Crazy Is As Crazy Does

Robert Fulghum, best known for writing a short essay titled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, is one of the very best storytellers in the world.

One of his finest tales involves his distaste of using business cards to introduce ourselves to one another. He thinks they have some utility - title, company, email address, phone number - but don't convey anything important about who we are. Further, he thinks they limit us to talking with each other about our occupations - as if they matter. For example, he doesn't like saying he's a writer. Writing - to him - is merely the product of what he does. What he does is something broader, and it doesn't fit on a 3x2 card.

Robert has butted his head against the wall of this conundrum on more than one occasion. Once on a plane, he decided to keep his business card in his pocket and lie; he told a man in a turban - whom he was certain he didn't want to talk to - that he was a neurosurgeon. Imagine his surprise when he discovered that the man in the turban really was a neurosurgeon. But, the man understood Robert's plight. He, too, was chagrined when - upon introducing himself - people began spouting off about their various neural malfunctions, as if that were all he was.

Another time - on another plane - Fulghum sought out a fellow liar, and without properly introducing themselves to each other, they agreed to lie to one another for the entire flight. The other player introduced himself as a spy. Fulghum said he was a nun. Robert said it was one of the damnedest conversations he ever had: imaginative, informative, and never true for an instant. And, to top it off, an elderly man stood behind Fulghum as they were deplaning, and said, "Have a nice day, sister."

It's easy to see how role-playing ala Sister Robert and Secret Agent Man is an interesting way to pass time in a pressurized cabin at 35,000 feet, but you only have to move a couple of clicks away from center to also see it as a way to ramp up the energy level and get the creative juices flowing in small groups looking to add variety to their meetings.

If your group likes this idea and wants to play with it, here are some things to think about.

• Be specific about what you want to accomplish. Ask: What result do we want to create? This gets you centered on where you want to end up, and not on the particulars of how to get there. A useful analogy is sailing. Good sailors lock into their destination, and then set their course. And, if they get blown off course, they don't try to get back on the original course; they keep their eye on their destination and chart a new course from where they currently are instead.
• Make sure a wide variety of roles are selected. For example, you don't want to end up with two nuns, a priest, three spies, and an FBI agent. Also, avoid typical business roles like accountant, sales rep, etc.
• Stay in character. For example, if a person from marketing is playing a trauma surgeon, she shouldn't simply take her knowledge of marketing and spit it out using doctor-speak. She should assume the knowledge base of a trauma surgeon and deploy it as best she can.
• Assess the results. You can talk about what happened and decide if and when you want to do it again by holding the following conversation at the end of the meeting.

Conversation:

• What was supposed to happen?
• What actually happened?
• What went well, and why?
• What can be improved, and how?

Afterwords: 

"I've always been crazy, but it's kept me from going insane." - Waylon Jennings, from the song I've Always Been Crazy

"You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans." - Tom Robbins

"Behavioral traits such as curiosity about the world, flexibility of response, and playfulness are common to practically all young mammals but are usually rapidly lost with the onset of maturity in all but humans. Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature." - Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." - Apple Computer, advertisement

You'll Never Walk Alone

There is a quote from Tony Campolo, pastor and author, that I've had in my files for years. I've kept it because it jarred me when I first read it, and has challenged my thinking about life since. Here's what he said:

"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

I've never been able to argue with his assertion; I've only been able to ask myself why I think he's right, and on that score, I've come up empty.

There's another quote I came across recently that's helped me begin to answer my question. It comes from Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon:

"Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that."

Or, as Tom Robbins asked about the TV set in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates:

“Does it not posses the power of a totem pole and the heart of a rat?”

Is television to blame for the fact so many of us have become so numb and disconnected from the violence and suffering that whirls around us like a doomsday machine? I think so; at least in part.

A case in point. I was up late reading and watching TV when the first reports of the February 13, 2009, plane crash at the Buffalo, NY airport started coming in. For a few minutes, I gave my full attention to the TV, but soon I was back to reading and glancing up every now and then to see if anything new was happening. I fell asleep before long, and slept peacefully through the night. In the morning, I turned the TV back on and found out that 50 people had died in the crash. At that point, I did what I think many of us did that morning: I acknowledged that some people I didn't know died in a plane crash in a city far away, and went about my business. After all, we see stuff like this on TV all the time.

Then ... I got a wake-up call. I had wandered back to the family room. The TV was still tuned to a cable news channel. I watched - mindlessly at first. I noticed that a young man was being interviewed. I figured the reporter would be asking the same banal questions reporters always ask in similar situations, and that the young man would answer in pretty much the same way others I've seen standing in his shoes did. The reporter didn't disappoint, to be sure, but the young man's answers stunned me. All of a sudden I was awake, and personally involved. In a nutshell, here's what happened. The young man told the reporter he had planned to stop by the airport on his way home from soccer practice to meet his sister's plane. He told him he had learned she was on the ill-fated flight, and no one had made it out alive. The reporter asked the first banal question: "What has been going through your mind the last few minutes?" The young man said he just talked to his Father - who was vacationing with his Mother in Florida - to relay the bad news, and said he was really worried about his Mother. The reporter then asked him another banal question: - "How are they taking it?" His answer was anything but banal:

"To tell you the truth, I heard my mother make a noise on the phone that I've never heard before."

All of a sudden I was there with him. I conjured up a vivid picture of his parents dealing with their grief in a small motel somewhere in Florida. I thought back to the time in my life when I had to pass the news to my future wife - we had been dating for about six months at the time - that her 14 year old brother had died in a freak accident. I remember trying to come up with the words to comfort her. I couldn't so I just held her. She cried herself to sleep. I thought about the struggle our family has been going through to help one of my sons deal with a serious substance abuse problem, and the nights I've stayed awake waiting for him to come home, and hoping the phone didn't ring first. This is hard stuff, and you pretty much end up dealing with it by yourself. Even those of us who thought twice about the 50 folks who died in the dark of night in Buffalo, were able to quickly put it our of our minds and go back to our daily routines. For those closest to the victims, however, life will never be the same.

In the future, I hope to remember that there are real people - with real families and friends that love them - behind the pictures we see and the sound bites we hear on TV. And, if I can do that, maybe I can also remember to stop to say a prayer asking God to walk with them in their time of great need.


Conversation:

• What is your reaction to the Tony Campolo Quote?
• Have you experienced the sudden loss of a close friend or family member?
  
• If so, how did you cope? Did you walk through your pain or deny it?
  
• If not, have you ever helped someone deal with a tragic loss? Explain.
  

Afterwords:

"You cannot put a cheap band-aid on a sacred wound; there is no way through pain but to walk through it." - Dr. Robin Smith

"We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, 'Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.' " - John Steinbeck

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares." - Henri Nouwen

Video:

The interview discussed above.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

You'll Never Walk Alone, Celtic & Liverpool Fans

Helter Skelter

Vincent Bugliosi spent much of his career working as a prosecuting attorney in the L.A. County District Attorney's office. He is best known for the prosecution of Charles Manson and several members of his "family" for the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders. His book Helter Skelter* is based on the Manson case. To watch Bugliosi talk about this case click here.

I had the pleasure of attending one of Vince's lectures a few years ago at the University of Texas at Austin. He spoke there about his book, Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder, which is a highly critical assessment of the work of the district attorney and prosecutors - among others - in the acquittal of O.J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. And, of the many things I remember from that evening, there is one comment he made that stands out. He said the first thing he does when prosecuting a case is to do the best job he possibly can of building the defense's case. Then - and only then - does he start to prepare his case. He went on to say that if he'd have been prosecuting the Simpson case, he'd have put in up to 500 hours just preparing to give his closing argument. Of course, a good deal of that time would have been spent preparing to give the defense's closing argument. The prosecutors in the Simpson case, he said, prepared their closing argument the night before they presented it.

Now, even if prosecuting a capital murder case is not in your future plans, you can still use Bugliosi's idea to great benefit. Give it a twist in one direction, and it's a fail-safe device. Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr. explains in a story from his book Questions of Character:

"When former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin heard someone suggest a course of action, he often asked what the strongest alternative was and the strongest reasons to pursue that alternative. Rubin knew the danger of rushing to judgment on complicated issues, and he wanted to see how carefully recommendations had been thought through."

Twist it in a slightly different way, and it's a sales training program. My former boss Larry Wilson said it first:

"Never talk about your product or service until you have demonstrated that you fully understand your prospect's needs."

Twist it again, and it's the secret to becoming a world-class communicator. Stephen R. Covey:

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

There are a few more rabbits I can pull out of this hat, but it's probably as good a time as any to let you have a go at it.

Conversation:

• What are some ways you might apply Bugliosi's idea - or some variation thereof - in your work or life?
  

Afterwords:

"He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion." - John Stuart Mill

"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life." - Albert Einstein

"When we sleep on someone else's pillow, we sometimes find ourselves having that person's dreams." - Tom Robbins

*The title of Bugliosi's book - Helter Skelter - came from the title of a song in a double album - The Beatles - which was recorded and released in 1968. It is more commonly known as The White Album, because it has no text besides the band's name on its all white jacket. The White Album is, perhaps, best known for attracting the attention of 60's counterculturists looking for hidden meanings in the music of The Beatles. One of those searching for subliminal messages was Charles Manson, who Bugliosi said used words contained in many of the album's songs - and generous helpings of hallucinogens - to persuade members of his "family" that the album was in fact an apocalyptic message predicting a prolonged race war and justifying the murder of wealthy people. Manson named the war he saw coming Helter Skelter.

Jim Collins Is Curious George

I interviewed Jim Collins - author of the best-selling books Built to Last and Good to Great - after a Masters Forum session and asked him what drove him to put several years of research into writing each of his books. This was his answer:

"The ultimate driving force is curiosity and contribution. And the curiosity part really ties into this notion of what we jokingly call the Chimp. Be like Curious George, start with a question and look under the yellow hat to find what's there. To see, to truly understand, and go 'Ooh, that's really interesting.' And then second, to make a lasting contribution."

I might add that instead of doing research, writing books, and giving lectures to make enough money to live the good life, Jim writes books and gives lectures to fund his next research project and make his next contribution.

Two years after Built to Last became a best-seller, Jim was asked a question - by a management consultant during a dinner in San Francisco - that spawned Good to Great:

"What advice do you have for mediocre companies that want to dramatically improve themselves? Are they doomed forever to second-class performance?"

Jim rephrased the question slightly:

"How can I help people and companies go from mere goodness to greatness?"

And, set out to find the answer.

First, he set up a research lab in his hometown of Boulder, Colorado. Incidentally, the lab is housed in the same building where he attended grammar school and his conference room is his old first-grade classroom.

Then, he assembled a research team - made up of young graduate students from the University of Colorado - to walk with him on what turned out to be a five-year journey to answer his question. But, he didn't simply pick the first warm bodies that showed up on his doorstep; he chose bold, curious students - like himself - who wouldn't settle for just any answers. The team he chose took on the name Chimps, because of Jim's chimpanzee-like ways. And, it wasn't long before pictures of Curious George began to show up around the lab. In total, some 20 Chimps worked on the project at a rate of four or five a year. Their work involved: analyzing stocks, conducting interviews, collecting and coding articles, and fact checking numbers in the book. They were - to a person - fully and passionately committed to the idea of greatness. They were - as a team - willing to take full responsibility for the conclusions they drew from their research.

In addition to curiosity, Jim was looking some other characteristics in the people he hired to be Chimps. They had to be:

• Smart
  
• Willing to death march
  
• Genetically encoded to be irreverent
  
• Willing to tell him when he was wrong

Conversation:

• Which, if any, of the five traits Collins looked for are also important to you? Why?
  
• If any, some, or all of them are important to you, how are you making sure this is accounted for in your recruiting and selection process?
  
• If you are able to find and hire people who possess the traits you say are important, are you capable of leading and retaining them? Are you sure?
  
• If not, what can you do to either develop the necessary capabilities, or make sure you are not hiring people you can't keep?

Afterwords:

"Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions." - Tom Robbins

"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein

"An accident is perhaps the only thing that really inspires us. A composer improvises aimlessly the way an animal grubs about. Both of them go grubbing about because they yield to a compulsion to seek things out." Igor Stravinski, Poetics of Music

"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking;" - Leo Tolstoy

Alex Haley: On Assignment for Playboy

In 1976, Alex Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The following year, Roots was made into a television mini-series that reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers. In 1979, ABC aired a sequel titled Roots: the Next Generations.

Until then, Haley was best know for writing The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was published in 1965 and was later named one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Alex was the speaker for the kick-off session of our 1991 Masters Forum series. He arrived fairly early on the cold and snowy Minnesota evening prior to his appearance. We had planned dinner together. But he called and said he would just as soon spend the rest of the night trying to get warm, and wondered if we might have breakfast early the next morning instead. I chuckled and said "not a problem." We agreed to meet at the hotel's coffee shop at half past six.

I was really anxious to meet Alex. I had become familiar with his work several years before he became famous. I was in college at the time and had attended an on-campus lecture by George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell's hate-filled presentation stopped me cold. I had grown up in a small town in Minnesota, and though I was familiar with the civil rights movement, I'd had no first-hand experience with it. Rockwell blew the fog away; he gave bigotry and hate a face and voice I'll never forget.

At roughly the same time, I got hold of an issue of Playboy magazine that featured an interview with Rockwell, and though I was not surprised to find him saying pretty much the same things he said in his speech, I was surprised when I learned that the interview was conducted by an African-American writer named Alex Haley. "Why in the hell did he do that?" I thought.

I had a chance to ask Alex that question as we sat having breakfast on the day he graced our stage. The story he told me was fascinating. He phoned Rockwell to set up the interview. Rockwell asked him if he was Jewish. He said he was not. Rockwell apparently didn't think to ask him if he was Black. Alex didn't bother to tell him either, and said there were a bunch of surprised Nazi's when a cab deposited him at their front steps on the day of the interview. He said Rockwell went ahead with the interview nonetheless, but kept a loaded pistol within his reach the entire time. You can read the interview here.

After he finished telling the story, I had another question for Alex. He had been quoted as saying:

"In all my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good and praise it."

I asked him what good he found in Rockwell. He answered:

"I found a very rich lesson for myself in my conversation with George Lincoln Rockwell for the Playboy interview. Whatever else, he was intelligent. I found that he had become a Nazi because of a series of frustrations in his life. He wasn't the tough, tough man he presented himself as being; he was actually a poignant, in-trouble human being, surrounded by ignorant haters - that's all they had sustaining them."

That answer rendered me speechless for one of the only times in my life. The best I could do at that point was suggest that I pick up the tab for breakfast and that we head to the auditorium where he would be giving his presentation. He was all for it. Before we left, however, he asked if he could have the two pieces of bacon I had left on my plate. I said "Sure!"

I have reflected on the notion of Alex finding something good about Rockwell many times since. I think there are two very important lessons to be learned.

First, research tells us that if we don't see the good in someone, we can't effectively manage or lead that person. Alex Haley reminds us that there is something good about virtually everyone, and if we can't readily see it, we simply need to dig a little deeper to uncover it. The key to the dig is listening to understand, or listening in a way that allows others to tell us their own stories in their own way and in their own time. Once you've done this a few times, you'll understand what Will Rogers really meant when he said:

"I've never met a man I didn't like."

Most people think he said it because he was an eternal optimist; I think he said it because he made it a habit to take the time to get to know people by listening to their stories. If you are a leader, you should make it a point to do the same with your colleagues.

Second, "find the good and praise it" is the by far the most important rule of giving effective performance feedback. But, it's not the only rule. A leader must also point to what is wrong with performance periodically. I learned this early in my career from Fran Tarkenton, who was both a quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings and a business consultant at the time. He remains a consultant today. He said that there needs to be a positive to negative ratio of 4:1 in giving performance feedback. He called the concept "laying the one," and said it's the one negative stroke in five that gives the four positive ones their credibility. James Boswell, the 18th century Scottish author, summarized this idea very succinctly when he said:

"He who praises everybody, praises nobody."

He could just as well have said:

"He who praises everything, praises nothing."

The idea didn't really come alive for me, though, until my oldest son landed on a 6th grade traveling basketball team coached by a guy named Joe Crawford. This could be a long story in itself, but suffice it to say that Joe was willing to "lay the one" at a time when every parent, teacher, and coach was being told they could only pat kids on the head and say good job; to do otherwise would damage their self-esteem. Joe took some heat on this. Coaches were also being "encouraged" to give equal playing time to everyone on the team, and not be concerned with winning or losing. Joe took more heat here, especially from parents whose kids were sitting on the bench at crunch time. In fact, at one point in the year, those particular parents tried to get Joe fired. They failed. But Joe didn't.

Joe did three things for the kids on that team during the three years he coached them. They were lessons which will last a lifetime.

First, he taught each and every kid how to play basketball. And he was really good at teaching basketball. This is in contrast to some parents who volunteer to coach youth sports to help their kid and their kid's friends and no one else.

Second, he established a high performance culture; kids earned their playing time and the right to be on the court when the game was on the line through attitude, hard work, and results. My son was one of those end of the bench kids at the beginning, and he earned more playing time as the year went along. One thing he knew for sure, though, was that when he was on the floor it was because he had earned the right to be there, not because of some equal playing time rule. This is how true self-esteem is developed: through true accomplishment.

Third, he taught them to honor the game. He showed them - by example - how to play by the rules, how to win with humility, lose with dignity, and show respect for teammates, opponents, game officials, and parents.

The bottom line for Joe and his kids? They lost the state championship game in triple overtime that first year. They won it the next, and lost in the finals again in the third. I still see kids who played on that team today, and to a one, they say that Joe was by far the best coach or teacher they ever had. Today Joe is running the national AAU basketball program. The AAU couldn't have made a better choice.

The bottom line for leaders? Spend most of you time looking for what's right with performance and praise it when you see it. And don't forget to "lay the one" once in awhile to bolster your credibility.

Conversation:

• What about Haley - what inner strength or life view or studied means of detachment - made it possible for him to sit down and listen to try to understand someone who was so filled with hate for him and all others of his race?
  
• How was he able to absorb Rockwell's rhetoric long enough to get a even a glimpse of the good he eventually saw in him?
• Besides the gun - though I don't think it was an issue - how was he able to refrain from arguing with Rockwell or striking back in some other way?
  
• Haley said he found a very rich lesson for himself during the conversation. What do you think it could possibly have been?
  
• Have you ever had an experience that mirrors Haley's in some way, shape, or form? If so, please tell the story of what went down, and touch upon any lessons you learned.
  

Afterwords:

"You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." - M. Scott Peck

"One has not only the ability to perceive the world, but an ability to alter one's perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them." - Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

"In the perspective of every person lies a lens through which we may better understand ourselves." - Ellen J. Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning

"When a man begins to have a vision larger than his own truth...he begins to become conscious of his moral nature." - Rabindranath Tagore

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there." - Eric Hoffer, Passionate State of Mind

"It's by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life." - Joseph Campbell

"You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light." - Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Video:

From Roots: Alex Haley Meets with George Lincoln Rockwell

Challenging Convention

Gary Hamel is one of the world's leading experts on strategy and innovation. He has penned countless articles and several tomes on these topics, including his latest, The Future of Management.

At The Masters Forum one year, Hamel talked of how convention stifles innovation. To illustrate, he focused on banks and asked - rhetorically - what might change in terms of day-to-day operations and/or strategic planning if two banks were to swap top management teams. His answer: nothing. Why? Because the banking industry has conventions - principles, practices, and protocols - which are followed by 99.99% of all banks and bankers. These conventions have been passed from one generation of bankers to the next, and their very deep roots virtually insure that any major innovations in banking will come from outside the industry.

Conversation:

For banks or bankers who want to challenge the conventions of the industry, Hamel suggested holding a conversation centered around these questions.

• What are 10 things you would never hear a customer say about a bank or bankers?
  
• What conventions do these statements represent?
• If we overturn these conventions, what new opportunities or new ways doing business emerge?

This is a very useful framework. You can use it in the same way to challenge the conventions of your industry, and you can use it in a variety of other ways. For example, you can ask what 10 things you would never hear a visitor say about your website, and go on from there.

Afterwords:

"To know what everyone knows is to know nothing." - Remy de Gourmont

"Engineers brought up and living in affluent Japan have no chance of understanding the needs of the next billion." - Fumio Ohtsubo, Panasonic president, as quoted by Financial Times

"Not only do we as individuals get locked into single-minded views, but we also reinforce these views for each other until the culture itself suffers the same mindlessness." - Ellen J. Langer

"The journey is hard, for the secret place where we have always been is overgrown with thorns and thickets of “ideas,” of fears and defenses, prejudices and repressions." - Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility." - Pablo Picasso

"Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest." - Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

Old Tricks for New Dogs

At his May 18th commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt had some very interesting things to say to the nearly 6000 graduating seniors.

He began by lauding the school and the quality of its graduates. He moved on to compare his generation to theirs, noting - among other things - that members of his generation spent all their time trying to hide their most embarrassing moments, while today's generation records and posts all those moments on YouTube.

In his wrap-up, he listed some of the things he thinks they should do right now.

"Don't have a plan. Instead, let's have some luck. Success is about being ready for the good opportunities that come before you. You can't plan innovation or inspiration, but you can be ready for it."

"For the last four years, you've been penalized for making mistakes. From now on, rewards will gravitate to those who make mistakes and learn from them."

"Think of something completely new, and go work on that. Take that as your challenge. Take that as your opportunity."

"Work in a group. None of us is as smart as all of us."

"Trust matters. Trust is the most important currency in a networked world."

"In a world where everything is remembered ... and kept forever ... you need to live for the future and the things you really, really care about. In order to know what those things are, you're going to have to turn off your computer and discover all that is human around us."

Unplug. Go analog. Leave the virtual world and make human connections. If you were born before 1977, there's a half-way decent chance you not only see the utility of doing this, but there's also a pretty good chance you've actually done it. If you were born between 1977 and 1995, you belong to a group the demographers call Generation Y, and according to Nadira Hira, a Gen Yer who writes for Fortune magazine and authored its 2007 cover story on Gen Yers and their impact on corporate America:

"Technology has made it harder for this generation to relate on an interpersonal level. People don't know anymore how to talk to each other in person."

A chink in their armor? Yes. Trust, you see, is born and bred in face-to-face relationships. It is the result of two people showing each other their eyes, and having authentic conversations in which they share stories and get to know one another from many different angles. Gen Yers, and the Millennials who are following along behind them, really, really need to get this.

A novel way for them to think about it is to take a step back in time and examine the lifestyle the Amish who truly live in an analog world. For example, author Richard Exley says:

"As you probably know the Amish believe in living a simple life - no electricity, no telephones, no motorized vehicles. Yet in many of their communities there is a pay phone. When asked about this apparent discrepancy one elder explained. 'If the telephone were in our home it would control us. As long as it is out here we control it.' He went on to say, 'Most people drop everything they are doing the instant the telephone rings and run to answer it. In their lives the telephone takes precedent over everything. (Of course cell phones have only made this addiction far worse.) The pay telephone, on the other hand, is our servant. It is there if we need it but we do not allow it to intrude into our lives.'"

They'll never go there, of course, but even taking a couple of small steps in that direction could pay big dividends.

On the other hand, Hira said she suspects that Gen Yers really do want to unplug and get personally involved with others. Here's what she said about supervising and retaining them:

"Ultimately, success with Gen Yers comes back to feedback and dialogue. They want to be engaged. They don't just want to have an evaluation once a year; they want to be mentored. Mentoring should be both formal and informal. Supervisors should take a holistic approach. They should constantly ask, 'What kind of dialogue do we need to have and how can we do it in an authentic and meaningful way?'"

She also noted that Gen Yers often prefer to turn to older leaders (from the World War II generation) for face-to-face conversation because:

"... they're looking for the person from the company who's got the most to teach them, the person who can really show them the institutional memory of the company. In the past, we've basically put those people out to pasture, but right now we're finding that they can basically be your best asset at a company."

I like to call this the "Old Tricks for New Dogs" phenomenon.

Will this new generation of ours get to the point where they are comfortable - and even enjoy - talking face-to-face with others? I think some will, but most won't.

Those who do will be the ones who simply take the time to enter into conversation after conversation, and discover how fascinating and satisfying they can be. This is an organic process. You learn to converse by having conversations. Your heart is in the lead. You speak your truth and listen genuinely to theirs. The conversations you have lead to deeper relationships and higher levels of trust. You are compelled to do this more and more often because the experience is so rich and rewarding. Relating this way to others becomes part of your essence. Donald Babcock expressed this notion of simply being in his poem The Duck:

"Now we're ready to look at something pretty special. It's a duck, riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.

No it isn't a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells.

"He isn't cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is a part of it.

"He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.

"But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have.

"He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.

"Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is. And neither do you. But he realizes it.

"And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it! He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity - which it is. He has made himself a part of the boundless by easing himself into just where it touches him.

"I like the little duck. He doesn't know much, but he's got religion."

Those who don't will be the ones who decide that being a good conversationalist is a matter of developing the right skill set. This is a mechanical process. You learn to converse by honing your skills. Your head is in charge. You speak correctly and listen skillfully. The conversations you have are hollow and fail to enhance your relationships or build trust. You retreat from them more and more because they serve no purpose as far as you can see. Relating with others becomes a function of doing and not being. Henry David Thoreau described relationships based on doing better than anyone before or since:

"What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm."

Google takes trust building seriously. According to Larry Brilliant, head of the Google Foundation:

"Google’s a strange place. When I met Eric Schmidt, he said, 'If you are kind to everybody, then you will make good decisions because people will give you good information, and if you are truthful to everybody, they will be truthful to you.' That’s what’s different about Google. They screw up and make mistakes, but they genuinely mean the good stuff about 'don’t be evil.'"

This is an interesting combination, don't you think? A high-tech company with a high-touch culture is quite rare today, although it will be the norm in the very near future. Get yours today! They're going fast!

Conversation:

• To what extent are you addicted to living in the digital world? What has accrued to your benefit as a result? What has been lost? How are you sure of your answers?
• If you were forced to unplug from the digital world for a month, and if your work life and personal life went on as usual in all other ways, how would you compensate? What valuable lessons can you imagine learning?
  
• How do you rate both your willingness and ability to engage authentic and meaningful conversations with others at work? At home? In your social circles? With strangers? How are you troubled - or not troubled - by your answers?
• Is your life blessed by the presence of true friends? How are you sure? How would you describe any pattern you can see in the way your real friendships develop? Is there a story you can tell to illustrate?

Afterwords:

"The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb." - Marshall McLuhan

"The goal of life is to take everything that made you weird as a kid and get people to pay you money for it when you're older." - David Freeman, screenwriter

"The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought." - Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." - Lawrence of Arabia

"No one person can answer the question of meaning in this world today. It is in thinking together, under strong conditions of serious search, that a new understanding can be approached. Group communication, group pondering, is the real art form of our time." - Jacob Needleman

"From moment to moment, from day to day, we search the eyes of others for that certain yes." - Martin Buber

"Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition ... in the moment of friendship, two souls suddenly recognize each other. It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship grow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing." - John O'Donohue

Video:

Eric Schmidt commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania.