Swept Up

You ever gotten swept up in a business deal or neighbor problem or some kind of holy war that made you wonder: What was that? What was I thinking?

This happens to me a lot. Just like it happens with every other human.

It doesn't matter if you're a big shot or not. In fact honchos are famous for getting themselves and lots of others swept up in stuff.

Stuff like WMD and subprime mortgages and TARPs and Health Care Reform and Change-Is-Coming-America and Mission Accomplished. And to think this is stuff that's swept up over a few measly years.

Yikes!

Why do we keep doing this?

Maybe it's because of the pounding we get from yak radio and talk TV.

And because leaders and bosses are forever promising to save us from melting polar caps, insurance companies, men in caves, quarterly sales slumps, devils, un-Americans, missing the Next Big Thing.

And, let's face it, maybe it's because we're willing to let others tack their talking points to our tongues.

What if everyone held to a couple of basic principles of responsible leadership and followership?

For leaders this would mean that truth and honesty are more important than urgency and victory. For followers this would mean it's your duty to ask Why until it can't be asked anymore.

And wouldn't it be great if someone invented a four-point checklist where you could check off the stuff people tell us on the TV and Radio and The Internet?

Like when they say "EVERYBODY needs to do this or do that or else."

And "We gotta DO something and we gotta do it now!"

And "There's just no time for any discussion because we gotta do something NOW!"

And "If you must ask why, well, then you must be ONE OF THEM and not one of us."

When this list reads Check-Check-Check-Check we'd all know we're getting swept up.

I wonder why nobody's invented that checklist to make it safer to use the TV and Radio and The Internet? Maybe it's because somebody already invented the OFF Button.

And assumed we'd use it.

--tim
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Confidence. Arrogance.

You ever seen these two forces at work in a family discussion or office staff meeting or joint session of Congress?

Maybe you find it easy sorting confidence and arrogance apart in this real-time, noisy, on-demand, demanding world. I don't, but I try.

Here's one attempt:

Confidence listens. Arrogance speaks to no one but itself.

Confidence enjoys the question. Arrogance wants the answer, any answer.

Confidence invests in tomorrow. Arrogance spends all it has for the glory of fleeting moments.

Confidence seeks resolution. Arrogance yells You Lie.

Confidence nurtures patience. Arrogance can't wait.

Confidence learns. Arrogance knows.

Confidence wonders and looks around. Arrogance and its stiff neck sees one way.

Confidence trusts. Arrogance suspects someone's to blame.

Confidence accepts the river coming its way. Arrogance controls the flow.

Confidence invites civility. Arrogance breeds chaos.

Confidence acts humbly, subtly. Arrogance seeks omnipotence and you better get on board or else you're one of them and not one of us.

Confidence hopes. Arrogance fears.

Confidence believes deep down. Arrogance trembles.

Confidence earns. Arrogance deserves.

Confidence sows steadfastness. Arrogance breeds anxiety.

Confidence searches for a Source and Center larger than itself. Arrogance believes only in itself.

Confidence renews and refreshes. Arrogance becomes a has-been.

Confidence asks Do You Want To Come Along? Arrogance asks Am I Good Enough?

--tim

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My Dinner With Vishwa

You ever have a conversation that you can't shake out of your head? I can't stop thinking about my dinner with Vishwa in Bangalore. And we had dinner two years ago.

That's when I asked: "So who's going to win, Vishwa, China or India?"

"Oh no, Mr. Tim, that is not the right question," Vishwa said. "Because it's not China or India. It's China AND India."

Vishwa says the young, emerging middle-class street in places like Bangalore believes the bulk of financial and human capital (i.e. money and talent) is moving to his part of the world and away from ours. It's just a matter of time says Vishwa.

So for my friend Vishwa the right question is simply: "When? When will it be China AND India?"

Oh my!

Maybe I can't get this dinner chatter out of my head because my four kids just went back to school.

Maybe it's because they were walking up the schoolhouse steps just as some famous Americans were yapping about the current American president encouraging kids to study hard.

Maybe it's because of a speech, Dave Laird, the soon-to-be retiring president of Minnesota Private Colleges Council, delivered the other day that had these facts:

-China will build 800 new universities in the next decade. America will build five.
-In Minnesota (my home) just 25% of 9th graders will earn a college degree in the next decade.
-Compared to students worldwide, American kids rank 25th in math; 21st in science; 15th in reading.
-In 1975 America was #3 in the world in graduating college kids who held a science or engineering degree. In 2005 America was 20th.
-And by 2004 China AND India were producing 10 times more of these brainy graduates than we do.

Dave Laird says America is falling behind China AND India. He's been a thoughtful, vocal leader on this topic. He only wishes more leaders in politics and business would be as public as the president when it comes to encouraging kids to study hard.

I wish everyone could have dinner with Vishwa. I'll bet that would encourage our kids to study harder. Maybe even make our famous yappers a lot smarter too.

--tim
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Sometimes Questions

You ever been in a sales or board or townhall meeting that wasn't going anywhere until someone asked a really good question?

The kind of question poet David Whyte would say has "no right to go away."

These questions are sometimes as good as answers. Maybe better.

A lot of questions are asked in a lot of meetings to fetch pride or power or status or 'gotcha.'

But not questions that have no right to go away. Those come from the soul. From wisdom places hard to hear in this talk-talk-talkie-talk world of ours.

They don't go away because some truth is just on the other side. Sometimes painful or inspirational or scary or peaceful truth we need to get to.

Questions like these are just what we need says David Whyte in his poem

SOMETIMES
Sometimes,
If you move carefully through the forest,
Sometimes,
If you move carefully through the forest,

Breathing like the ones in the old stories who could cross
A shimmering bed of leaves without a sound,
You come to place whose only task is to trouble you,
With tiny, but frightening requests.

Conceived it seems out of nowhere,
But in this place starting to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop doing what you are doing right now.
And to stop what you are becoming while you do it.

Questions that can make or unmake a life,
Questions that have patiently waited for you.

Questions that have no right to go away.

Sometimes Questions. You get to know them because they have no right to go away. Do you have any of these questions sometimes?

--tim
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Steve the Innovator

You want to grow in a tough time like this you need to get comfy with these two words: radical constraints.

Steve the Innovator taught me these two words. And it's those two words that allowed him to create www.readitfor.me (my favorite place on the web).

In short, radical constraint means thinking completely differently about a problem or goal. Another hot innovator, Evan Williams who invented Twitter, told THE ECONOMIST in December 2007 that 'radical constraints can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things.' One question, the story says Evan Williams likes to ask is ''what can we take away to create something new?''

Sounds like big stuff when the big-wig inventor of Twitter talks about radical constraints.

In Steve's case he wrestles the same demons we mortals in businessland face every day: How do I grow in a tough economy? The typical approach is to come up with better answers to questionable sales, marketing, pricing, product programs.

Not Steve.

Radical constraint concepts led him instead to an offbeat question: "What could I do that would get me in the email inboxes of C-level decision makers 52 times a year AND have an 'open' rate of ten times average email campaigns?"

Readitfor.me was his answer. And the best part is it has no clear linear tie to his core digital consulting agency, Polar Unlimited. Unless you consider that the weekly blogpodcastebookmashup that is readitfor.me is followed by thousands of people, many who are business honchos too busy to read all the must-read business books out there.

So Steve does a nifty, thrifty summary of the best business books of the moment. It's less book review than an unpacking of big ideas bound by hard cover. I actually go looking for his email if I don't find it during the week (this week it was sitting in my spam folder for who knows what reason.)

If I was CMO of a place like Amazon or Target or Wal Mart or Barnes & Nobles and wanted to sell more books to more business execs or a place that peddles publications or software or anything else that promises to make business run better, I'd want to pick Steve the Innovator's brain.

Not for answers. I'd want offbeat questions about how you get inside (and stay inside) the heads of customers and prospects in this idea and knowledge economy of ours.

--tim
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We the Writers

You ever wonder why people blog?

The business gurus, Tom Peters and Seth Godin, say blogging helps you think more than it helps you get rich or become famous.

Which makes me wonder what if all this blogging (which is to say writing) makes us better writers and then better thinkers?

I know a business columinist in Minneapolis who knew of a freelance writer who called his trade 'vernacular engineering.'

Goodness gracious, that's well said. And well-engineered.

Writing is the engineering of ideas; the test-bed of creativity; the thing you do to shape and refine concepts until they are just right.

Here's an idea: What if our President, an accomplished author (and, perhaps, now the nation's Writer-in-Chief...), asked every kid in America to start blogging? And to encourage them, Mr. President, how about you promise to make time to read one kid's post during every one of your presidential press conferences and weekly radio addresses?

How great would it be if We the People became We the Writers? And in the process, became the world's best vernacular engineers in this knowledge and idea economy of ours?

--tim

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He Has Cancer

You know the words no Mom or Dad or Kid ever wants to hear:

''He has cancer.''

Those words were my wife's words about our son.

I'll always remember that phone call. My wife said quietly at first: ''You need to take this.''

Then Those Words, ''He has cancer.''

Same crud as Lance Armstrong.

Those Words send you somewhere lonely. Somewhere scary. It's a place that's not dark. Nor light. A place where time checks out. Moments are thick. Minutes immovable.

And the people, your people, they are gone. Way gone. Because you’ve lost your place because maybe you're going to lose your boy. And they just don't know how to reach over to you. You've moved onto a different path. A path that's only for you and people like you who have Those Words.

I asked just one thing in the middle of our first night with Those Words, ''Are You really coming to take my boy?''

As you wait for some kind of answer, people, who are gonna be Your People through this thing, begin gathering around you, saying stuff like “we're thinking of you.”

They call. “We're praying for you.”

They drop an email. “We'll ask God to heal your son.”

They bring a meal -- lordy, do they bring meals. “Let us know if we can do anything for you.”

This gathering of Your People really takes off when someone says you should set up a page on Caring Bridge .

Holy smokes!

You quickly realize, this is a place where you can actually begin to manage Those Words; to keep Your People up to date in (sorry to sound clinically techno-geeky here) a way that scales. Even better, even more important, Your People can keep you in their thoughts and prayers at scale.

Geez, is THAT important when you and your wife and your kid are dealing with Those Words.

"It's a sacred place," says founder and CEO, Sona Mehring. A place she started in 1997 to support a Mom and a Dad and Their Baby, all friends, who'd been dealing with a really difficult illness.

Sona's a down-to-earth, techie-type, and she asked her friends a simple question at a tough time: How can I help?

You know like I know that keeping Your People up-to-date at a time like this is really hard. Really time-consuming. Really emotionally draining. And, speaking from experience, you gotta know it's really the last thing you want to do if you're like my wife and me and my kid when we gotta figure out what to do with Those Words.

Sona's response back in '97: She stepped up and created the world's first social network so her friends and their family could easily share and update one another. Before Facebook. Before MySpace. Before YouTube. Before Twitter.

Now, it's the most important social media place on the planet!

The CaringBridge premise is simple. Each family has a page. And they use it for free as long they wish to keep friends and family informed and connected when, as Sona says, "it matters most. It's a time when people need to connect. It's a place for important emotional support."

In 1997, Sona's friends and then some 100 other families turned to CaringBridge. From there it took off. The number of families has doubled every year. More than 30 million people have visited CaringBridge in the last 12 months. Every day 200 family sites are created. These are people like Your People who have cancer, premature babies, cardiac challenges, serious accidents.

Today, CaringBridge is a vibrant non-profit, depending on small contributions from the people like Your People who benefit most.

If I could pick a theme song for CaringBridge, it would be this one from Bruce Springsteen. And if I could pick a tagline it'd be this line from that song:

"With These Hands. With These Hands. C'mon Rise Up."

I know what Your People and their hands can do for a Mom and a Dad and a Kid with Those Words. There's no clear-cut cure for cancer yet. But Those Words are no match for Your People, Your Community, and a place like CaringBridge.

Do you wonder what would happen if you had this sacred place and Your People with you before you ever get Those Words?

--tim

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