctions to either muster the courage or accept the serenity, to try to change things or accept them? Where does this wisdom to know the difference come from?

Example: For me, the wisdom comes when I get clearer. I get increased clarity when I tell the truth, as difficult as it may be to recognize, about what I can and cannot do and what I can influence and what I cannot.

Well, “The Serenity Prayer” is just that, a prayer, a request of God as we understand him or her. Once I accept that there can be something greater than my individual will, a power greater than my own willfulness and ego, once I accept that “higher power” I will have opened the floodgates for the serenity, the courage and the wisdom to come through.

*Anyone living in a dictatorship or under fascism of any sort obviously has less control over things. To my knowledge, no one who subscribes to this blog lives in one of these countries. If anyone does and has another point-of-view about this, I would love to hear from them.

Soft is Hard: The Challenge of Engaging People In the Meaningful, Transformational Work We Like to Call the “Soft Stuff”

Those of us who have been doing transformational work in its various shapes and forms have all faced the challenge of talking about paradigm-shifting, meaningful large-scale change and gut-retching existential reinventions in a way that people can comprehend.  There are times when it is like we are speaking a foreign language that people don’t understand.

I have been offering “soft stuff” for the past 30 years, through my writings, my talks, coaching services and the various forms my conscious leadership work takes, most recently offering people the opportunity to commit to their own self-transcendence by joining a FutureShapers Roundtable as a Member or becoming certified to Host and lead Roundtables.

The soft stuff is difficult to quantify, something we all like to do in this materially-oriented society. It is hard to measure, another thing we love to do. In addition, the soft stuff requires deep personal introspection, which can often challenge previously unexamined assumptions which may be difficult to do for people, especially if they are not used to doing such an internal inventory.

                                                             
                                                                            Brian Whetten

More recently, I have come to know Brian Whetten, an enrollment coach who works with people who do meaningful work, many of whom are executive coaches or personal life coaches. Whetten has been coaching me and my FutureShapers partner Tom Eddington for several months, and we have learned much from him. As a result of more than ten years of research, Whetten has determined that only 10% of the value in a coaching relationship, for example, comes from what the coach does; 30% of the value comes from the coach’s presence – who they are and how they show up in the relationship - and a whopping 60% of the value comes from the client’s own commitment to the work. I found this to be a major news item! This also applies to people offering soul-nourishing, transformative products and services, not just coaches. He contends that enrollment is the primary tool we have for creating client commitment, where 60% of the client value comes from.

This finding is in stark contrast to selling breakfast cereal or computers where the buyer merely has to say “yes’ or “no.” In this enrollment process, the “buyer” has to meet the vendor half way and put some “skin in the game” themselves in order to receive the most value. At first take, this seems wrong because it goes against all the ideas we are used to as a result of being the target of mass marketers and advertising all our lives. Whetten writes: 'So while we tend to think of [enrollment] as some “yucky” thing we have to do in order to serve our clients, it’s actually one of the most important services we have to offer. And it’s not just about coaching. What we’re talking about is the ability to support people in creating any type of sustained, positive change. Whether you’re a manager looking to get more out of your people, a holistic practitioner wanting to support patients in developing new wellness habits, or a consultant seeking to add value to an organization, if you’re in the business of change, where you’re seeking to make an impact in the lives of others, enrollment is a big piece of your job.'

Enrollment as “one of the most important services we have to offer”? How’s this for a paradigm popper, a mental model-buster, a reframing challenge? Whetten points out that real change – such as that offered by transformational products or services – scares people. He adds that the deeper the changes we want or need to make, the more these scare us. How can we support people in addressing this resistance and creating the changes they most want to make? The most popular approaches to resistance, he tells us, are either “attack” or “avoid” – the former being slick and aggressive sales approaches and the latter being people giving away services and struggling to stay in business.

Whetten writes about a third way, and the way that is the most authentic and effective. He writes: 'The surest way to know if something is a great decision is when the voice of intuition says “Yes,” the voice of reason agrees, and the voice of fear says “Hell No! Run Away!” Our opportunity is to help our clients understand this, help them look for their “Yes, Yes, Hell No’s!” and then help them commit to creating the changes they most want to make. Our opportunity is to help our clients discern the difference between their truth and their fears. We want to listen to their fears and honor them. The voice of fear has a very specific job. That job is not to stop us from taking action. It’s to warn us of a potential danger. When we slow down and honor the voice of fear, without attacking it or avoiding it (which is really just fight or flight – meeting fear with yet more fear) the voice of fear feels that it’s given it’s warning and done its job, and so it quiets down and lets us get on with our goals. It’s the third way of enrolling clients, that’s both clean and effective. Mastering it allows you to turn “selling” into one of the greatest gifts you can offer – both to your clients and yourself.'

A big gap I’m seeing is between what people say they want and what they are willing to commit to; how much are they willing to be changed to attain the level of consciousness they claim to want? I addressed this in my Mini Keynote editorial in August. As vendors, we need to meet our clients and customers midway across the gap between what we are offering and what they want, transcending their fears and others bits of resistance they may be sitting on. If they want what we are offering they must be more engaged than the passive purchase process we use in buying produce, cereal or an automobile.

From my standpoint, the hard part of engaging people is breaking the pattern of “selling” I have learned after a lifetime of being exposed to mass marketing and advertising, and learning to have two-way exploratory conversations, not one-way sales pitches, reciprocal commitments by both parties in the relationship, not “overcoming objections” and tactical presentations.

Another lesson I learned from Whetten is that what we are offering isn’t for everyone. We are not selling cereal. Having a transformation shift is not for everyone! We are offering a transcendent experience that many people yearn for but most avoid. Our offering is for the people who really want it, who are committed to going through whatever they need to go through in order to achieve the level of consciousness they claim they want. They need to be engaged with us! They need to engage their fears as well.

About a year ago I was watching a TV special on Africa and recall the host talking with a Sudanese farmer about a local crisis in the community and the challenges of getting local officials to act responsibly. This uneducated elderly man told the host, “You cannot wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.” Some people are pretending to be asleep. Trying to enroll them is a waste of time; I and my colleagues need to focus on people who really want to be awakened and are not pretending.  



NOTE: Here is another website with some of Whetten’s free offers: http://www.sellingbygiving.net/ 

Mister Smith is Dead: They Don’t Go to Washington to Serve Anymore

Do you remember the old James Stewart movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”? Probably few of you recall seeing it when it came out in black-and-white in the late 1930s but it has been a popular movie on television for many years, often airing around the holiday season since it evokes sentiments of justice, idealism and good winning over evil.  “Jefferson Smith” (played by Stewart) goes to the nation’s capitol to work with his childhood hero only to discover the many shortcomings of the political process. True to Hollywood, good wins out in the end, despite attempts to corrupt Smith at first and then to cover him in scandal.

Stewart and Jean Arthur (lead roles in the movie)

According to the IMBd website, the director  - Frank Capra - has “received many letters over the years from individuals who were inspired by the film to take up politics.” The movie surely continues to inspire idealists who want to serve their country through bettering the system from the inside out by enduring all the humiliation of running for office in order to “bring democracy back to the people.”

But the system continuously devolves into gridlock and dysfunction as each new rookie politician succumbs to the toxicity and corruption they encounter in city, state or national politics.

I have been writing about system dysfunction in Washington for several years and have viewed it as a “systems problem,” which I define as “when well-meaning, competent people keep trying to correct the problem and it keeps getting worse.”

The other day I happened to catch an interview of journalist Mark Leibovich on his latest book, This Town:  Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital. Leibovich is the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, based in Washington. In 2011, The New Republic named him one of Washington’s “Most Powerful Least Famous” people whose “political writing is among the finest and most feared.”

          Click on picture to watch video

Leibovich provided a detailed account of how Washington has been grossly distorted by the relatively recent (last twenty years or so) explosion of money in politics, turning the city into “a mecca for glitz, gold and greed” according to PBS. The book is exposing the perverse and pervasive narcissism of Washington’s ruling class, again according to PBS. He spoke about how “money rules the day and status is determined by who you know.”

Watching the interview on TV, what caught my ear was his reference to the “Mr. Smith” movie. He talked about how most of us think people go to Washington to serve the people, like Mr. Smith did in the movie, like the way it is supposed to be in the “greatest democracy in the world.” “However,” he said “now people go to Washington to get rich, to make money.”

While the system is indeed dysfunctional and needs a major overhaul, perhaps even a complete rebuild, people are not as much the victims of “the system” as I have been asserting. Many are. Leibovich identifies a good many from both parties who are contributing to the dysfunction and ripping off “We the People” from what we are entitled to and lining their pockets through greed and more greed.

I am writing this while raw with this new recognition/perspective, feeling more outrage, even at some of my former heroes whose haloes have become tarnished as a result of this revelation. I’m feeling more disappointment, more sadness and more hurt than I ever have over the state of our nation.

As I expressed in my email to Leibovich, my hope is that enough people who can do something about this will become enraged enough to actually do something about it and make it illegal for politicians to get rich at the expense of the people who elect them.

We’re All in This Together!

Willis Harman was a visionary and a strong advocate for human transformation. He taught me much during our friendship, from the mid-1980s when we first met until his passing in 1997. Working with him was a true joy. Knowing him was also a joy. Harman was a strong advocate for the interconnectedness of humankind and gave talks and wrote prolifically about the subjects of “global mind change,” paradigm shifts and human consciousness. 

    Willis Harman (1918-1997)

For those who may not know who this man was, he began as a professor of engineering at Stanford University where he also started human potential classes, all the time remaining under the administration’s radar. He then went to work at Stanford Research Institute (now called SRI) where he was involved in various experiments and research projects on human consciousness, including remote viewing and future studies work, much of it sponsored by the U.S. Government. In the 1970s he was recruited to head the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), which researches and publishes on subjects related to human consciousness. He remained at IONS until resigning soon before his death. He wrote a number of books, my favorite of which is Global Mind Change, which was republished after his passing.

Several years ago, Global Mindshift (now inactive after making some provocative videos) got hold of a sound recording of one of his short talks and added an animation to the audio, producing a short 90 second video. You’ll find it on the FutureShapers videos page. Scroll down to the fourth video on the page. His words are as pertinent today as they were then: we can no longer fix any one system unless we fix them all; we can no longer have some people having their needs met but not others. My way of saying this is that we all interconnected and “we’re all in this together!”

 

Modern Day Tyrants – Part Two

[Last month I identified the modern day tyrants as the traders and speculators in the financial markets – those who add no value whatsoever other than generating profit for themselves.This article has been adapted from an article titled “Who Are the Modern Day “Tyrants”? published in the June 2002 issue of my monthly newsletter. This month I will complete my thoughts]

                Thomas Paine

These modern day tyrants value short-term financial gratification more than anything else. Their actions are totally inconsistent with a sustainable world in which people are values and life is affirmed. They create no real value in the world, certainly not in the way most of us think about adding value, such as an exchange of something for something else. Their sole purpose is to make a profit, and to do so with the least amount of capital as possible. They do not invest in companies. None of their cash ever owns a stock or allows any company to expand. None of their cash ever creates jobs. They have no loyalty to any cause or group of people (unless it is their own staffs).

Like it or not, traders are driving the “train of capitalism” – the most dominant economic system in the world. CEOs, directors, executives with vested stock and holding options, investment bankers, brokers, and investors of all sizes are merely passengers on this “train” which traders are driving faster and faster. No longer is it sufficient to own a good sound investment in a company that is producing a decent product. These players require minute-by-minute stock evaluations which drive their decisions (often programmed by computer) which in turn has all the rest of us jumping through hoops. CEOs, directors and major investors sometimes think they are in control but the people most influential in this craziness – those who are really pulling the strings and manipulating stock values – are the growing cadre of day traders who are taking bigger and bigger profits in larger and larger numbers in shorter and shorter timeframes.

How many decisions to remain dependent on Middle East oil are influenced by stock values in publicly-traded companies? How many third world cultures have been violated and how many non-industrialized people have been MacDonaldized because of corporate-wide drivers to maintain stock price? How many traditions have been trampled so more growth can be documented in the annual report? How many weapons need to be sold in order to maintain quarterly projections?

How many lobbyists are needed to purchase special tax breaks so stock value will be enhanced? How many short cuts are taken in manufacturing and ethics to save money and increase earnings in order to maintain optimism on The Street?

How many natural treasures are sacrificed in order to enhance projections for future earnings and, therefore, a better price today? How many children are forced into near-slavery conditions so a trader in Manhattan can make an extra million in one day?

I don’t mean to imply that traders are consciously doing something malicious. But they are having a huge negative impact on the rest of us. What is worse is that they are seemingly oblivious to it. What could be even worse yet is that they are not oblivious and simply don’t care!

The time is here for all of us – traders, doctors, merchants, consumers and teachers – to be responsible for our choices and accountable for our actions.

Few people realize that the “economy” that most of us think about (the exchange of real goods and services) is a mere fraction of the amount of financial transactions taking place in the world every day. More than 90% of the world’s economic activity has nothing at all to do with any exchange of value; it is all about trading – betting on fluctuations and making huge fortunes as quickly as possible. The economy that most of us are part of could be compared to the vending machines income as a part of the total gross revenues of a Las Vegas gambling casino. It is part of the total revenue but a very small part.

Like the kings and queens in centuries past, traders are simply going about their lives taking their nobility for granted – oblivious to any negative impact they might be having in the world. But if you accept that we all have impact on each other – and that we have some impact even if we sit in our room every day and “do” nothing – then what is the impact  these traders have on the rest of the world, particularly those in other parts of the world, who are so heavily influenced by American capitalism?

Some time back, I saw an infomercial on television that was pitching a system which you could purchase and become an overnight stock trader! Doesn’t this suggest that we are rapidly becoming a society of traders instead of investors? So who has to work anymore? Let’s just sit home and trade all day! There’s no sense working at a job making something that people could use to better their lives. There’s no need to leave the house and sweat for a living building a house or providing a service that people might require. Let’s make a few trades and make a ton of money sitting on the couch. Hey, who needs to work anyway?


[NOTE: John recommends The Divine Right of Capital, by Marjorie Kelly (Berrett-Koehler, 2001)]

Modern Day Tyrants – Part One

[Both parts of this article - Part One and Part Two - have been adapted from an article titled “Who Are the Modern Day 'Tyrants'?" published in the June 2002 issue of John’s monthly newsletter]

Back in the middle ages, royalty was assumed to be either divine or very well-connected to the Gods in what has become known as the “Divine Right of Kings.” Kings and queens could do all sorts of nasty things and everyone excused it as “willed by the gods” or some such rationalization. This was the assumption everyone had grown up with. This assumption was passed on from one generation to the next, one century to the next, pretty much unchallenged. People went along with tyrannical behavior, social injustice, unfair application of the laws, and even tolerated absolute madness, assuming that this was the way it was supposed to be. No one questioned it. Then, one day, someone said – “hey, why are we going along with this?” (Thomas Paine and his crowd) and democracy was born.

 

             Thomas Paine

Once this long-held assumption was questioned and perceived as having no real validity in fact, the divinely-endowed rights and privileges associated with royalty started becoming things of the past.

Today, we have a new class of privilege, a new group of tyrants who only possess the rights they hold because the rest of us allow them to by granting them the same sense of legitimacy that our forefathers and foremothers granted their royalty. Similar injustices and inequities exist in the world because a new generation of tyrants is being allowed to run roughshod over the vast majority. A new “madness” is being condoned by the masses who don’t appear to be challenging the underlying assumption that this is “willed by the gods” and, thus, we think we have no power to change it.

Please notice that I did not say we don’t have the power to change it – only that we think we don’t. Also, let’s see how “tyrant” is defined before we get too far into this. The dictionary defines tyrants as people who are unrestrained by law, who usurp sovereignty and are harsh users of power and authority.

So where do most of these “new” tyrants hang out? Where are most of them concentrated? Where does the most power appear to lie in these days of very complex systems in a globalized world?

We tend to think that the real power resides with our national leaders – like heads of state. Fewer of us realize that the real power these days lies with money and the system in which it functions. Students of systems thinking know that answers to questions in complex problems are rarely obvious.

The economic system has the greatest impact on global society than any other system in the world. Let’s look at what players within the economic system are having the most negative influence. Who are the least restrained by law? Who are the harshest abusers of power? Who are the greatest usurpers of sovereignty?

Are they the Arab despots in the Middle East? The billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet or George Sorros? Hardly. They have too high a profile to dominate the system effectively. If you examined every group of people from the most disenfranchised people to the most opulently privileged, where would you find the ones who have the most negative global impact today?

The people who have most of the influence on the most influential system work behind the scenes, content to simply make scads of money while most of the public’s attention focuses on the faux leaders - like politicians, celebrity activists, CEOs of the large multinational corporations, major investors, religious leaders, and prominent academicians.  These modern day tyrants let the faux leaders get on the covers of the magazines and distract attention from them.

The tyrants of today are the people who are engaged in pure financial speculation, without having any loyalty to any person or any organization except making the most money in the shortest time. Traders are like casino gamblers, and their actions wouldn’t be particularly harmful if the winners reaped the rewards from knowledgeable players – where all parties know the rules of the game they are playing.

Today’s stock and option traders don’t add any value except to make themselves more money. They “bet” on upswings in the so-called “market” which resembles a lottery more every day. Companies that do nothing but speculate are out to make as much money as possible without ever really “investing” in anything. Growing numbers of day traders speculate on short-term price fluctuations rather than longer term appreciation. Arbitrages, margins, caps, puts and calls fill their vocabulary, punctuated with Daisy Chains, Double Tops and Bottoms and Day Orders.

[To be continued……Next month I will continue this line of inquiry]

Recognizing Our Uniqueness

In my latest book, The Great Growing Up, I write about holons and how everything and everyone is part of something larger and a whole for something smaller. In a seeming paradox, each holon is also unique. Even “identical twins” are not 100% identical.

I am presently reading Your Unique Self in which the author deftly addresses this parts/whole conundrum for us. Before I continue I want to be clear about one distinction: while our uniqueness is factual, saying we are each “special” arouses the egoic mind and can reactivate the separation paradigm that ranks me versus others, not as unique parts of a larger whole but as my being better or worse than you. Now back to Marc Gafni’s book.

In a section he calls “The Puzzle-Piece Teachings,” Gafni writes: "You are a puzzle-piece. If you try to round out the unique curves of your puzzle piece through meditation or any other spiritual oneness practice, the puzzle piece that is you will simply not fit into the divine oneness. The part fits into the whole through its unique part nature. You are not interchangeable with any other part. Only the puzzle piece that is your authentic Unique Self can seamlessly connect you to the divine one. Similarly, Unique Self is not absorbed in the whole. Unique Self is integrated into the whole, meaning that the part does not lose its integrity as it merges." 

Gafni makes one of the clearest distinctions about how our uniqueness is our gift – even our gift to God – so long as it is not confused with “the skin-encapsulated ego” or separate self. As he writes, “The puzzle piece becomes part of the whole only through its unique puzzle-piece nature…. if you are identified exclusively with your ego-separate self, then you think that your puzzle piece is the whole puzzle."

This is where extremism gets loose in the world, when the partial truth becomes the one and only truth and violence results. Discussing this fine line between ego-specialness and our Unique Self is challenging yet Gafni does an admirable job applying his writing skill and brilliance to the task.                 

Crisis of Discernment: Living in Truth or Living Lies?

Prompted by a lot of what I see in social media, it appears that we as a society are blurring the lines between what is real and what is illusion. If we are intentionally entering into this fantasy, such as playing “Second Life” or other virtual games, or attending a “Harry Potter” movie, then fine.  We are consciously choosing to spend time in a mystical, magical alternative reality as a relief from the real world, as pure entertainment or even escapism.

But when we start accepting fantasy as reality simply because it is labeled as if real, we are entering a dangerous world of self delusion. This is when escapism gets dangerous, in my view.

As we have all witnessed in our government leaders, there is a common practice of repeating an assertion over and over again so that eventually enough people believe the assertion is a truth. Paraphrasing Nazi Joseph Goebbels, “Tell a lie long enough and it becomes the truth.” Failing to distinguish between fact-based reality and a frequently-expressed ideology is dangerous because we start confusing the two and begin living lies!

Allowing lies (fantasy) to shape how we live and relate to one another is a disservice to the soul, completely out of integrity with our world. It means living in a falsified reality rather than living in the world as it is. We are culpable by subjecting ourselves to influence by a system we know to be false.

Another example from Facebook: Total strangers invite us to be their “Friends” – not “Connections” as LinkedIn called our virtual assemblage of contacts before Facebook came on the scene, but “Friends”! I don’t know about you but I have pretty clear criteria for who my friends will be.

Another newly emerging example from LinkedIn: People I do not know are endorsing me for skills I don’t think I have. In other words, these “endorsements” are more likely given in order to prompt a reciprocal response, making LinkedIn endorsements totally meaningless, not to be relied upon by any thinking person.
I’m reminded of an earlier confusion with what was true shortly after the printing press made it so easy to publish. One of the phenomena that came to the surface was that people started confusing the truth with what had been printed – as in if they saw it in print it was fact. To some degree that may also apply today.

Confusing the truth with an untruth has already impacted our quality of life. Keep in mind that all of us don’t need to be living lies as long as some of us are. This confuses the issues and restricts progress on matters important for the masses. As long as there is any confusion about any of our global crises, corrective measures are hijacked at worst or delayed at a minimum. Matters such as bank regulation, healthcare and campaign reform, environmental protections and gun control are only five crises that have gotten confused enough to prevent meaningful interventions in the U.S. In some of these cases, delays brought on by confusion can be just as deadly as a out-and-out  hijacking.

I am reminded of Rebecca Costa’s conclusions, in her book The Watchman’s Rattle, (see my earlier article on this) as she researched failed empires throughout history. Each empire she studied failed after two changes occurred; first, when collaboration and cooperation turned into gridlock (see Washington as a glaring example of gridlock) and, second, when ideology replaced facts. It seems we passed both these phases some time ago. So can collapse be far behind?

Straddling Paradigms Can Make You Crazy

I recently reviewed Dancing at the Edge: Competence, Culture and Organization in the 21st Century, by Maureen O’Hara and Graham Leicester, for Amazon.com and a short story in the book caught my attention. The story’s punch line points to a conundrum many people are facing today. First the story:

In his book Radical Hope the philosopher Jonathan Lear tells the story of …Plenty Coups, chief of the Crow nation at the end of the 19th century. His tribe [was] coming under pressure from the white man to give up their way of life and enter the reservation. The culture that had supported and defined the Crow nation’s world was threatened with collapse.

Plenty Coups described the transition many years later as follows: “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again.” As one Crow woman put it, in terms that many would echo today: “I am trying to live a life I do not understand.”

How many people today are trying to live lives they do not understand?

I contend that anyone with any awareness knows the old ways are losing ground, credibility, even usefulness while nothing seems to be rising to take their place. We are living in a world where one paradigm is falling away while the new one isn’t fully formed.

Using a physical metaphor, it is like having one foot on the dock and the other on a tiny dingy which isn’t tied to the dock. If you have ever been in that position your know that at some point you either have to put all your weight on one or the other, the boat or the dock, or you will most certainly get very wet.

Paradigm straddling can be that way too. If you remain loyal and invested in the old, you will have trouble with anything that challenges that worldview, precluding acceptance of anything that doesn’t make sense from that perspective. If you try to live in both worlds, it can drive you crazy.

My suggestion is to invest yourself in the new paradigm, even if it hasn’t been fully formed or accepted. Start living from that place and let the rest of the world catch up with you. Remember, the new paradigm of thought doesn’t replace the old one, it simply absorbs it. We can continue using the bits that are still useful and release what no longer fits.

The FutureShapers Covenant: A Sacred Commitment (Part B)

[Last month I posted Part A of this two-part article and failed to mention that FutureShapers, LLC is a new company I am starting. We will be forming executive peer groups that we are calling Roundtables and members will be asked to make major commitments to living and working more consciously – what we are calling “The FutureShapers Covenant.” This article has been adapted from FutureShapers online material. Now I will continue where I left off last month.]

    “Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your     intentions. And the actions which speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is     none. Coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff     character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over     skepticism.” - Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s idea is that one’s character is made up by how one lives up to one’s commitments. As an antidote to this withering of our social fabric, FutureShapers offers this model for encouraging true commitment from its members.

FutureShapers has set a standard for commitment that instills character, consciousness and meaning into one’s life and one’s work. Members in FutureShapers Roundtables are encouraged to aspire to unconventional levels of awareness in what they say, how they say it and what they mean by what they say. They become aware of distinctions such as the difference between an opinion and knowing, a belief and a fact, a promise and an indication of interest, a desire and a preference, to name  a few. Here are aspirations to which FutureShapers Roundtable Members are asked to commit:

•    Seek self transcendence, deepening self-examination/exploration, increasing my experience of equanimity and serenity;

•    Be authentic; integrate my mind, body, heart and soul; be consistent with my walk and my talk;

•    Continuously examine myself - personality traits I can improve upon, my stories and my beliefs that limit me, and my attitudes and actions that negatively impact others;

•    Do no harm; whenever I am wrong, promptly admit it and make amends for any harm I’ve done to anyone;

•    Treat others as I would like to be treated (“The Golden Rule”);

•    Seek out ways to be in relationship with a power greater than my own egoic mind;

•    Spend at least 20 minutes each day in meditation/quiet time;

•    Do the right thing always; whenever there is a question, follow my heart and my conscience, not my head;

•    Be more compassionate about others and reverent about life, honoring my interconnectedness with all living things;

•    Accept my leadership responsibilities as an honor and a gift, not an obligation or cause for self-importance;

•    Consciously be a role model for others; and

•    Create workplace cultures where these aspirations are honored and respected.

Until one can truly commit oneself to something larger than oneself, one is destined to a life of mediocrity. Explorer William H. Murray said it most succinctly in his 1951 book, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition. He writes, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.”

The FutureShapers Covenant: A Sacred Commitment, Part A

Individual and collective commitment to a cause has been at the backbone of all major social transformation – from the founding of the U.S.A. to getting a man on the moon, from changing the public attitude about drinking and driving to the ending of apartheid in South Africa.

Much of our history as human beings was the result of true commitment. However, true commitment is one of the scarcest human qualities today. People say “yes” or make agreements every day that they hold as tentative in their minds, subject to whim and convenience. As a result, we live in a world of empty promises which leads to social cynicism which, in turn, leads to lowered expectations. What people say is often quite different from what people do. As an old saying goes, “We judge ourselves by our intentions while judging others by their actions.” If we judge ourselves with the same criteria – our actions not our words – then we may start to see how culpable we may be in this weakening of our social fabric.

It is so easy to give lip service to doing the right thing, stating the moral high ground, saying what people want to hear, but an entirely different moral toughness is required to keep our word – to do what we say we are going to do. After years of these tentative “commitments” the rest of us have gotten used to people reneging on their promises and not keeping their word. The worst if it? It has become “socially acceptable.”

The dictionary calls a commitment “an agreement or pledge” to do something in the future. A pledge is defined as “a binding promise” or “guaranty.” These hardly sound like casual, half-hearted promises. When one guarantees something they stand to lose something of value. When they make a promise they have given their word. Implied in giving one’s word is a certain sacredness, similar to a sacred oath. This is what FutureShapers asks of Roundtable members: to hold their Roundtable commitment and aspirations as a covenant, a sacred pledge to oneself and the other members.

Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said, “Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions. And the actions which speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none. Coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.”

Olympic legend Bruce Jenner states, “Abolish your fears and raise your commitment level to the point of no return, and I guarantee you that the Champion Within will burst forth to propel you toward victory.”

Do either of these quotes sound like idle “indications of interest” subject to the big “if” – if something better doesn’t some along; if I still feel like it when the time comes; if it feels comfortable; if events align so as to make it easy; or if it isn’t too inconvenient? These are all tentative, conditional, and provisional – nowhere near “the power to change the face of things” as Lincoln suggested.

Next month I will finish this thought and include the list of aspirations we ask people to commit to. Check back around January 10th.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Jim Carrey and Eckart Tolle Team Up to Bring Consciousness to Media

Over the last couple of decades I have been part of many, many discussions, dialogues and debates about how the Great Turning, the “new paradigm,” the Age of Consciousness. They have all been directed toward a shift from a social paradigm based on separation, fear and scarcity to one based on connection, love and sufficiency. In each of these conversations, both private and public ones, the final “yeah but” comes by way of this discourse stopper: “How will we ever get the media to change, after all they are driving much of what is unwanted in our culture?” or something to that effect.

Well, three years ago, an organization was birthed with a mission to transform the entertainment and media industry that has so much influence on so many people. It was formally inaugurated on June 4th, 2009, at the Zanuck Theater on the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles. It seeks to empower entertainment and media professionals and companies to produce and distribute content that inspires new consciousness-based worldviews for global audiences by providing information in three primary arenas: 1. education, 2. collaboration and 3. advocacy.

1.    Education
It plans to provide resources and guidance supporting its members’ personal, inner education thereby assisting them in deepening their fundamental connection with themselves which, once achieved, results in the desire to express that essential sense of self and personal transformation in and through their work; to bring to members’ awareness the need for responsibility for the ideas, issues and events that they are shaping the world we live in – for both “good and ill;” and provide mentorship,  giving back and supporting the next generation of industry professionals.

2.    Collaboration
It will provide resources and services to help its members in the entertainment and media businesses, who are living a transformational lifestyle, to connect with their like-spirited peers; its offerings will encourage collaboration to create content that expresses transformational intentions and values.

3.    Advocacy
Within the trade, it will support the larger media and entertainment communities in understanding transformation and its importance in a cultural and global context, and to help them become comfortable with the reality of transformation; In the public arena, it plans to help legitimize the genre of transformational entertainment and of transformational content in the media.

Pretty ambitious. you say? Pie in the sky, you say?

Over the decades I have seen hundreds of well-intended initiatives fizzle out within a few years or even months. Could this be another?

Well, it might if it lacked credibility. In this case, there is credibility. The founder, John Raatz, who has introduced many transformational films and books into the world through his public relations firm Visioneering, brought in superstar actor Jim Carrey and bestselling author and spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle as his co-founders.

Here is a video of Carrey talking about the initiative and introducing Tolle at one of the inaugural events:

                                                                 Jim Carrey introduces Eckhart Tolle (13 mins)

The name of this membership organization in the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment (or “GATE”) which describes itself as a global movement to Transform the World by Transforming Entertainment and Media. Still evolving, GATE has just morphed its legal structure to a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization in the U.S.

GATE is now accepting memberships, so I urge you to join me as a member and, even better, forward this article to anyone you know in media or entertainment. This is the best initiative I have seen to dramatically transform an industry that, for better or worse, possesses so much influence in the world, for better or worse.

The Power of a Vulnerably-Shared Story

After World War II thousands of young U.S. veterans flooded the job market and, thanks to the G.I. Bill, purchased homes in newly-built neighborhoods. Frequently, the men and their brides would come together and share stories of their experience in the Pacific, Europe or Africa. One man shared that he landed on the Normandy beach on D-Day and was four miles inland before he was able to pry his fingers loose of his rifle. Others shared their harrowing experiences that their wives had never heard from their husbands privately. These young couples experienced a deep bonding and developed a community of friends that, in many cases, lasted a lifetime.
 

Post WWII family getting started

Groups of people stranded together by some unexpected situation such as a snowstorm or power outage often facilitates strangers getting to know one another. This is especially true when people aren’t sure they are going to survive or be rescued. Many people open up so much that they inspire reciprocal shares and sometimes lifetime bonds are formed. As collective intelligence theorist Tom Atlee says:

    Story is a powerful way of organizing and sharing individual experience and exploring and co-creating     shared realities…..every person, every being, everything has a story and contains stories -- and, in     fact, is a story -- and that all of these stories interconnect, that we are, in fact, surrounded by     stories, embedded in stories and made of stories.

    Lived stories are those real-life, actual stories that are happening in the real world all around us all     the time. The actual unfolding events relating to any one actual entity or subject comprise that     entity's or subject's lived story…..become sensitive to lived stories... to learn about the lived stories     of people, places, things... to share our own lived stories... to discover how all these stories     intersect, who or what is in the foreground and background of each other's lived stories. Ultimately,     this provides the guidance we need to find our own most meaningful place in the universal story.

    While analysis is good for control and prediction, story-sensibility is good for understanding meaning     and role.

Vulnerably shared stories evoke trust, inspire even greater vulnerability, and can build bonds that last forever. These are the seeds of community that people used to have and now miss. We have forgotten how to tell our stories vulnerably. We are socially conditioned to “play it safe” and not reveal too much of ourselves. Then we wonder why we miss community so badly.

Naturally, there is something to be said about “appropriate vulnerability.” With some people you may not feel entirely safe sharing deeply personal matters. This requires discernment on your part. But when you do feel safe and trust the people you are with, and desire a deeper connection, it may help to allow yourself some discomfort by opening up. Then, when you are asked to tell your story, share yourself from your heart, not your head. Recall life-defining moments and share those. What shaped you to be the person you are today?

If you feel stuck and can only think of your standard check-in, your “elevator speech,” look for something you have never shared about yourself and share that. This could start a flow of additional disclosures that people would like to know about you and you would like to know about them.

Doing Business with Boiled Frogs

The degree to which I hear reports of growing cynicism in today's workplace reminds me of the parable of the boiled frog. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this analogy, imagine an experiment involving a frog, a pan of water and a stove.

As the parable goes, the frog is placed in the pan which contains room temperature water. The frog is content to sit there, especially if it has been out of water for a long time. It has no compelling reason to move. When the heat under the pan of water is warmed ever so gradually, the frog slowly adjusts to the warming water and, in the absence of any sudden change in temperature, eventually doses off and is boiled to death.

    photo by Peter Turla

On the other hand, goes the parable, if you were to heat the water in the pan before the frog is placed in it, it will immediately sense the danger and leap from the pan to a place of presumed greater safety.

The purpose of the parable is to show how unaware we can be about insidious threats to our well-being. It graphically illustrates how easily humans can adapt to incremental changes, even changes which threaten their health and spirit, if these changes are slow and gradual enough.

In this parable, the frog represents people. The water represents the system - the places where we work and live. The pan represents the container, the larger system - society - which includes our workplaces, the market, entire nations, nature and the environment. The heat under the pan represents the energy that is threatening to destroy everything in the pan, albeit very gradually. The frog - people in this parable - slowly gets drowsy to the point of asphyxiation, as can happen when one spends too much time in a sauna or hot tub where the temperature is constantly increasing. Finally, it’s too late and the frog gets boiled, just to finish things off. Mercifully, the frog is by then oblivious to its eventual fate!  

Like the frog, people don't notice the small incremental changes in their environments, at work or in society in general. They become insensitive because they've adapted; they have done what their ancestors did to survive - adapt or perish. In adapting, they have learned to ignore creeping degradations in the quality of their lives and their work experiences. They have become desensitized to situations that would have caused previous generations to "leap from the pan."

An important distinction between people and frogs: frogs don't think. Frogs react. Frogs don't make choices. They respond by instinct. People think and can make choices. They can awaken from their complacency and choose different outcomes for themselves. They can respond to critical choice points when they become aware of them.

Who would you want on your team - a group of highly-adaptive cynics who had mastered coping in a spiritually hostile environment (like the boiled frog) or a group of people who are fully awake and alive, and bring their entire beings - their whole selves - to the job? For me, there's no way I'd want to depend upon a team of boiled frogs.

Bribery vs Lobbying: One is Illegal and Wrong; the Other is Legal, but Is It Right?

Thanks to the federal and state politicians who don’t possess the will to reform our campaign finance laws, the endless amounts of money that special interests are willing to spend to gain special advantages and a U.S. Supreme Court who thinks corporations are people, millions of anonymous dollars are pouring into political advertising and influence peddling without any accountability or transparency. Let’s look at the similarities between illegal bribery and legal influence peddling:

    •    Both buy favors.

    •    Both are anonymous or faceless.

    •    Both tilt the playing field of fairness.

    •    Both disenfranchise those who can’t afford to purchase favorable treatment. 

    •    Both compromise the politicians.

    •    And both subvert the system.

Bribery is illegal and frowned on by society. Lobbying is legal and thereby tacitly condoned by our society.
Who made campaign financing and lobbying legal? The beneficiaries are the ones who made the laws. The issue of morality versus legality I shall leave to you the reader.

This query was prompted by two recent media pieces. One was a June online piece by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor: see http://robertreich.org/post/24472398883?632ecf88

The other was a segment on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on July 8th where Lesley Stahl interviewed Jack Abramoff, one of the most notorious U.S. lobbyists of our time, who served more than three years in prison for his crimes – one of only a few lobbyists who ever served time. You can watch the interview here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57319068-10391709/jack-abramoff-inside-capitol-corruption/?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.1

Please read the former and watch the latter. Then see if you have the same reaction that Stahl had during the interview: "I think the public's going to be furious watching this," she said after expressing her anger at what he’d done. I hope people do get angry. I hope you do. We need to get mad as hell and stop taking this anymore!!

Another Facet for the Conscious Organization

As I have written many times over the years, you cannot enter a dialogue about human consciousness without including the ego.  Well, you could, but you’d be avoiding a primary actor in the process. For all its darkness and lightness, the ego exists in us all – not as a thing to be exorcised, or be rid of, but to master, transcending the negative and utilizing the positive.

In my writings over the past 25 to 30 years on Conscious Leadership and The Conscious Organization, I have covered various facets of consciousness whereby the negative aspects of ego, or shadow, are minimalized, allowing the positive traits of the ego to better contribute.

I just finished reading the book Egonomics where the authors make an elegant case for three principles that not only require us to do things differently but they require us to be different. These three principles are humility, curiosity and veracity. 

      
It occurred to me that while the authors of the book are largely discussing ego in the individual context, as in a leader, I started thinking of it in the organizational context as in the corporate culture.  Here’s how they describe the first of these principles:

        "…humility is intelligent self-respect that keeps us from thinking too much or too little of         ourselves. It reminds us how far we have come while at the same time helping us see how far         short we are of what we can be."

Imagine an organization having this as a cornerstone to their culture. In his book  Beyond Ego: Influential Leadership Starts Within, Canadian consultant Art Horn  defines what I would call “negative ego” as “the part of you that sees yourself as above, below or against other people or circumstances.” This might be the most succinct definition I have come across for the dark side of human ego.

The second Egonomics principle is curiosity:

        "The highest concentration of curiosity isn’t created by adding an ounce of order to a pound of         openness, or vice versa. Trait curiosity requires equal parts of both."

What the authors call “trait curiosity” is built-in, intrinsic, always there - as opposed to episodic curiosity.

Imagine an organizational culture possessing trait curiosity, always curious, always exploring, asking questions. This reminds me of the “learning organization” that became so popular in the early 1990s after the publication of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. At the time, it was a departure from the “know it all” cultures that were so dominant, like the U.S. auto makers’ cultures until the 1980s when Japanese manufacturers started kicking Detroit’s butt. This arrogant Detroit culture could be seen as “organizational ego” run rampant.

The third principle for this conscious dominion over ego is veracity, a word we don’t hear much about these days. Here’s part of what the Egonomics authors have to say about it:

        "Fused with humility and curiosity, veracity…. keeps the capital of the ego working for us rather         than  against us. Veracity means truth. Truth refers to facts or reality; it implies accuracy and         honesty.  Truth is a destination. Veracity doesn’t differ from truth in its destination, but it         differs in action.  Veracity implies the habitual pursuit of and adherence to truth. Both pursuit         and adherence matter immensely; pursuit in arriving at truth, and adherence in making a         change once truth is discovered."

Now imagine all three of these principles embedded in an organizational culture where individuals expressing these characteristics are rewarded, respected and admired for their dominion over ego allowing the organization as a whole to exude that same dominion. After all, if one is alive one has an ego. But a healthy functioning ego takes dominion and mastery so it stays clear of those darker sides – like arrogance, defensiveness and bravado to name a few - that do so much damage.

I find these principles to be a great fit for my model of a conscious organization, where people are encouraged to seek out any darkness and shine light on any dysfunction. Thanks to Egonomics, we have more content on which to build.

Conscious leaders who adopt these principles are leaders who have dominion over their egos  and offer hope to all who work in the public or private sectors.


                                                                   * * * * * *
NOTES:

Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Our Most Expensive Liability), by David Marcum and Steven Smith, Fireside/Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007

Beyond Ego: Influential Leadership Starts Within, by Art Horn, ECW Press, Toronto, 2008

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, by Peter Senge, Doubleday Currency, New York, 1990