Things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, sales took a downturn and Morris was really catching a lot of heat. About at his wit’s end, he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, “Blame your predecessor.” Morris called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO. Satisfied with his comments, the press, and Wall Street, responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.

About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, “Reorganize.” This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.

After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times. Morris went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope.

The message said, “Prepare three envelopes.”

In this world of speed and high expectations, we don’t get second chances.  It may not be fair but it is life.  At 1-Focus International we work with executives and senior managers to ensure iterative and sustainable change.  That means it is always an ongoing process of refinement and recreation.  It is never the flavor of the month or a one time event.  For some this seems to involved or complex.  However, most of us know that whether it is the organization, life or our families, that there is no quick fix to issues; no simple answers to the challenges; no easy strategies for implementation.  At best we can learn to take things in stride and smile.

MIT SMR De-Mystifying Leadership Collection, sponsored by Hewitt Associates can be obtained here.

[private_Corporate]

[firstname], because you are a member of the [memberlevel] Group, here are your free articles for this collection.  You may use these links directly from MIT.

• Can You Measure Leadership?
• Are You a Vigilant Leader?
• Improving the Performance of Top Management Teams

[/private_Corporate]

Kiva

When you join our lending team, we can work together to alleviate poverty. Once you’re a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva “count” towards our team’s impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you – but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team’s collective portfolio, so our team’s overall impact will grow!

Check out the Sustaining Change lending team, and learn more about lending teams on Kiva in general, by clicking here.

There is a lot in the book and you can read parts of it yourself on the author’s web site:  The Secrets of CEO’s. The stats on how many CEO’s use coaches is particularly interesting:

Around 40% of FTSE chief executives have used a personal coach. (“It is extraordinary to think you can be excellent at something without a coach. The notion that Roger Federer would not have several coaches is ridiculous. One of the best things that happened to me was to get a coach,” says Richard Baker, a former boss of Alliance Boots, a pharmacy.)

Up until recently, not all executives were willing to admit they used a coach. I wonder what kind of coach.  t 1-Focus International, our Coach Approach is designed to be congruent with both our collaborative philosophy and our excellence programs. Both Sandy and I are Master Certified Coaches and our executive coach associates are vetted by us to ensure similar levels and standards.  We tend to be more reflective than task in our approach to coaching and clearly and this is what executives need.  The “best bosses” according to the article mentioned, find a way to make time to be with their family, to think in solitude and to stay healthy.  One valuable way is to work with a Master Coach to reflect on strategy and issues that often get missed in the bustle of day to day activities.

By the way, the book while out in Great Britain, hasn’t been released in the US.  It is however beginning to get press even in the New York Times

Our talk was complicated by our need for a translator– Shamans see the world a little differently than most of us and our translator’s desire to translate the Shaman’s meaning to what she thought he meant, at first. But, soon we had a rhythm and an understanding.

He (Kahn) Yuri, sees the world is coming to the end of the way of life as it has been. It is time for our mind, body, spirit connection to integrate. Will we make this transition successfully? He looked somewhat sad. The struggle has been long and using the tip of his nail as an indicator, he told me we have this much of a chance as the time is so close.

Words from Shaman, I am told, are often meant to take time to understand. As I awoke the next morning the revelation hit me, he was describing the last stage of our Emotional Steps that related to the 3 Phase of Change in our 7 Step Model.

Now we are standing at nearly the bottom of the energy drop off, just before integration takes place AND where most change fails, as we often give up when this deep drop off of energy/productivity hits us. Yet, if have patience… integration takes place and the situation reverses itself and a massive surge of energy and productivity takes place when we finally are able to let go fo the old and integrate the new.

As I described this to a colleague, I realized that it was like mountain climbing. When you turn our model upside down, it became so clear. The steep drop off and change, became a mountain. Could it be that we are nearly at the top of the mountain, tired, worn out, living in dualities so long, wondering is it worth trying to change at all…should we just continue with the old way or turn back or start something new? The answer may be that we are so close to the top, why not keep going… so we can enjoy the view at the summit and rest on the vast and flourish plateau when we arrive.

Are there situations in your life where you are undergoing major change and feel ready to quit? Could you be closer to the summit than you think? What would it take to keep going and continue to the end… to the summit?

While the feature article on Google is an interesting read, we recommend Stewart D. Friedman’s article (video below) and Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? by David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad:

It’s a dirty little secret: Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can’t, neither can anyone else.

Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life,
April 2008 Harvard Business Review article by Stewart D. Friedman

Contrary to conventional wisdom, work and the rest of your life don’t have to compete in a zero-sum game. The secret? Experiment with small changes that simultaneously improve your satisfaction and performance in all four areas of your life—work, home, community, and self. Friedman offers a chart and worksheet that you can download online.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

You can read the full transcript here which ends in a powerful call t alof us to be fully present in the choices that we make:

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are — I am — the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the “we” inside of me.

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

Tolle writes about flowers being the representatives of the spiritual realm. Due to their fragile and ethereal nature they represent one of the best access points for contemplation. It is in the stillness we can gain consciousness instead of our compulsive naming. Nature is the best place to start as people tend to invite “labeling”. All of this is relevant to us as leaders, executives, parents and partners. We are part of the collective consciousness and if we believe as Tolle says – our world is at a crisis point, it is up to us to have our own practices that lead us to influence the world. To have a legacy is to learn to be present with our perceptions and not “lost in thought”.

Oprah has partnered with author Eckhart Tolle to present a live 10-week Web event on Oprah.com. The first class last Monday had over half a million attempting to log on.

“A New Earth” is a book that has the potential to change the way you view yourself and your world—it will awaken the highest self within you. If you are one of the view in the western hemisphere that has not heard of this event, click here to see a very slick introduction.

The live event is late for me in Europe, so I can download the material. You can listen to it on video or audio for your i-Pod by checking your i-Tunes. It is the number one podcast download.

Could we be looking for something bigger than our daily lives and jobs?

A Travelocity survey of 1,017 people in late 2007 found that 17.7% of respondents had previously taken a vacation with a volunteer or philanthropic component. Of those, trips with a focus on conservation, education and health care were the most popular.

There are a number of references and sources in the article but one that caught my attention was the Cross-Cultural Solutions , a recognized leader in the field of international volunteering, with over 4,000 volunteers each year. Founded in 1995, CCS is international not-for-profit organization with no political or religious affiliations.

Most “voluntourists” prefer philanthropic traveling to traditional vacations, and executives are no different. Executives frequently hope the experience will further define their career, according to Dava Antoniotti, director of program enrollment for CCS.”A lot of people are used to the daily grind, and they’re questioning the direction of altruism in their careers,” says Antoniotti. She notes that executives often find trips more fulfilling than just donating money, and that some take their families as well.

We are all looking to create meaning in our lives and we would love to do this at work. As the title of my post suggests, I think that this is a wonderful way for us all to get beyond ourselves and our own privileged life.  That said, isn’t it sad that we don’t look closer to home to find a way of giving back?  Instead of only looking to leave a legacy through volunteering during one’s vacation, executives should seek out the opportunities to build a legacy in their own organizations.

• Contribute your commentary on the case
• Read others’ contributions
• Compare your perspective with the experts’

The first interactive case is entitled: How to Change the World by Howard H. Stevenson is a fictional case study that probes a dilemma facing many ambitious young professionals: How to do well while also doing good. While the author Stevenson admits that this is a bit contrived in that all the choices come at a single point in time, it is in my mind a bit far fetched for most of us. I should be so lucky to be in such a position, at any age, but the truth is, I would not be that interested in the work and commitments that would be required in any of his three choices. If one can get passed the grandeur of the “job offers” then the objective of the case as written in the first line is well worth analysing:

Alan Wilson has several career options but only one ambition — to make a difference.

One of the scenarios even involves our passion – mergers. So I will be looking forward to the opinions of all those who post as well as “the experts”.