Do Not Go To Your Left

When author and TV commentator Roger Rosenblatt graced us with his presence at The Masters Forum several years ago, he gave us this advice on how to live a more successful life:

"Do not go to your left."

He explained that going to your left is a basketball term for working on a weakness; a right-handed player who learns to dribble and shoot from the left side will be more effective on the court. And while this is great for basketball, he said, people who try to compensate for weaknesses in life usually get weaker.

Roger's words could easily be a one-off title for the book - Now, Discover Your Strengths - by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, or even a folksy mission statement for a human resources department. In other words, forget about identifying and correcting weaknesses and focus on building up strengths instead.

There a many ways to discover your strengths. One is to buy Gallup's book - Strengths Finder 2.0 - by Tom Rath. There is a code tucked away inside each book; you can use it to go online and complete a questionnaire that will point to your greatest strengths.

Another approach is to meet face-to-face with four or five people you know and trust, and ask them for feedback on your strengths. The benefit is you get to see yourself as others see you - which isn't always the way you see yourself. You can also ask questions to clarify things you don't understand.

Conversation:

• Pick four or five people who have seen you in action and experienced your behavior over a reasonable (a few months) amount of time.
  
• Meet with each of them individually, and ask what they value most about you. Listen. Ask questions to clarify. Take notes.
  
• Upon completion of the meetings, sift through your feedback and list the top three things they said they value most about you - your strengths.
  
• Meet with each of them again to share your findings and get their response. Ask one or more of them if they would be willing to help you further develop these strengths.

Afterwords:

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig." - Robert Heinlein

"Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. Don't eat pork. I'm sorry. What was that last one? Don't eat pork. God has spoken. Is that the Word of God, or is that pigs trying to outsmart everybody?" - Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show

“There is a Japanese proverb that literally goes ‘Raise the sail with your stronger hand,’ meaning you must go after the opportunities that arise in life that you are best equipped to do.” - Soichiro Honda

The Way of WOLF

I ran into my friend Julie Gilbert at a special program we conducted recently and found out that she has left Best Buy in order to share her ideas on how organizations can create high-performing, innovative, and engaging cultures that tap into the energy and talent of all employees. Her new company is WOLF Means Business.

Julie appeared in our 2007 Masters Forum series to tell the story of how and why she created Best Buy's Women's Leadership Forum - the WOLF program - that has reshaped the company's innovation culture and processes, new products and services, practices in its stores, personnel practices, leadership development, and service to communities.

The WOLF story is long and involved. I'll try to hit the high spots as I summarize it here.

When CEO Brad Anderson introduced her to our audience that day, he began by saying that when he assumed leadership at Best Buy:

"The most critical part of what I wanted to do was to deliver customer-centricity; to change the whole identity of this massive corporation from a product-centered company to a customer-and customer-solutions-centered company."

At its core, WOLF is an outgrowth of Julie's sense that the first - and most important - thing Best Buy needed to do to achieve Brad's goal was revamp its definition of customer. The company had historically considered its customers to be white males between the ages of 16 and 35. This flew right into the face of the fact that women influenced 89 percent of all the money spent on consumer electronics. She asked:

"If women are now dominating the spending, in an industry that was built, like most other industries, as a boys' toy store, how does that impact the future of the company if we don't change?"

Change came slowly, but surely. Early on - before WOLF came into being - when she visited stores and asked sales personnel to demonstrate their methods, she noticed that virtually all attention was focused on male customers and very little on women. Later - after WOLF was established - when sales personnel learned to focus on female customers and talk about things that women generally cared more about than men - how careful the installers are not to make a mess in the house, for example, or how wires can be hidden from view in an installed unit - overall sales jumped. In Julie's words:

"When they looked her in the eye, when they talked about things she cared about, in every single test we did at Best Buy the women would for no apparent reason upgrade products, add on additional services, and aggressively try to move up the installation date."

Did it translate to the bottom line? In the 18 months leading up to September, 2007, Best Buy had increased its market share among women by more than two percent. This resulted in additional sales of $3.6 billion.

The fact that the WOLF program has delivered such stunning sales increases for Best Buy is a remarkable story. Even more fascinating, though, is the story of how it came into being.

It starts small. Julie had noticed that when she would visit stores with her Best Buy partner - a man - the male staff would greet him heartily, but virtually ignore her. The female staff, on the other hand, would usually greet her warmly. One day, she asked a woman at one of the stores why she thought this was happening. The woman began by pouring out her story of being ignored, of having men receive credit for her ideas, of being bypassed for promotion, and of generally not fitting in the company; she ended by talking about Julie:

"We never see a woman executive. When we see you walk through the door, and we know the success you have had at Best Buy, we know that if we keep working hard we're going to become you."

Julie went home that night and had a dream, in which she was a small girl back in the South Dakota town where she grew up, the moon was full, and she heard the howling of animals.

"What came to me in this dream is they're stray wolves. They're saying, 'I'm out here. I'm out here, too. Hey, I'm out here, too!' They're people who do not feel like they fit, who do not feel like they have voices, who want to be heard. And they want to be respected like everyone else."

She went on to say that unlike most humans, wolves care for stray wolves, in part as a way to insure that they have genetic diversity. She said she also realized that eye contact has been lost in our modern society, and there is a distinctive quality to the eyes of the wolf.

"They are so focused. They are looking you right in the eye, and there could be explosions and big things happening all around you and they don't blink. They are intense, they are focused, and they are authentic."

She said:

"As I was waking up out of this dream, this bolt of lightning hit me again and it said, 'Julie, if not you, who is going to do this?' At that moment, in my bed at two in the morning in December, I grabbed my laptop and started creating WOLF."

The WOLF program, Julie said, has three pillars:

"The first is commitment. Commitment to each other, to innovation in the business, and to all stray wolves who need our help. The second is networking: building a strategic diverse network by connecting with people who can help us achieve our goals and do our jobs better every day. The third is give back: becoming better leaders by giving back to the company and charitable organizations impacting the lives of women."

She said she included the give back component in part because the best leaders she had known were people who would offer their time and attention to someone who is struggling. Brad Anderson highlighted this notion in introducing Julie. He said he had gone to a Lutheran seminary right after college, but had left when a professor told him:

"If you’ve got one good sermon in you, you're incredibly lucky."

Anderson said:

"I only very late in life discovered I had a sermon, and I was amazed to find I did."

He followed by saying that after observing Julie's work at Best Buy, he recognized its profound significance:

"You have this incredible joy of watching people take their talents into the world and play those talents out. The WOLF program is designed to find a way to help people who don't know what their sermon is or their story is, and don't know how to find it and tell it, to find it and tell it."

Julie puts it in slightly different terms:

"As leaders our job is to inspire others to believe in themselves and become someone they never thought possible. I wanted Best Buy to be the place - if you have a daughter who's in fifth grade, you're already talking to her about going to Best Buy to work. The reason you are is that it has the most amazing opportunities, it's going to build your leadership skills, it's going to give you opportunities you couldn't get anywhere else and faster than anywhere else. You could be leading a global business anywhere in the world. And you could follow your passion."

The bottom line? At Best Buy, the number of female job applicants in areas where there are WOLF Packs has increased by 37 percent. There are 40 percent more female general managers, and the number of female district managers (managing between eight and 15 stores) has been increased threefold. The turnover of female employees has also decreased dramatically. According to Julie:

"We were losing a female manager every 48 hours inside of Best Buy. In part as a result of WOLF, turnover among women at Best Buy in areas where there are Packs was reduced by 5.7 percent between February 2006 and February 2007. The savings from the decreased turnover alone have been enough to pay for the whole WOLF program."

A final point about WOLF. Men are also allowed to join WOLF packs, and many have. The barrier to entry is steep, however. They have to apply, write an essay, pass an interview with panel of women in the Pack, and go into the field and prove their worth. As a result, Julie said:

"It has become a cool thing at Best Buy to be an Alpha Male WOLF."

There is much more to be said about the WOLF program itself, but I want to stop here and present the reasons why I think it has been so successful. As you will see, much of my thinking in this regard has been shaped by my study of the works of Joseph Campbell.

First, the story of WOLF is not the story of a large consulting firm coming into Best Buy with a cookie cutter culture change program. It is - instead - the story of Julie's personal journey to make her life more meaningful by enriching the lives of those around her. In almost all ways it is the powerful story of the mythical hero's journey of self-discovery, self-transcendence, one's role in society, and the relationship between the two. It's also a journey she was prepared to take. In the words of Joseph Campbell:

"The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character. It's amusing the way in which the landscape and conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he is ready for is the one that he gets. The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed."

Second, WOLF was a creation of the spirit, not of the mind. This gave her a lens to look at the world around her from a very different angle. Campbell again:

"We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves."

Third, she was not attached to specific outcomes. She was willing to make sense of things as she went along. And, once she did, she simply did what she intuitively felt was right. Campbell says:

"I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about."

Fourth, while there was no obvious path to follow at the outset, she uncovered one while walking. In Campbell's words:

"If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

Fifth, she was inclusive and non-hierarchical. She invited everyone - with the caveat that men had to go through a formal initiation process - to walk with her as an equal partner. The sense of this is best stated by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

"If we think we monopolize the truth and we still organize a dialogue, it is not authentic. We have to believe that by engaging in a dialogue with the other person, we have the possibility of making a change within ourselves, that we can become deeper. Dialogue is not a means for assimilation in the sense that one side expands and incorporates the other into its 'self'. Dialogue must be practiced on the basis of 'non-self.' We have to allow what is good, beautiful, and meaningful in others to transform us."

Finally, she was intrinsically motivated to do what she did. In other words, she did it for the pure joy of doing it - nothing more, nothing less. Campbell:

"The only question in life is whether or not you are going to answer a hearty 'YES!' to your adventure."

I purposely looked through the lens of Joseph Campbell's work to comment on Julie's success. This is because the language of business, or corporate-speak, is nowhere near up to the task. What Julie did - and she couldn't have done it without Brad Anderson's support - couldn't have been done by worshiping at the alter of typical business norms and practices; it could only have been accomplished by taking a higher road - a living road best described by poets, philosophers, artists, and maybe even mystics. I wish her good luck and God's speed in her journey ahead.

Conversation:

• What stood out in Julie's story?
  
• What meaning does it have for you?
  
• What questions are emerging?
  
• Where are the sharp edges?

Afterwords:

And this is the law of the wild
As true and as blue as the sky
And the wolf that keeps it will prosper
But the wolf that breaks it will die.
Like the vine that circles the tree trunk
This law runneth forward and back
The strength of the pack is the wolf
And the strength of the wolf is the pack.
- Rudyard Kipling

"The passion in our nature urges a human being to choose 'the one precious thing,' and urges him to pay for it through poverty, conflict, deprivation, labor, and endurance of anger from rejected divinities. It is the warrior that enables the human being to decide to become a musician only, or a poet only, or a doctor only, or a hermit only, or a painter only. It is the lover in a man or woman who loves the one precious thing, and tells him what it is; but it is the warrior in Rembrandt or Mirabai who agrees to endure the suffering the choice entails." - Robert Bly, Iron John

"The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain." - Colin Wilson

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - Jack Kerouac

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded." - Charlotte Bronte, Preface to the Second Edition of Jane Eyre

"Once individuals link together they become something different. Relationships change us, reveal us, evoke more from us. Only when we join with others do our gifts become visible, even to ourselves." - Margaret Wheatley

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds." - Edward Abbey

The Drunkard Disciple

In a recent Warrior of the Light newsletter Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist, tells the following story which is titled The Drunkard Disciple:

A Zen master had hundreds of disciples. They all prayed at the right time, except one, who was always drunk.

The master was growing old. Some of the more virtuous pupils began to wonder who would be the new leader of the group, the one who would receive the important secrets of the Tradition.

On the eve of his death, however, the master called the drunkard disciple and revealed the hidden secrets to him.

A veritable revolt broke out among the others.

"How shameful!" they cried in the streets, "We have sacrificed ourselves for the wrong master, one who can’t see our qualities."

Hearing the commotion outside, the dying master remarked, "I had to pass on these secrets to a man that I knew well. All my pupils are very virtuous, and showed only their good qualities. That is dangerous, for virtue often serves to hide vanity, pride and intolerance. That is why I chose the only disciple whom I know really well, since I can see his defect: drunkenness."

Please don't jump to the conclusion that this is a story about whether you can trust "drunkards" or not; that's a whole different conversation. This is a story that asks the question, "How can I trust you, if I don't really know you?" And that question begs another, "How can you come to really know another person?"

The answer to the first question is "You can't." The answer to the second is you can never really know another person - not even those closest to you - but you can come to know most of the people in your life well enough to know whether you can trust them or not.

The notion that it’s important to be able to build trust with others is one of the latest “silver bullets” ricocheting off the walls of corporate America. As a result, books on trust, seminars on trust, and consultants that say they can help a company create a high trust culture in ten easy steps are in high demand. This is hogwash!

There is no formula or set of skills that you can master to help you build trust with others. Trust building is a raw, organic process that consists of spending whatever time it takes to tell our stories to others and listen to theirs. And, I don’t just mean stories that flesh out our resumes. I mean stories that tell where we came from, and where we dream of ending up; stories that shed light on the paths we’ve traveled - triumphs and tragedies alike; stories that reveal not only what’s on our mind but also what’s in our heart.

Then, at the end of the storytelling, or when we’ve gotten to know each other from as many different angles as possible, we get to decide whether we trust each other or not. And, if we’ve been really truthful with each other, a genuine trust relationship is almost always the result.

Conversation:

• What is trust?
  
• How is it created?
  
• In what, or whom, do you trust?
  
• How freely do you extend trust to others?
  
• How can others earn your trust?
  
• How do you react if someone violates your trust?
  
• Will you ever be able to trust that person again? Why or why not?

Afterwords:

"Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Freedom is about being vulnerable to one another, realizing that our ability to connect is more important than feeling secure, in control and alone." - Eve Ensler

"If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a chronological table — a fool’s notion of history." - Honoré de Balzac

"Conversations are efforts toward good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate. To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night. If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act—it does not matter whom—and we will survive." - Barry Lopez - Eden Is a Conversation (closing remarks at Quest for Global Healing, Ubud, Bali, Portland Magazine Autumn, 2006)

"We are not as near each other as we would like to imagine. Words create the bridges between us. Without them we would be lost islands. Affection, recognition and understanding travel across these fragile bridges and enable us to discover each other and awaken friendship and intimacy. Words are never just words. The range and depth of a person's soul is inevitably revealed in the quality of words she uses. When chosen with reverence and care, words not only describe what they say but also suggest what can never be said." - John O'Donohue, Beauty

The Sorcerer's Way to Innovation

The Naskapi Indians live in small, nomadic bands on the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. The mainstay of their life is caribou hunting. In warm weather months, large numbers of caribou migrate through Naskapi lands. The animals travel at a very fast pace - covering up to forty miles a day - over terrain that humans can hardly traverse. The key to successful hunting during this time is the anticipation of the migration route, because the hunters have no hope of getting close enough to even see the caribou herds otherwise.

The bitter cold of winter changes everything, and calls for a very different approach to the hunt. First, there are fewer caribou. Second, they are dispersed more widely. Third, they go from sprinting across the tundra to settling in the woods. As a result, the Naskapi have to figure out where the herd might be each day instead of trying to head them off at the pass.

To do this, they use a shamanistic practice - scapulamancy - that has been passed down from one generation of Naskapi to the next. Here's how it works. Each night during the hunting season, a Naskapi shaman holds the shoulder bone of a long-dead caribou over a fire until burnt spots and cracks appear. When they do, the shaman reads the results and tells the hunting party where to go to find caribou the next day.

The idea you can find caribou by following cracks in a charred shoulder blade seems silly to those living in the developed world. Yet, the Naskapi have survived in their inhospitable surroundings by following this ritual. Why does their magic work? For possible answers, we turn to a recent book on strategy - Competing on the Edge - by Shona L. Brown and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt:

"The rituals provide novelty. First, they introduce an element of randomness into the inevitably patterned actions by which the hunters’ tactics become too predictable to the hunted and too locked into a set pattern. They help the Naskapi avoid over hunting, what we would call success-induced failure. Second, by following these random patterns, the Naskapi are much more likely to explore new hunting grounds that can yield new ways to hunt caribou and perhaps even new game."

They go on to point out that Naskapi magic holds a lesson for business:

"Novelty and even randomness (technically termed mutation) are critical to success, especially in times of rapid and unpredictable change. Without novelty and randomness, hunters will be slow to spot change and will uncover few opportunities to find new game or to hunt the old game in new ways. Novelty breaks the frame of the past. The same is true of managers who become stuck in routines and trapped by tightly configured business models. Whereas the Naskapi create this freshness by following random cracks in charred caribou bones, contemporary managers can do so by pursuing new opportunities in unexpected and possibly even random ways."

There are many ways to intentionally use random selection to generate novelty. One to try comes from Bob Sutton, Stanford University professor and author of Weird Ideas That Work. In a recent visit to The Masters Forum, he said:

"Reactivity, a software company I advise, holds regular brainstorming sessions where employees talk about ideas for new technologies, products, and companies. After holding a few of these sessions, a couple of the software designers were becoming concerned that the ideas discussed were getting too narrow. So they invented a random selection process. Attendees at the sessions were given index cards and told to jot down on each a technology (one color of cards) or an industry (a second color). Random pairings were then created by picking a card from each deck, and the group brainstormed for five minutes on the possibilities of each pair. The ideas deemed most promising became homework for several small sub-groups, which reported what they'd learned at the next meeting. For example, the pairing of shipbuilding and risk management inspired some promising ideas about doing dynamic risk management in real time, a method that could be quite valuable for helping companies price insurance of all kinds, not just for ships. As for the efficacy of the process, one of the designers said 'It helped get us out of the rut we were in.'"

Conversation:

• Are you superstitious? How so?
  
• Do you believe it is possible to divine the future? Explain.
• Are you familiar with the beliefs of spiritual traditions other than your own? Is there one in particular that interests you?
  
• If you learn about something that does not mesh with your belief system, what do you do?
• What are the ways in which your company is predictable to its competitors?
• How can you use novelty and randomness to break out of your traditions or set ways of operating?
  

Afterwords:

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"It seems safe to assume that human beings require a functional equivalent to a table of random numbers if they are to avoid unwitting regularities in their behavior, which can be utilized by adversaries." - O.K. Moore, Divination: A New Perspective, American Anthropologist 59, 1957

"I am enthusiastic over humanity's extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuities. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat may come along and make a fortuitous life preserver. This is not to say, though, that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem." - R. Buckminster Fuller

"In bullfighting there is a term called ‘querencia.’ The querencia is the spot in the ring to which the bull returns. Each bull has a different querencia, but as the bullfight continues, and the animal becomes more threatened, it returns more and more often to his spot. As he returns to his querencia, he becomes more predictable. And so, in the end, the matador is able to kill the bull because instead of trying something new, the bull returns to what is familiar. His comfort zone." - Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO

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

The Power of Stories

A recent speaker at the Masters Forum said that having a story to tell about our product or service can add value for customers and be a differentiator in the marketplace. He went on to say he was recently influenced to buy a product called Big Tattoo wine because of the back story he found on the label. Here's a slightly expanded version of that story; it appears on the company's website:

Two Brothers Winery, a partnership between brothers Erik and Alex Bartholomaus, released their debut wine, Big Tattoo Red 2001, in autumn of 2002 as a way to raise funds for cancer research and Hospice care in memory of their mother, Liliana S. Bartholomaus.

Alex Bartholomaus, President and C.E.O. of Billington Wines in Springfield, Va., created this unique blend in Chile. Alex then teamed up with his brother Erik, an established world-traveling tattoo artist, to design a fun label that would remind the two of their mother. Erik designed the label and they named their creation Big Tattoo Red.

Fifty cents from every bottle sold was donated to the Hospice of Arlington, Va., and other breast cancer research foundations in the name of Liliana S. Bartholomaus. The two sold 13,835 cases of the 2001 debut vintage and raised $83,010 to donate to Cancer research and support. The 2002 vintage was released in June, and the brothers were able to raise $300,000 in donation money. Erik and Alex have decided to make some of the donations on a state-by-state basis. This has helped them convince many distributors across the country to join in matching donations from Big Tattoo Red sales and giving even more money to local charities.

In an effort to expand this project even more, the brothers are now producing Big Tattoo White, a Riesling blend from Germany and a Syrah from Chile.

It was the Bartholomaus brothers' goal to honor their mother, who lost her battle against cancer in 2000. They wanted to do this in a creative and beneficial way. These fun wines boast a label with a Fleur de Lys, Liliana's favorite symbol, and their labels stand out on any retailer's shelf. The popularity of the wine soared during 2003, popping up on wine shop shelves and restaurant wine lists nation wide.Because of this touching and powerful story, the brothers have raised $1,305,100 for their cause as of today's date.

At the Masters Forum, we've focused on the power of stories from the beginning. In fact, one of our founding principles says it’s stories - not data or information, no matter how well or cleverly presented - that are the principle driver of learning that sticks in the human brain. Or, as the author Rudyard Kipling said:

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten."

Accordingly, we have always selected our speakers not only for their great new ideas and unique ways of seeing, but also for their knack of saying what they have to say in the form of highly compelling, entertaining stories. In addition, we have held several sessions over the years on the subject of storytelling as a leadership and culture-building tool.

One of my favorites featured journalist and storyteller extraordinaire Roger Rosenblatt, whose first words to us were:

"I believe we're here to tell one another stories."

From there on, Roger's talk was simply a string of stories, along with a handful of suggestions on how to live. Anecdotes from his travels as a journalist, to Africa and Asia. Memories of growing up in the Gramercy Park neighborhood in New York. People he has interviewed over the years. Stories he has read. Quotes that stand out in his mind. He encouraged us to think of our lives and our stories. Many of us were straining though to connect the idea of stories with the challenges of doing business.

Writer Mike Finley, who authored the summary of Roger's session for us, was one of those scratching his head:

He's a professional storyteller. But what do stories mean for those of us making a living light years from the New York Times Magazine?

In business it may mean that we must identify what our story is. Chances are it is not something that has been percolated down in corporate communications. It may include, but does not center on, the plucky tale of the company founder and what he learned to do with baling wire and chewing gum.

The story may focus on the struggle to get inside your customers' problems and solve them. Or the individual lives of employees, their dreams and their difficulties. The challenge of being a decent employer, a good neighbor, and still returning a favorable yield to investors. Or the brave face you put up against competition that threatens at times to blow you away. It is the culture of the company, and how it is built upon sweat and care, and what it expects of people. It is the struggle against chaos that packs each day with new tensions. It is coping with the story itself, and the unavoidable arc that takes a company from early growth to slow decay.

The story changes every day, and the best you can do is to be sure that on any given day your story is as true as you can make it. The worst is to live a lie.

Conversation:

• What is the story of your company's birth and formative years? What was its raison d'etre? What were its guiding principles?
• How has its story unfolded over the years? What has changed? What is unchanged?
• Does your company's official mission statement inspire you? If not, what story would you write to replace it?
• What stories do you tell new colleagues to let them know how it is to work here? Are they the same stories you would tell them if you were forced to toe the company line?
• Does your company need to create a new story to compete more effectively in today's rapidly changing world? If so, what is the story you think needs to be written?
  

Afterwords:

"Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern." - Eric Hoffer

"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it . . . and change it as times change, truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts." - Salman Rushdie

"But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"'I would ask you to remember only this one thing,' said Badger. 'The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each others memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good story-tellers. Never forget these obligations.'" - Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel

Are You Lucky?

When he appeared at The Masters Forum, author Dan Pink told of a conversation he had with an HR executive he met at a conference. When talk turned to unusual interview questions, she shared her favorite:

"Are you lucky?"

Dan immediately thought, "I'm so going to steal that." And, he did.

I heard a great story about luck several years back. It came from Cliff Havener and concerned a consulting project he had just finished at 3M. Cliff included the story in his book - Meaning: The Secret to Being Alive - which was published two or three years hence. I quote from the book:

The general manager of 3M's Occupational Health and Safety Products Division once asked me to conduct a broad-scale study. The flagship of his line was disposable face masks.

The two questions he wanted answered were: Why was this product successful? and Will it continue?

If you didn't know how and why it would work, how did you get into the business?

Here's what he told me:

Once upon a time there were two R&D scientists experimenting with a technology to mold paper into various shapes and have it stay that way. Once they got it to work, they asked each other, 'Now what can we do with this?' One suggested paper dresses. 'Nah!' said the other, 'That's been done.' But, being on the subject of women, he added, 'But what about paper bras? A woman could wear the bra for a few days and throw it away. She'd never have to wash it.' That was their idea of the product's reason for being. Each asked his wife what she thought. Being supportive, loyal wives, they answered, 'Oh honey, you're so smart. What a great idea!' They just didn't mention they wouldn't wear one on a bet. Having completed their market research, the two convinced management to build a pilot plant. It consisted of die-cutting machines stamping out everything from 32As to 44Ds.

They named the product, packaged it, and gave it to the sales force that called on department stores. These guys usually called on the stationery buyer about tape and such. They made a detour to see the lingerie buyer, who, of course, was a woman. The roars of laughter that erupted from the lingerie buyers' offices caused the sales guys to slink out without bothering to open the door. With bright red faces, they called headquarters: 'Did you clowns ever check this out? That was the worst experience of my life.' The home office cheered! One possible application of the technology had been eliminated. They were one step closer to finding a home for it.

'O.K., the bra idea didn't work. Now we've got all those die-cut machines. What can we do with them?' someone asked. 'Well, if we cut the bras in half and add rubber bands, we'll have face masks,' someone offered. That's what they did. Industry bought them, like crazy. That's how we got into this business. The thing is, we don't know why industry bought 'em like crazy - or if they're gonna keep buying them like crazy.

What I found out was that while Tweedledum and Tweedledee were playing with the bras that became face masks, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) changed its primary focus from accident prevention to air quality. Manufacturing plants found themselves equipping workers with canister masks. Canister masks are heavy. They restrict breathing, induce fatigue, and interfere with vision. Morale and productivity plummeted. Adding insult to injury, plants had to sterilize the masks every night further increasing costs.

Into this situation blindly stumbled a product that was lightweight, induced far less fatigue, and interfered less with vision. It provided a way for companies to comply with OSHA’s regulations without destroying their profit. That’s dramatically superior usefulness. No wonder industry bought ‘em like crazy.

The company had provided dramatically superior usefulness – without consciously intending to do it, knowing how to do it, or knowing it had done it.

This is also a story of prototyping. Send something into the market. Find out if it works. If it does, great. If it doesn't, regroup and try again. Typically, though, a company will make a much smaller bet on the front end.

Conversation:

• Are you superstitious?
• Do you believe in karma?
  
• Are there some people who are just plain lucky and others who are unlucky?
  
• Who is the luckiest person you know? Unluckiest?
  
• How has luck - good or bad - made a difference in your life and career?
• Is good luck simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time? If so, how can you know when you're standing in the right spot?
  
• What can you do to increase the chances you'll be lucky?
  

Afterwords:

"No matter what our character, no matter what our behavior, no matter if we are ugly, unkind, murderers, saints, guilty sinners, foolish, or wise, we can get lucky." - Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather

"Luck or tragedy, some people get runs. Then of course there are those who divide it even, good and bad, but we never hear of them. Such a life doesn't demand attention. Only the people who get the good or bad runs." - John Steinbeck

"My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a Quaker." - Woody Allen

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

A Sacred Mission

On September 7, 2002, Navy Secretary Gordon England announced the decision to name the fifth amphibious transport dock ship of the San Antonio class U.S.S. New York (LPD 21). He said:

"This new class of ships will project American power to the far corners of the Earth and support the cause of freedom well into the 21st century. From the war for independence through the war on terrorism, which we wage today, the courage and heroism of the people of New York has been an inspiration. U.S.S. New York will play an important rule in our Navy's future and will be a fitting tribute to the people of the Empire State."

In response, New York Governor George Pataki, who had requested the the Navy revive the name U.S.S. New York in honor of the 9/11 victims, said:

"The U.S.S. New York will ensure that all New Yorkers and the world will never forget the evil attacks of September 11, 2001, and the courage and compassion New Yorkers showed in response to terror."

The ship's motto is Strength forged through sacrifice. Never Forget.

The ship is not only special because of its name; it is also special because 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, La., to cast the ship's bow-stem section, which is the foremost section of the hull on the water line that slices through the water. When the steel was poured into the molds on September 9, 2003, Navy Captain Kevin Wensing who was there said:

"Those big, rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence. It was a spiritual moment for everyone there."

It wasn't too many months later that Hurricane Katrina disrupted construction on the ship when it pounded the Gulf Coast, but the 684-foot vessel escaped serious damage and within two weeks thousands of workers - including hundreds who lost their homes in the storm - were back at work. Some who lost their homes lived at the shipyard. Others lived on a Navy barge. Still others in bunk-style housing. Why this great devotion to duty? Philip Teel, a vice president for Northrup Grumman and head of its ship systems division, shared his opinion at a Navy League dinner in New York City on March 22, 2006:

"It sounds trite, but I saw it in their eyes. These are very patriotic people, and the fact the ship has steel from the World Trade Center is a source of great pride. They view it as something incredibly special. They're building it for their country."

Our highest calling is to make a contribution to something outside ourselves and our own. As a result, we are most committed to our work when we feel that we are dutifully and loyally serving a group of others too large for us to know everyone in it. Examples abound: soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, firefighters, police officers, EMTs, members of the FBI, CIA, DEA, INS, and others risking their lives for their country; research scientists dedicating their lives to eradicate deadly and debilitating diseases; teachers working long hours for minimal pay to prepare our kids to go out and make the world a better place; employees who work for companies or organizations that not only provide important products or services, but are also serving and supporting the communities that surround them; etc.

Author Robert Heinlein viewed moral behavior as that which contributes to survival: first for ourselves; second for our families; third for our group; fourth for all of mankind. His notion of moral behavior at the third level - which he called patriotism - was women and children first. He told a story to illustrate this in an address at the U.S. Naval Academy in April, 1973:

I said that 'Patriotism' is a way of saying 'Women and children first.' And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did.

In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut right through it.

One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.

But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman's foot loose. No luck —

Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free... and the train hit them.

The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and died later, the tramp was killed — and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.

The husband's behavior was heroic... but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that's all we'll ever know about him.

This is how a man dies. This is how a man ... lives!

Conversation:

• How do you go about learning from your successes, your failures, or significant events that impact your life?
• How do you make sure any lessons you learn are integrated into your current approach to work and life?
• How have you dealt with any sacred wounds you've received? Is there a better way?
  
• What is your reaction to Robert Heinlein's notion of moral behavior and his story of the tragedy in his hometown?
  
• What is your life's mission? How does it bring out the best in you?
  
• How does your company's mission and/or that of your job bring out the best in you?

Afterwords:

"You live and learn. Or you don't live long." - Robert Heinlein

"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

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the grey, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then - the glory - so that cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories" - John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Is Brilliance Overrated?

Four-time Masters Forum presenter Dennis Prager wrote an interesting column for the Jewish World Review recently. It's titled Brilliance Is Overrated. He begins by saying that the emphasis on the importance of intellect - and the corresponding adulation of intellectuals - in America is greater than it's ever been. The rest of the article questions whether or not that's the right thing for us to be doing. Here are some of his points:

"People assume that a Nobel laureate in physics has something particularly intelligent to say about social policy. In fact, there is no reason at all to assume that a Nobel physicist has more insight into health care issues or capital punishment than a high school physics teacher, let alone more insight than a moral theologian. But people, especially the highly educated, do think so."

"Intellectuals have among the worst, if not the worst, records on the great moral issues of the past century. Intellectuals such as the widely adulated French intellectual Jean Paul Sartre were far more likely than hardhats to admire butchers of humanity like Stalin and Mao. But this has had no impact on most people's adulation of the intellect and intellectuals."

"So, too, the current economic decline was brought about in large measure by people in the financial sector widely regarded as 'brilliant.' Of course, it turns out that many of them were either dummies, amoral, incompetent, or all three."

"The reason we have too few solutions to the problems that confront people - in their personal lives as well as in the political realm - is almost entirely due to a lack of common sense, psychological impediments to clear thinking, a perverse value system, a lack of self-control, or all four. It is almost never due to a lack of brainpower."

I think Dennis argues his case brilliantly - as usual - and I would like to stand on his shoulders to add a couple of thoughts of my own.

First, it's becoming more and more difficult to get smart and stay smart; the world is simply changing too fast around us. Former Army General Eric Shinseki:

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."

Second, the more brilliant and/or successful a person has been in a particular field or endeavor, the more likely he or she is to arrogantly hold on to old truths and fail to see the new. According to William Blake:

"The things in which we passionately believe: those things are precisely those of which we should be most wary."

A recent example of how this epistemic hubris - a belief in the primacy of one's own educational background, thinking, and brilliance - can spell big trouble, comes from the folks at Stratfor, a company specializing in gathering geopolitical intelligence for business.

"A group of men in Saltillo, Coahuila state, abducted anti-kidnapping consultant Felix Batista the evening of Dec. 10 while he dined at a restaurant. According to reports, Batista received a call on his cell phone, prompting him to leave the restaurant. At that point, a group of men waiting for him ushered him into a truck and drove off. The incident was first reported in the local press Dec. 14; federal authorities confirmed the report Dec. 15."

"Batista first arrived in Coahuila on Dec. 6 at the invitation of state law enforcement authorities. He delivered a series of presentations on anti-kidnapping strategies to business and police officials in Saltillo and Torreon. On the morning before his abduction, Batista met with several officials from the state’s office of public security. He was dining with a businessman when the abduction occurred."

"This is not the first time that an anti-kidnapping coordinator has been abducted in Mexico. Presumably, someone with his knowledge and credentials would have been keenly aware of the need for vigilance against pre-operational surveillance. In reality, such persons frequently maintain a false sense of personal security that keeps them from practicing what they preach."

Batista has not been seen or heard from since.

Conversation:

• How have you been brilliant?
• How do you practice what you preach?
  
• How might you be vulnerable to epistemic arrogance?
• How can you insure that what you know is the actual truth and not simply your version of the truth?
  

Afterwords:

"People are idiots. Including me. Everyone is an idiot, not just the people with the low SAT scores. The only difference is that we're idiots about different things at different times. No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot." - Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

"Even the monkey can fall from the tree." - Chinese Proverb

"Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves." - Larry McMurtry

"It is in the darkness of their eyes that men lose their way." - Black Elk

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin

"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty." - Stephen Jay Gould

"Mental models are powerful filters. They help us make sense and meaning but filter out anything that does not belong. If our mental map is wrong – our judgment or assessment will be wrong." - Eamonn Kelly, Powerful Times

"An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical." - Bill Moyers