Executive Development Training Programs

Introduction

Your life is important. Whether you achieve what you want in life matters. Whether you are happy matters. Honor and fight for your highest potential. Self-realization - the realization of the best within you - is the noblest goal of your existence.

Sentence completion work is a deceptively simple yet uniquely powerful tool for raising self-understanding, self-esteem, and personal and professional effectiveness. It rests on the premise that all of us have more resources than we normally are aware of; more potentials than ordinarily show up in our behavior. Sentence completion is a tool for accessing and activating these unrecognized resources.

The essence of the procedure, as we will use it here, is to write an incomplete sentence, a sentence stem, and to keep adding difference endings. The sole requirements are that each endings grammatically complete the sentence and that each ending be different (at least six, more is better). You can write in a notebook or work with a computer.

Write as rapidly as possible. No pauses to think; no worrying about whether any particular ending is profound, relevant, or significant. The speed of your progress depends in part of the level of focus and consciousness you bring to the work both while doing it and later when reviewing and reflecting on your endings.

Integrate them into your daily practice ... then your work would benefit while you as human benefited. You would grow professionally at the same time that you grow personally. Achievement would rise and self-esteem would rise. In this sense, work has the potential of being a spiritual discipline - of that is how it is approached. If a concern to grow in integrity is not a concern of the spirit, I do not know what is. It is also concern with profound ramifications for business success. Soul work is essential to meeting the challenges of an information economy.

One example of a sentence stem:

If I take full responsibility of my choices and actions
I’d be more aware that my choices have a tremendous impact in shaping my life.
I’d think deeply about the impact of my choices before making any decision.
I’d make my mind really clear before making any important decision.
. . .
. . .
. . .

These sentence completion programs practiced by companies like GE, Motorola, Intel, Walt Mart, Walt Disney below were designed to building an ability to become high performance executive and it’s also equivalent to building an ability to create a powerful company. In terms of producing dramatic, bottom-line results, these have been the most successful programs ever developed.

Subject of the executive development training programs (3 programs):
1. Raising Performance (20 weeks)
2. Personal Growth/Taking Responsibility (30 weeks)
3. Development of People Skills/Managing Skills (21 weeks)

For each day of the week, Monday through Friday, there are four to five basic stems to be completed. At the start of each day, before beginning work, do at least six endings for each stem. From day to day, inevitably there will be repetitions. That is not a problem, but do not allow repetitions on the same day. This practice itself, done repetitively, brings about integration. Later, reflect on what you have written in the evening.


I. Raising Performance (week 1)

If I take full responsibility for my standard of living . . .
If I bring a higher level of awareness to my work life . . .
If I look at my work life realistically . . .
If I think all team members as my partners . . .
If I take full responsibility of my choices and actions . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 2)

If I look at how I spend my time . . .
If I think about how I set my priorities . . .
When I reflect on the level of awareness I bring to my work life . . .
If I think about how I invest my time . . .
If I want to be perceived as an effective team player . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I want to keep customer for life . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 3)

If I were to commit myself to achieving greater financial success . . .
If I were willing to work using everything I know . . .
If I reflect on what it means to take full responsibility for my standard of living . . .
If I reflect on how it might feel to commit myself fully to financial success . . .
A really innovative approach to my work might include/entail . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 4)

If I reflect on what it means to use everything I know . . .
If I take full responsibility for my choices and actions . . .
If I take full responsibility for how I deal with people . . .
If I remain in full mental focus every moment today . . .
If I were convinced what I do makes a difference . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I want customers to trust and admire our company . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 5)

If I reflect on what it means to take responsibility for my choices and actions . . .
If I reflect on what it means to take responsibility for how I deal with people . . .
If I bring higher level of awareness to my social anxieties . . .
If I reflect on what I would do if I remained in full mental focus at work today . . .
If I want every one in our team to pull together . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 6)

Morning
If I commit myself to raising my standard of living . . .
If I commit myself to a high level of success . . .
If I want to be more innovative in my work . . .
If I want to contribute ten percent more to my team’s efforts . . .
If I want to achieve breakthrough in my work …
Sales & Marketing: If I want to raise my performance by ten percent . . .

Evening
When I reflect on what I’ve become aware of today . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 7)

Morning
If I stay focus on the goal of being more successful . . .
If I treat listening as a creative act . . .
If I bring a higher level of purpose to my daily activities . . .
If I want to raise the level of my creativity . . .
Team: Our team might be more effective if we …
Sales & Marketing: If I want to raise my performance by ten percent . . .

Evening
When I reflect on what I’ve become aware of today . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 8)

Morning
If I notice how people are affected by the quality of my listening . . .
If I bring a higher level of self-responsibility to my daily activities . . .
If I bring a higher level of benevolence to my dealings with people . . .
If I want to be perceived as trustworthy . . .
Team: If I want my team members to feel accepted and respected by me …
Sales & Marketing: The scary thing about performing at a higher level is . . .

Evening
When I reflect on what I’ve become aware of today . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 9)

Morning
If I am fully present to whoever is talking to me . . .
If I am fully present to whatever I am doing . . .
If I keep my career goals clearly in focus . . .
If I look for opportunities to contribute . . .
Team: If I want to translate my understandings into action . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I want to translate my understandings into action . . .

Evening
When I reflect on what I’ve become aware of today . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 10)

Morning
If I treat myself with respect when dealing with other people . . .
If I treat other people with respect . . .
If I bring a higher level of integrity to all my dealings with people . . .
If I choose to set an example of personal integrity . . .

Team: If I want my associates to have confidence in me . . .
Sales & Marketing: One way to raise sales is . . .

Evening
When I reflect on what I’ve become aware of today . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 11)

Morning
If I take success seriously as a goal . . .
If I stay focused and committed to greater success . . .
If I think of success as natural and appropriate to me . . .
If I breath deeply and experience my own power . . .

Team: If I commit myself to a higher level of contribution . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I commit myself to raising my level of sales . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 12)

Morning
If I choose to give my best at work today . . .
If I bring a higher level of benevolence to whomever I deal with today . . .
If I want to convert my dreams into realities, I need to . . .
If I really want the life I say I want . . .

Team: If I want our team to see me as a valued member . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I want out customers to feel deeply attached to our company . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 13)

Morning
If I tap into a power within me I’ve never fully used . . .
If I pay more attention to how I deal with people today. . .
If I want to bring more clarity and purpose to my work today . . .
If I bring a higher level of enthusiasm to my work today. . .

Team: If I bring more benevolence to my dealings with team members . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I bring more benevolence to my interactions with people . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 14)

Morning
If I operate as if my work will determine the success or failure of my company . . .
If I want to take more pleasure in my work, I will . . .
If I want to take more pride in my work, I will . . .
If I want to operate more self-responsibly at work, I will . . .

Team: If I want to be a superb team player . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I can accept operating at a higher level . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 15)

Morning
If I approach my work as opportunity for self-development . . .
If I bring a higher level of self-esteem to my work . . .
If I want to make it easier and more pleasant for others to deal with me . . .
If I give people the experience of being seen and heard by me . . .

Team: If I want t contribute more to my team . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I want to be more creative in my work . . .

Evening
If any of what I am writing is true, it might be helpful if . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 16)

Morning
If I bring a higher level of consciousness to my work today . . .
If I bring a higher level of benevolence to my dealings with people today . . .
If I operate with a higher level of self-responsibility today . . .
If I bring more integrity to my work today . . .

Team: If I bring a higher level of consciousness to my team interactions . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I bring a higher level of consciousness to our clients or customers . . .

Evening
If any of what I am writing is true, it might be helpful if . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 17)

Morning
If I bring a higher level of purposefulness to my work today . . .
If I operate more self-assertively today . . .
If I want to break through to a higher level of performance in my work today . . .
If I want my work to bring me more joy . . .

Team: If I want to bring more excitement to our team . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I want to bring more excitement to my work . . .

Evening
If any of what I am writing is true, it might be helpful if . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 18)

Morning
If I look for challenges to my creativity today . . .
If I look for challenges to my resourcefulness today . . .
If I bring a higher level of excitement to my work . . .
If I want to feel more pride in my work . . .

Team: If I keep expanding my vision of what is possible to me . . .
Sales & Marketing: As I keep expanding my vision of what is possible to me . . .

Evening
If any of what I am writing is true, it might be helpful if . . .

I. Raising Performance (week 19)

Morning
If I take full responsibility for the attainment of my desires . . .
I feel proud of myself at work when . . .
If I commit myself at work to using everything I know . . .
If I treat my goals and aspirations with respect . . .

Team: If I want to help energize my team . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I want to operate at a high level of motivation . . .

Evening
If any of what I am writing is true, it might be helpful if . . .


I. Raising Performance (week 20)

Morning
If I accept success as natural and appropriate to me . . .
I my self-concept expands to a higher vision of my possibilities . . .
If I fully deserve whatever I am able to earn . . .
As I grow more comfortable with higher levels of performance . . .

Team: One of the things my team needs from me is . . .
Sales & Marketing: If I can see myself as a much higher level producer . . .

Evening
If any of what I am writing is true, it might be helpful if . . .


If you’ve done this first part of the exercise (Raising Performance) regularly, you feel a significant expansion of awareness combined with enhanced motivation and improved performance. What the program demonstrates in action is the energizing power of awareness in the workplace.

Next week we’ll start with the second part of the training: Personal Growth/Taking Responsibility (30 weeks) with the same procedure: For each day of the week, Monday through Friday, there are four to five basic stems to be completed. At the start of each day, before beginning work, do at least six endings for each stem. From day to day, inevitably there will be repetitions. That is not a problem, but do not allow repetitions on the same day. This practice itself, done repetitively, brings about integration. Write as rapidly as possible. No pauses to think; no worrying about whether any particular ending is profound, relevant, or significant. The speed of your progress depends in part of the level of focus and consciousness you bring to the work both while doing it in the morning and later when reviewing and reflecting on your endings in the evening.


II. Personal Growth/Taking Responsibility (week 1)

Morning
Self-responsibility to me means . . .
Independence to me means . . .
Thinking for myself means . . .
Trusting my own mind means . . .

Evening
If any of what I am writing is true, it might be helpful if . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 2)

Morning
If I operate more self-responsibility today . . .
If I think for myself today . . .
If I bring more awareness to my deepest needs and wants . . .
If I bring more awareness to what I truly think and feel . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 3)

Morning
If I am more straightforward about what I think and feel today . . .
If I operate more self-assertively today . . .
If I operate my wants and needs with more respect today . . .
If I express myself calmly and dignity today . . .
If I want to translate these ideas into action . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 4)

Morning
If I pay more attention to my inner signals today . . .
If I am more truthful in my dealings with people today . . .
If I am self-accepting today . . .
If I am self-accepting even when I make mistakes . . .
If these ideas start working in my subconscious mind . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 5)

Morning
If I disown what I am thinking and feeling . . .
If I place other people’s thoughts above my own . . .
When I look at what I do to impress people . . .
If I fake who I am to make myself “likeable”. . .
I am beginning to suspect . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 6)

Morning
If I am more accepting of my feelings today . . .
If I deny and disown my feelings . . .
If I am more accepting of my thoughts . . .
If I deny and disown my thoughts . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 7)

Morning
If I am more accepting of my fears . . .
If I deny and disown my fears . . .
If I am more accepting of my pains . . .
If I deny and disown my pains . . .
Right now it seems obvious that . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 8)

Morning
If I am more accepting of my desire to be liked . . .
If I deny and disown my desire to be liked . . .
If I learn to manage my desire for approval . . .
If I can acknowledge my desire for approval without being controlled by it . . .
If I want to translate these ideas into action . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 9)

Morning
If I am more accepting of my deepest self . . .
If I deny and disown my deepest self . . .
If I am more accepting of my intelligence . . .
If I deny and disown my intelligence . . .
If I allow myself understand what I am writing . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 10)

Morning
If I am more accepting of my thoughts and feelings, whether or not anyone shares them . . .
If I deny and disown thoughts and feelings others do not share . . .
If I betray my thoughts and feelings in action . . .
If I honor my thoughts and feelings in action. . .
I am beginning to suspect . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 11)

Morning
If I imagine being more self-responsible . . .
If I imagine being more independent . . .
If I imagine looking at things through my own eyes . . .
If I take more responsibility for the ideas I live by . . .
If these ideas start working in my subconscious mind . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 12)

Morning
If I honor my judgment today . . .
Sometimes I keep myself passive when I . . .
Sometimes I makes myself helpless when I . . .
If I pretend to be less than I am . . .
If I allow myself to absorb what I am writing . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 13)

Morning
If I bring more integrity into my relationships . . .
If I take more responsibility for my choice of companions . . .
If I take more responsibility for my personal happiness . . .
If I take more responsibility for the level of my self-esteem . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 14)

Morning
If I live more authentically today . . .
If I treat my thoughts and feelings with respect today . . .
If I experiment with being more self-assertive today . . .
If I am willing to see what I see and know what I know . . .
If I fully face the meaning of what I am writing . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 15)

Morning
If I hold myself accountable for my promises and commitments . . .
If I stop all excuse-making and alibiing . . .
If I refuse to surrender to helplessness . . .
If I were willing to say “yes” when I want to say “yes” and “no” when I want to say “no” . . .
If I am beginning to suspect . . .

Evening
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 16)

Morning:
If I were willing to let people see who I am . . .
If I took more responsibility for delivering on my commitments . . .
If I operate more self-responsibility at my work . . .
If I choose to translate these ideas into action . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 17)

Morning:
If I stay connected with what I truly think and feel . . .
If I take more responsibility for fulfilling my wants . . .
If I refuse to blame anyone . . .
If I make my happiness a conscious goal . . .
Right now it seems clear . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 18)

Morning:
If I look people in the eyes and tell the truth today . . .
If I refuse to be ruled by fear of disapproval . . .
If I refuse to hide who I am . . .
If I am simple, honest, and straightforward today . . .
If I allow what I am writing to fully penetrate . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 19)

Morning:
If I bring more integrity to my relationships . . .
If I remain loyal to the values I believe are right . . .
If I refuse to live by values I do not respect . . .
If I treat myself with respect . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 20)

Morning:
If I accept responsibility for my life and well-being . . .
If I accept responsibility for my choices and decisions . . .
If I accept responsibility for my actions . . .
If I accept responsibility for how I deal with people . . .
If I choose to translate these ideas into actions . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 21)

Morning:
If I want to grow in independence, I will need to . . .
If I want to grow in self-esteem, I will need to . . .
If I want to be more authentic, I will need to . . .
If I want to outgrow dependency, I will need to . . .
If I am willing to experiment with these ideas in action . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 22)

Morning:
If I look at things through my own eyes today . . .
If I am willing to see what I see and know what I know . . .
If I am truthful today, even if it’s difficult . . .
I grow in self-esteem when I . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 23)

Morning:
If I operate more self-responsibility today . . .
If I operate more self-assertively today . . .
If I operate more authentically today . . .
If I operate more honestly today . . .
Right now it seems clear that . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 24)

Morning:
As I grow in self-responsibility . . .
As I grow in independence . . .
As I learn to say what I truly think and feel . . .
As I learn to look at things through my own eyes . . .
If these ideas start working in my subconscious mind . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 25)

Morning:
Sometimes when I am afraid of self-responsibility I . . .
Sometimes when I am afraid of independence I . . .
If I want to outgrow any fear I have of self-responsibility . . . .
If I want to outgrow any fear I have of independence . . .
I am beginning to suspect . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 26)

Morning:
One of the things I’ve been learning through this program is . . .
As I notice how I feel when I am being self-responsible and when I am not fully . . .
As I notice how I feel when I am being authentic and when I am not fully . . .
As I notice how I feel when I am honest and when I am not fully . . .
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 27)

Morning:
I feel most proud of myself when I . . .
I feel least proud of myself when I . . .
If I give myself credit for my willingness to struggle . . .
If I give myself credit for my dedication to personal growth . . .
If I allow myself to understand what I am writing . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 28)

Morning:
As I learn to translate what I am learning into action . . .
As I continue to struggle, even when it’s difficult . . .
If I choose to persevere, no matter how long it takes . . .
One of the ways I am changing is . . .
I am beginning to suspect . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 29)

Morning:
As my understanding of self-responsibility deepens . . .
As my understanding of independence deepens . . .
As I learn to be more authentic when dealing with people . . .
As everything I am learning takes root in my deeper mind . . .

Evening:
I am becoming aware . . .


II. Personal Growth (week 30)

Morning:
As I learn to operate at higher level of self-responsibility . . .
As I learn to operate at higher level of independence . . .
As I learn to pay more attention to what I truly think and feel . . .
As I learn to treat myself with more respect . . .
As I go on translating these learnings into action . . .

When you compete this thirty-week program and want to carry the work further, I suggest that you go through the entire program again, from the beginning. It will be a new experience for you in many ways because, having gone through it once, your context has changed. You can do this program over and over, if you have the commitment to keep growing in this area of personal growth.

Joy and Play at Work

There is ample evidence that a joy-filled workplace improves financial performance. The workplace should be fun and fulfilling. Fun means rewarding, exciting, and creative. Sports and games help us understand what brings joy to the workplace. In this kind of working environment, our talents are fully exerted. We felt a lot of fun to use our talents and experiences accumulated through years of hard work. Joy at work gives people the freedom to use their talents and skills for the benefits of society, without being crushed or controlled by autocratic supervisors. People want to have a chance to make the most of their abilities to meet the needs of their families while doing something useful for society.

In many companies the employee’s talents are rarely used and often go unnoticed. Many companies have made the workplace a frustrating and joyless place where people do what they’re told and have few ways to participate in decisions or fully use their talents.

People become passive under the control of the bosses. In many companies we could easily see that when supervisors were in plant, the technician tended to wait for them to manage the situation. Often staff technicians were more engaged and reacted more quickly to problems without bosses looking over their shoulders.

Paternalism keeps people in a state of childlike independence. It prevents workers from taking control of their work and lives. They are never in a position to take risks or make decisions, and so never develop to their full potential. In the end, paternalism kills any chance of joy at work. When bosses make all the decisions, we are apt to feel frustrated and powerless, like overgrown children being told what to do by our parents. Treating employees like children is not in their best interest, nor does it serve the goal of an organization.

Ordinary workers need independence and a feeling of control if they are going to take on responsibility, show initiative, and be willing to risk failure. Putting one’s talents on the line is essential to creating a healthy and fun workplace. Most people will flourish in a liberated workplace. A liberated workplace brings much happiness, independence, and sense of being an adult. In this kind of workplace people are assumed to be thoughtful, creative, trustworthy, and capable of making decisions.

The assumption that people all over the world are unique, creative thinkers, fallible, capable of learning, trustworthy, capable of making decisions and willing to be held accountable really made sense to me. People accomplish through empowerment, freedom to act, decision-making, not having to be told what to do, but being trusted to make good decisions. Freedom and responsibilities help people learn rapidly and feel like owners.

A modern business can no longer run by a few people who think and many people who do what they are told - the traditional military command-and-control model. Today, decisions cannot be made in the old authoritarian manner. They need interaction, intuitive reflection, and the fostering of collaborative mental models. They need play. They need creativity. They need learning. This massage goes against the traditional way in which most people look at their career position. They do not think their job in terms of learning. They feel that their leadership depends on their “knowing” - their ability to project self-assured confidence in their own information. The corollary notion, that “the best way to learn is through play,” makes the message even less palatable.

We need to design organizations that encourage people to look beyond job security and seek the rewards that come with a creative, enterprising approach to work. Many of the world’s large organizations are filled with people trapped in the dead-end goal of seeking security. It is the enemy of joy at work. We need to ask, where is the love for creativity and accomplishment? Where are the other unique traits and gifts and frailties that make us human? Security is hollow substitute for a rewarding, stimulating workplace.

Rigid job definitions are not compatible with joyous workplace. Managers should treat people like adults, trusting their honesty, judgment, maturity, and professionalism rather than relying on detailed procedures, manuals, and minute supervisory oversight. Managers should increase the chances of creating a rewarding, exciting, vibrant, successful, and fun workplace.

Fun workplace is one that allows people to work in an environment that is most consistent with human nature. In many of my interactions with people in the workplace, I asked the questions, “What is the most important factors that makes a workplace rewarding, satisfying, exciting, and fun? The typical answers I get:

· “Good friends”
· “Good environment”
· “It’s challenging”
· “I get to do what I am good at”
· “Fair pay”
· “I learn alot”
· “Doing something worthwhile”
· “I’m needed”
· “I’m thought as a person”
· “Winning”
· “Part of the team”
· “Significant responsibility”

People make pay an overly important factor when they choose a job. Most people find out later that their happiness in the workplace has very little to do with the level of financial compensation they receive.

A special workplace has many ingredients. The feeling that you are part of a team, a sense of community, the knowledge that what you do has real purpose – all these things help make work fun. But by far most important factor is whether you are able to use your talents and skills to do something useful, significant, and worthwhile. The biggest joy is the opportunity to use our abilities when it really counts. From this perspective the key to a great workplace is feeling wanted and important.

Fun at work start with individual initiative and individual control. Individuals, not bureaucracy, make the decisions and hold themselves accountable. This process involves creativity, careful analysis, planning, and disciplined execution. The goal should be to design a workplace where the maximum numbers of individuals have an opportunity to make important decisions, undertake actions, and assume responsibility for the results. People given responsibility for decisions do not want to fail. A working environment should be based on principles of trust, freedom, and individuals acting for the good of the larger group. The power to decide must be given to as many people as possible if their individual talents are to be fully utilized.

Research shows that when employees feel like tightly controlled robots, with no opportunity to make decisions or take action on their own, productivity and performance decline.
Ideally, the decision maker is the person whose area is most affected, or one who initiated an idea, discovered a problem, or saw an opportunity. The decision maker then seeks advice from leaders and from peers. If it is unclear who the decision maker should be, the leader selects an individual to gather advice and make the final decision. Before any decision can be made on any company matter, the decision maker must seek advice. The bigger the issue or problem, the wider the net that is thrown to gather pertinent information from people inside and outside the company.

Important things happen when the advice process is used by an individual before making a decision or taking action:

§ It draws people whose advice is sought into the question at hand. They learn about the issue and become knowledgeable adviser. The sharing of information reinforces the feeling of community. Each person whose advice is sought feels honored and needed.

§ Asking an advice is an act of humility, which is one of the most important characteristics of a fun workplace. The act alone says, “I need you.” The decision maker and the adviser are pushed into a closer relationship.

§ Making decision is on-the-job education. Advice comes from people who have an understanding of the situation and care about the outcome. No other form of education or training can match this real time experience.

§ Chances of reaching the best decisions are greater in team approach than under conventional top-down approaches. The amount of fun in an organization is largely a function of the number of individuals allowed to make decisions. The advice process stimulates initiative and creativity, which is enhanced by wisdom/experience from knowledgeable people elsewhere in the organization. The opportunity to make important decisions after participating in an intensive advice process helped people learn in an accelerated way. But freedom at workplace requires people who can reason, make decisions, and take responsibility for their actions.

I could easily see for myself that problem solving (and decision making) was a learning process. It was, in fact, hardly individual at all. It was primarily a social process, simple, unheroic, and unscientific.

Suppose that you and I are part of a team, holding meetings to make a decision. Look closely at what happens during such a meeting. We talk. Ideally, we talk freely and openly. If we have any hope of reaching a decision, we know the meeting can’t be dominated by one person - certainly not by the boss. We know that nobody in the room has any solution at hand. We will have to struggle together to find an answer to a situation that concerns us all. If the meeting is to be effective, therefore, none of us can lose patience with the thought processes of our colleagues.

Groups that perform a variety of functions are an essential part of a successful and fun workplace. When teams handle a variety of tasks, individuals are able to make full use of their skills, and work becomes more challenging and enjoyable. In team, individuals play roles and maintain their identities. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Building good team depends on hiring the right kind of people.

Education is a matter of performing tasks in an environment that encourages feedback and constructive criticism. In other words, we learn best when we discuss our work with other, make decisions that matter, and find out from others whether what we did was right or wrong. The people consulted along the way are apt to learn even more.

Working and taking responsibility for a turbine is the best way to learn about the turbine; maintaining water-treatment equipment is the best way to learn about maintaining the equipment; and being a supervisor is the best way to learn how to be an effective leader. This explains why apprenticeship programs have been so effective over the ages. Group projects and performance reviews are also important learning setting for everyone – certainly more important than classroom lectures or formal training programs. All these learning experiences are made more valuable when leaders act as mentors and advisors.

Most senior executives seem to believe that God or the board created them to make all the important decisions. But every decision made at headquarter takes away responsibilities from the people elsewhere in the organization and reduces the number of people who feel they are making an effective contribution to the organization. Joy comes from freedom. When senior executives assume the power of command-and-control model, the people who are operating units don’t get as much excitement and fulfillment from their work. It is a shame that most managers give little thought to how their decisions affect the working environment for their employees.

Controllers are not only joy-killers, but they also inhibit a company’s creativity, and in this process, dampen its long-term chances for success. The more you try to control people, the less responsible and accountable they become. Giving up control requires trust. This approach requires leaders to trust those responsible to them – because it is the subordinate’s actions and decisions that decide the success of the leaders.

Most people want to know how well they performed. The goal should be to have everyone in the company feel like a volunteer. Volunteers are typically enthusiastic, energetic, and effective. Growth, responsibility, adulthood, and fun come from making decisions and being held accountable for the results.

Moral leaders serve an organization rather than control it. Their goal is to create a community that encourages individuals to take initiative, practice self-discipline, make decisions, and assume responsibility for their actions. The form of servant leadership is often misunderstood as being hands off, even passive. It is just the opposite. The true servant leaders are engaged in every aspect of organization’s life, from suggesting radical new ideas and strategies to teaching the organization’s principles and values. This kind of leader is never passive or far from the center of the organization’s important plans, processes, and actions.

Employees in operating units are usually wiser than executive think, and if they make the wrong decision, they derive enormous satisfaction and grow tremendously from the very act of making it. Failure and mistakes are also part of what makes games and work fun. Failure is inevitable in any endeavor. It is also an essential element of learning and eventual success. Failures, in turn, teach us humility, and because experience is often painful, we learn indelible lessons. While winning and losing do influence how we feel about work, they are not the key to fun. Indeed, failure is nearly as important as success in creating a great workplace. The system guru Edward Deming said that a leader’s job is to drive fear out of the organization so that employees will feel comfortable making decisions on their own.

A leader character is more important than his or her skills. Good leadership starts with a person’s character. I am not sure whether character necessarily boosts profits and share price, but I am convinced that it is essential to creating a fun workplace. The most important character traits of a leader are courage and integrity; humility and the willingness to give up power; love and passion for the people who work for them.

A person’s character speaks far more lauder and with more lasting effect than any speech or letter to employees. Our character is transparent to those around us. Leaders must realize this. The people around us are not fooled even if we try to cover up our flaws. We are an open book.

Most employees make corporate decisions on the basis of what they believe their leaders’ value. How do they determine what their leaders think is important? They pay attention to criteria used for determining compensation. They read company presentations to shareholders and banks. They consider what factors their bosses use in making decisions. They track how leaders steward corporate resources. They watch how leaders live their lives.

The question is not whether we have values, but which values and principles really guide our behavior. Values and principles mean something only when they affect everything we do, every day of the week. It doesn’t mean we consistently meet the standards we set for ourselves. They were our aspirations and were felt deeply, but we are fallible like anyone else.

It is not essential to be a great visionary. A leader must communicate a vision, but that vision can come from a colleague or someone outside the organization. Nor does a leader have to be an accomplished strategist or analyst. Again, strategy and analysis can be undertaken by others inside or outside the organization. A leader doesn’t even have to be an effective communicator.

Finally, a leader doesn’t even have to be inspirational. People usually posses the motivation, discipline, and inner strength to act in a way that is true to themselves. The role of leader is to create an environment that allows these qualities to flourish.

Humility is at the core of a leader’s heart. Humility is understanding who you really are, regardless of your title or education, your wealth or status. Humility underlies the impulse to make others do better.

Schoolteachers seemed to adapt to this concept of leadership more quickly. The best teachers are rewarded by performance of their students and the success of former students. Leaders who want to increase joy and success in the workplace must learn to take most of their personal satisfaction from the achievements of the people they lead, not from the power they exercise.

In “Good to Great,” Jim Collins wrote the results of his ten year research that companies that seem to do better in the long run were run by understated leaders. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy - these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln than Caesar.

The Coach was not the best shooter or the best defender. He did not make decisions for his teammates. But he was their leader. He served his teammates and made them better. The most important aspect of this leadership style is letting others make important decisions. When that happens, leaders dignify and honor their subordinates. At the moment power is shared, everyone is in a position of equality. People feel needed and valued because they are needed and valued.

Not having the chance to make decisions within the organization in which one works is a great tragedy, leading to hopelessness and despair. Picture this. I am your supervisor, and I walk over to you with pencil in hand and tell you to take it. You reach for the pencil, but I won’t let it go. So I say, “What is wrong with you? Why can’t I delegate the pencil to you?”

Courage is also required when senior executives are asked to surrender a large portion of their authority to others. When executives give power away, they often feel insecure, as if they are not doing their jobs when they delegate decisions to subordinates. Not only are decisions being made by the people who are most familiar with the facts, but also the act of making them gives more people a real stake in the organization’s performance. To attain this goal we should allow every working person to be free to take actions and make decisions. This will make us more passionate about our work and ensure that organizations have the best chance to succeed economically.

I believe that leaders exercise tight control only on issues that affect the shared values of an organization. These share beliefs are the bedrock of an organization’s sense of community. They are glue that holds everything together. All other decisions, including those with major financial implications, should be delegated to the team members who are closest to the matter under consideration - to a lower level employee with firsthand knowledge.

It is important for leaders to distinguish an organization’s unchanging principles from its constantly changing strategy. The former is a function of moral precepts that have been tested and proved over millennia. The latter is tied to market conditions and the strength and skills of an organization.

Max De Pree says in - “Leading Without Power” -, “We are working primarily for love. Love prompts us to visit our employees around the world. Love makes us want to work extra time. Love pushes us to do whatever it takes to help others succeed. And love forgives mistakes.

Leaders who create dynamic, rewarding, enjoyable workplace love people. Love is an act of humility that says, “I need you.” Love affirms that the other person is worthy and important. Most of us know what love demands. If I love the people who work in my organization, I will allocate time to be with them, to know them. Leaders can’t serve the people without spending time with them.

The traits of good leaders – courage, integrity, humility, love and passion for people who work with them – are essential to the roles they play in the workplace. I believe that leaders have three main roles. They are responsible for interpreting the organization’s shared values and principles. They are advisors to people in the organization. And they are collective conscience, pushing the organization to reach its goal and live up to its ideals.

This is part of what Max De Pree refers to when he suggested that leaders need to “define reality.” Where we stand relative to our goals? How are we doing relative to our competitors?
Who is most responsible for our success or our failure? What are the consequences of our performance? It would be wonderful if each of us routinely answered these questions and adjusted our work habits accordingly. Leaders must find ways to stimulate self-discipline, self-assessment, and individual and team accountability.

Goal and mission tend to shape the behavior of organizations and the people in them, therefore corporate must have a broader and more meaningful purpose than simply making money. Profit is like breathing. Breathing is not the goal of life, but it is pretty good evidence of whether or not you are alive. Superior performance in today’s world must have both a moral and a financial dimension.

The most important questions in business are often never asked:
What is our motive? What is our purpose? Are they worthwhile?
Motive and purpose guide our behavior, color our decisions, and add or subtract joy from work. We need to keep asking this questions, and use the answers to measure our success.

While capitalism offered spectacular improvements in the standard of living and undreamed –of opportunities for the ambitious and adventuresome, it did not offer relief from self-responsibility. It counted on it. It was a system geared to individuals who trusted themselves – trusted their minds and judgment – and who believed that the pursuit of achievement and happiness was their birthright. It was a system geared to self-esteem. In this sense work became a vehicle for character development and economic sustainability.

The Corporate Immune System

In the human body, the immune system is built into the cells within the bloodstream. Its role is to maintain equilibrium with the intruders from the outside world that continuously enter the body. The active cells of the immune system can detect these outside organisms and, if necessary, secrete chemicals to defend the body against them. The more capable the immune system, the more resistant the host body is to harmful effects from bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites. These intruders from the outside are not prevented from entering, nor are they systematically destroyed on every incursion. The immune system keeps them in check while they exist within the body.

If you take an airplane for example from Frankfurt to Bangkok, you move your body between two environments of completely different bacteria, fungi, and viruses. When you get off the plane in Bangkok, your immune system begin to “recruit” new cells from the regular flow of lymphocytes that your body produces in the spinal column and releases into the bloodstream. Some of these potential antibody cells will be called into action, depending on the new molecular environment in which you wade.

Each day, your immune system recruits enough new cells to constitute up to 20 percent of its own population. You body, during that recruitment process, rebuilds equilibrium with the unfamiliar intruders of Bangkok’s atmosphere. This makes the human immune system into an extremely open system – and thus a good learning system.

Unfortunately, there are limits to the numbers of intrusions that the human body can handle. That tolerance of any body has an upper value. Thus imagine that you are put into an environment in which more than 25 percent of the invaders consist of a new type. Or suppose you are invaded by a particularly virulent organism. In that case, the intruder from the outside is numerous or powerful enough to exceed your immune system’s capacity to learn.

Now you have an infection. Instead of learning and incorporating the new molecules, the immune system must repel. It increases the body temperature to make life more difficult for the new intruders, and it develops a composition of antibodies and killer cells to cope with new types of intruders. Without thinking, your body has moved into a mode of resistance and rejection. This is not necessary beneficial for you. You experience a fever, exhaustion, headache, and tension in your digestive system. The reaction to the entrance of a foreign substance may even have more severe effects. Your resistance and rejection may upset your own equilibrium so much that it could lead to shock or even death.

This state of affair is as true for corporations as it is for individuals. The health of a company is under constant attack from the inside and the outside. The attacks come from individuals or groups of individuals who do not want to be part of the whole. They are there for their own purpose. It does not matter how honorable or dishonorable these purposes may be. The health of community is under threat.

This biological view does not distinguish between inherently good or bad behavior, for instance – even if it were possible to define what is good or bad. Consider, for instance, a highly intolerant institution, which hires a group of consultants to improve its practices. Now, new ideas and new people enter the firm, with the intention of opening up the institution’s behavior and improving its chances of survival. This intent is assuredly “good” – but to the existing (intolerant) membership, the intruders’ behavior will seem “bad” and parasitic. The corporate immune system will go into action. The temperature will go up, and killer cells may finish off the intruding ideas. When this happen, it should not be taken as a comment on the quality of those ideas. It is a reaction to the strength of the host system’s immunity mechanism.

In biological terms, a merger or an acquisition represents an intrusion of foreign bodies, ideas, and values into the host organization. If you acquire a competitor who is 25 percent of your size, you have accepted an intrusion of 25 percent of your existing population. A 50 percent merger with a foreign partner means an intrusion of 50 percent for each of the two partners.

At these proportions, many acquisitions and most mergers are likely to rise well above tolerance limits of both partners. Acquisitions and mergers are infections. That is why the temperature goes up and the corporate body goes into a resistance mode. Many cases of this resistance have been well documented. Harvard management professor Michael Porter analyzed 2,700 mergers and acquisitions by 33 majors U.S. companies over a 36-years period. His report found failure rates between 50 and 75 percent.

The tribes within the merged institution continue to see themselves as separate entities. If I come to your country as part of the merger of our companies, you will still see me as an outsider. You will trust me less than someone from your home institution.

In the early 1970s when “diversification” was fashionable Royal Dutch/Shell bought a medium sized metal company, Billiton. In term of people, capitalization, turnover, or any other measurement, the Shell Group was so much bigger than Billiton that Shell could absorb this acquisition without any difficulty. However, by any standard, Shell’s intrusion was way above Billiton’s tolerance level.

Shell did not show a rejection mechanism. But Billiton did. The Billiton entity ailed, and in effect, died. Less than a decade later, nearly all of the senior Billiton managers had left – notwithstanding the utmost care Shell had exerted to leave the original management in control. For Billiton, the merger represented an infection and had to be repelled. This meant that Shell was unable to reap the benefits that Shell had hoped might emerge from the Billiton measure. Shell was simply too big for Billiton.

There is no easy way to manage mergers and acquisitions, once the bankers have left. The infection analogy is useful because it shows why money cannot buy intelligence, knowledge, and innovative behavior in large quantities. Learning is not a matter of “filling up the tank” by buying a new partnership. Learning is a process. Partnership takes times.

The less a company operates in control of its environment, the more open it should be: foreign bodies and ideas will be able to enter easily. That is as it should be; indeed, it becomes strength of the company. However, the company can never be sure how these bodies and ideas will behave, once inside. Every intruder has a choice: it can select a symbiotic relationship or it can pursue its own benefit, to the exclusion of all others.

All intruders are not alike. Richard Dawkins, who has written at length in “The Selfish Gene” about the role of intruders and parasites in evolution, describes them all as egoistic. None of them “cares” about the welfare of the host body, except as a vehicle for their own survival. They serve their own genetic interests. At the same time, however, many of them serve the host body well: They are symbiotic, increasing the sophistication and capability of the host body at the same time they remain dedicated to their own interests. There are bacteria that live in beetles, for examples, and use the beetle’s egg as transport into the bodies of new beetles. They do not obstruct the reproductive process of the beetle; indeed they depend on it.

Destructive parasites can also exist anywhere in the corporate host body. They can be excluded individuals or even individuals in positions of power, but planning their exist on their own terms. Power can be used to manipulate the definition of “us” in the service of someone else’s strategy. A senior manager manipulating a situation to make his or her own résumé look good, but leaving all the rest vulnerable, is behaving parasitically. Similarly, when a division of a company resents being part of the whole, that division can easily become a parasite in the host body. It does not matter whether this resentment is justified. All of these people and subsystems, in Richard Dowkin’s sense, are serving their own self-interest at the expense of the natural functions of the host company.

If a company begins to perform seemingly self-destructive acts, you should not ask, “Why is this activity in the interest of the corporation?” You should ask, “Whose interest is served by this self-destructive act?” Is it the small group that has misused its power to define the company as only the five or six top people? Is it the large intestinal snail called a partner company, a division, or a trade union?

We normally think of intruders as parasites and of parasites as entering with the intention of weakening their hosts. This need not always be the case. On entry, every intruder has the same choice: a symbiotic relationship or a parasitic one. Indeed, there is a great deal of leverage available from cultivating symbiotic relationships with organizational parasites. To understand such relationships, the critical question is this: Why would certain people or substructures work with a kind of group loyalty to one another when others would not?

Dawkins answer this question: All the members that stand to gain from trying their fate to the host institution will “corporate.” They will work together to make the whole institution behave as a single coherently purposeful unit. They are symbiotic, increasing the sophistication and capability of the institution at the same time they remain dedicated to their own interests.

It is clear that management’s responsibility for guarding the corporate health is best served by preventive medicine and setting a context for mutual cooperation. Make sure, when a new member enters, that there is a shared value system in place. When a new member enters the system, make sure that there is a contract based on long-term harmonization of goals. In this way, the company has the highest certainty that entrants will elect for member status, instead of becoming parasites.

Money is not enough of an incentive. If the salary and bonus levels represent the sole or the most important condition of the contract between company and individual, the chances are increased that the lure of larger amount of money will lead to parasitic behavior. This will be even truer for people who are in a closer position to higher amounts of money. The management levels in a company are the most propitious, from a parasite’s points of view!

The Flocking Company

The United Kingdom has a longstanding milk distribution system in which milkmen in small trucks bring the milk in bottles to the door of each country house. At the beginning of this century, these milk bottles had no top. Birds had easy access to the cream which settled in the top of the bottle. Two different species of British garden birds, the titmice and the red robins, learned to siphon up cream from the bottles and tap this new, rich food source.

This innovation, in itself, was already quite an achievement. But it also had evolutionary effect. The cream was much richer than the usual food resources of these birds, and the two species underwent some adaptation of their digestive systems to cope with the unusual nutrients. This internal adaptation almost certainly took place through Darwinian selection.

Then, between the two world wars, the UK distribution closed access to the food source by placing aluminum seals on the bottles.

By the early 1950s, the entire titmouse population of the UK (about a million birds) had learned how to pierce the aluminum seals. Regaining access to this rich food source provided an important victory for the titmouse family as a whole; it gave them an advantage in the battle for survival. Conversely, the red robins family as a whole, never regained access to the cream. Occasionally, an individual robin learns how to pierce the seals of the milk bottles, but the knowledge never passes to the rest of the species.

In short, the titmice went through an extraordinarily successful institutional learning process. The red robins failed, even though individual robins had been as innovative as individual titmice. Moreover, the difference could not be attributed to their ability to communicate. As songbirds, both the titmice and the red robins had the same wide range of means of communication: color, behavior, movements, and song. The explanation, said Professor Allan Wilson - a zoologist/biochemist based at the University of California at Berkley – could be found only in the social propagation process: the way titmice spread their skill from one individual to members of the species as a whole.

In spring, the titmice live in couples until they have reared their young. By early summer, when the young titmice are flying and feeding on their own, the birds are moving from garden to garden in flocks of eight to ten individuals. These flocks seem remain intact, moving together around the countryside, and the period of mobility lasts for two to tree months.

Red robins, by contrast, are territorial birds. A male robin will not allow another male to enter its territory. When threatened, the robin sends a warning, as if to say, “Keep the hell out of here!” In general, red robins tend to communicate with each other in an antagonistic manner.

Birds that flock, said Professor Wilson, seem to learn faster. They increase their chances to survive and evolve more quickly.

Some companies facilitate flocking of their management teams; other companies have stronger territorial tendencies. They classify members by their specialty, skill, or mandate – production engineers in one “function,” marketers in another. Then they appoint a management team of people from various functions and give each a specific written statement, spelling out in detail exactly what their assignment should be. Each member is carefully instructed to avoid encroaching on the others’ territories; marketing people do not oversee production, and production people steer clear of marketing concerns. Finance managers concern themselves with measurement and money handling, and do not permit themselves to get involved in process concerns, while process managers ignore the imperatives of finance, except where they are given direct orders. Each red robin is allocated his or her territory in the corporate garden. We should therefore not be surprised, when these teams communicate as antagonistically as red robins, at squabbling at the boundaries of their territories. The amount of institutional learning is limited.

Any organization with several hundred people is bound to have at least a couple of innovators. There are always people curious enough to poke their way into new discoveries, like the titmice finding their cream. However, keeping a few innovators on hands is not enough, in itself, for institutional learning. The organization must leave space for them, so that they do not feel squelched and their innovations have time to develop.

As with the titmouse’s innovation, when it learned to siphon cream from English milk bottles, a well-designed program of development can have evolutionary effect. The innovation spreads rapidly through the organization, without being commanded to spread. Somehow, people just seem to know what to do. They gain and spread the knowledge because they have been given structures that encourage flocking.

Each employee has an ultimate potential, and as a self-perpetuating work community it is in the company’s interests to help the individual reach that potential. Thus, people move from job to job, within the enterprise – in part so they accumulate the maximum experience available during a working life and in part so that, through “flocking,” the organization gains from their experiences.

Most innovative companies are run by teams. This is because teams have a higher capacity to learn than individuals. In fact, in most companies with a certain degree of complexity, most decisions are made by teams. The capacity for a management team’s learning is influenced by the way team is defined. It should include all the people who together have the power to act on their common interest. Ideally, a management team at any level of the company should include all people who are necessary for the implementation of that team’s decisions. They should be able to work together on common problems, each with his or her individual contribution and technical specialty. This should be an ideal “flock.”

As in bird species, the resulting social transmission will be different in a territorial company. Both the territorial and the flocking company may employ equally innovative individuals, but the chances that the innovative ideas will become company policy are much reduced in the territorial company.

Some cultures are like songbirds: they can learn to flock more easily because they have institutional learning bred into them, whereas other companies are more like mollusks. But human organizations have resources for evolution. And even if they are not participated in designing a company from its birth, many managers will find themselves in a position with influence on some part of the business. From there, they can begin to remodel the company’s structures and policies in a way that facilitates flocking and improves the company’s ability to learn.

Innovation and flocking require organizational space – freedom from control, from direction, and from punishment from failures. Experiments must take place with relative safety. Conversation must be free and candid, without fear of reprisal. Employee movements must be largely self-determined; no one can “command” a bird to flock in a certain direction, because the travel pattern of the flock emerges from its own movement. To behave with ecological concern often requires a leap of faith: that you will be better protected by harmony and flocking than by territoriality and force of will. The cost of maintaining a company without flocking and innovation, where every adaptation had to be ordered from the highest levels of the hierarchy, was too big.

Learning By Accommodation

As for learning itself, according to the prevailing views, you are supposed to learn only during a particular part of your life: the school (university) years. This learning time is a time of fun, without too much responsibility. Then you move into real life, into work at a company where you apply your knowledge. Play stops and hard reality takes over. You are paid for what you know. The more you know (or have learned), the more you should earn. Education is not a vehicle for expanding your capability, but simply a credential for bettering your lot.

Having more knowledge may ultimately mean that you becomes a leader. Then, at last, people will listen to you. They will be convinced by your logical arguments and the superior array of facts at your disposal. If they still do not carry out your commands (assuming that you have explained them clearly, reasonably, and calmly), it is probably because other people in the organization - wittingly or otherwise – put barriers in the way. It is your job to have those removed. Leadership has little to do with learning as decision making does. Indeed, when a leader says, “I learned something I didn’t know before,” it detracts from his or her ability to appear certain and thus to inspire confidence. Thus a leader who learns is a leader who is unsure.

This attitude is a cartoon of intelligent human life. It portrays people as cars: you start at a service station (university) and feel up your “brain tank” with knowledge. Then you use your intellectual fuel to advance down life’s highway. This view reflected in the way we recruit, remunerate, and promote people. There is no place at the top for an actor who seeks to anticipate outside events by, for example, bringing people together to look at developments that might turn into a crisis. There is no room for someone who admits that he or she does not have all the answers. The idea that the company itself could do some learning of its own does not enter into anyone’s mind.

I could easily see for myself that problem solving (and decision making) was a learning process. It was, in fact, hardly individual at all. It was primarily a social process, simple, unheroic, and unscientific.

Suppose that you and I are part of a team, holding meetings to make a decision. Look closely at what happens during such a meeting. We talk. Ideally, we talk freely and openly. If we have any hope of reaching a decision, we know the meeting can’t be dominated by one person - certainly not by the boss. We know that nobody in the room has any solution at hand. We will have to struggle together to find an answer to a situation that concerns us all. If the meeting is to be affective, therefore, none of us can lose patience with the thought processes of our colleagues.

A modern business can no longer run by a few people who think and many people who do what they are told - the traditional military command-and-control model. Today, decisions cannot be made in the old authoritarian manner. They need interaction, intuitive reflection, and the fostering of collaborative mental models. They need play. They need creativity. They need learning. This massage goes against the traditional way in which most people look at their career position. They do not think their job in terms of learning. They feel that their leadership depends on their “knowing” - their ability to project self-assured confidence in their own information. The corollary notion, that “the best way to learn is through play,” makes the message even less palatable.

To have to learn something meant you didn’t know it in the first place, and for people who are grown up in authoritarian environment, it was consider much better to lie and give an answer - any answer - than to admit you don’t know. This attitude is still ingrained in many companies - sometimes deeply ingrained.

Ultimately, if companies do not embrace the hypothesis of “accelerating learning” and the concept of “play” - of creativity - they will suffer the serious long-term effect of learning more slowly than their competitors.

The activity most people have in mind when they think of learning - being exposed to facts and assimilating them intellectually. In this activity, there are ready-made ideas and structures that fit the situation. These ideas can be transmitted from one individual to another. This is the learning activity of the traditional lecture hall or classroom; it is so prevalent that many of us are conditioned to equate learning with teaching.

In company, the closest one gets to teaching is when an expert or a consultant stands up in a management meeting and doles out his or her wisdom. This teaching is not the dominant method for training in companies. That’s just as well – it shows that in companies, when performance counts, people recognize that teaching is an ineffective route to learning.

The other type of learning, as Piaget puts it, is learning by accommodation. In this type of learning, you undergo an internal structural change in your beliefs, ideas, and attitudes. When we learn by assimilation, says Piaget, the lectures and books of conventional school learning are sufficient. But learning by accommodation requires much more. It is an experiential process by which you participate fully, with all your intellect and heart, not knowing what the final result will be, but knowing that you will be different when you come out the other end. This interrelationship with the environment actually makes you grow, survive, and develop your potential. Someone who undergoes a course of military training, for example, will no longer think or act the same way as before; the same is true for someone who goes through the rigors of in-depth professional school or corporations.

The Tolerant Company

There was a time, when the balance of payments of Chile deteriorated to the point that foreign exchange became a problem to the country. The causes seem clear: Chile could no longer produce its own food and had to rely increasingly on imports. The United States decided to offer a helping hand and dispatched a team of agronomists to study the problem.

The team flew to Santiago de Chile and proceeded from there directly to the Andes Mountains. The Andes are the region where the potato originated; it is still a main staple in the Chilean diet. Potatoes have grown for thousands of years at considerable heights in the mountains.

The U.S. agronomists climbed these heights and looked at the potato field. The fields clung precipitously to the mountainsides. They had irregular shapes and were interspersed with boulders. Within each field, the agronomists discovered ten or more varieties of potatoes growing. There were round potatoes and elongated potatoes, red, white, and blue potatoes; and many more perturbing to the scientists – some plants that bore many potatoes and others that bore only a few tubers. These seem terribly inefficient.

By then the team had most of the elements needed to write a convincing report. Out came the hand-held computers. The calculations showed, beyond doubt, that a more careful selection of seed of potatoes, a switch to higher-yield varieties, and a more systematic weeding and cropping of the fields would increase the annual crop by at least 15 percent. Because this equaled the shortfall in the country’s food production, the team took their plane back to the United States with the feeling of a job well done.

But the advice was wrong. However scientific the agronomists’ approach may have been, they could not compete with the accumulated local experience, based on thousands of years of potatoes growing in the Andes.

Chilean peasants, based all their lives in mountains, know that a wide variety of terrible things could harm their potatoes. There may be a late night frost in spring, or a caterpillar plague in summer. Mildew might destroy the plants before any tubers have formed, or winter might come too early. Over the years, each of these calamities has taken place from time to time.

Whenever the new calamities strikes, the peasants walk up to their fields and look everywhere – in the corners, behind the boulders, and amid the weeds – for the surviving potatoes plants. Only these surviving plants are immune to the latest plague. At harvesting time the peasants will carefully dig up the survivors and take the precious potato tubers back to their huts. They and their children may have to go through a winter famine, but at least they have next year’s seed potatoes from which a new start can be made. They are not locked into a particular set of farming practices, or a particular type of potatoes; they may be inefficient at times, but they have diversity bred into their everyday practice, diversity that allows them to meet unforeseen disaster.

By reducing the number of varieties in a potato, the monocropping approach guarantees a much higher yield in the short run, in the long run, it depletes the soil, diminishes the variety in the system, and threatens the health and life of the plants and animals living there.

Corporate system that aim at maximizing short-term proceeds, and disturb or cut out activities in the margin of the company’s “fields,” represent the business equivalent of monocropping. In the long run, the parable of the Chilean potato suggests that these companies have greatly diminished chances of survival.

By maintaining a certain level of variety within itself, the company is far more adaptable, because it is far more capable of responding effectively to the variety of forces that exists in this environment.

Intolerant companies can have long and healthy lives, provided that they have an appreciable amount of control over the world in which they live. The banking and insurance industries in many European countries lived for long times in this sort of world. So do many “postal, telephone, and telegraph” companies, as long as their telecommunications bailiwicks are strongly regulated. Under monopolistic conditions, a stable market or other conditions in which the company maintains control, the managers will do well to optimize efficiency. They will go for maximum results with the minimum resources. This minimization of resources inside the company requires intolerant management style. There cannot be much room for delegated authority and freedom of action.

Instead of growing potatoes in an open environment like the Andes, these intolerant companies are growing potatoes in a glass house, the horticulturist controls the amount of heat, light, fertilizer, and humidity in the environment 24 hours a day. Over time, like the horticulturist, managers of intolerant companies become more and more clever at finding the optimum, most efficient methods for growing the potatoes in a controlled environment. The managers’ structures and knowledge base get honed over time to deal with a familiar world, but there is little learning by making internal changes to fit a changing world.

The company will undeniably thrive for as long as the world remains stable. High tolerance, after all, is wasteful of resources. That is why a company with a lot of control over its environment has few reasons to be open or tolerant.

When the environment becomes unstable, however, there is a need for fast learning. Now, suddenly, the glass house cracks. The external environment, with all its unpredictabilities, reasserts itself. The managers must return to growing potatoes in the Andes. Diversity and openness are much better management dictums in those conditions.

Questions of tolerance are a fundamental part of a company’s ecosystem stance. Ecology does not only concern the relationship between a company and its surroundings. Equally important are the company’s relationships with the different personate inside itself: its individual members, its subsidiary companies, and its branches. To tolerate a variety of life forms within oneself gives a company the resilience to withstand stress and even disaster.

Companies such as Sumitomo, Du Pont and Intel found it easier to adapt because they had tolerance. Tolerance was the core quality that made is possible to diversify and decentralize, yet still manage the entity as a whole. These companies were particularly tolerance of activities in the margin: small, seemingly strange businesses that might have been pruned off the corporate rosebush elsewhere, but here were given as an outlet for endeavor.

When Du Pont needed to move into chemicals; Sumitomo into banking, or Intel into microprocessor, there was already a budding nexus of capability within the enterprise, ready to move into a new status as a core business. Moreover, because the company had been tolerant of this “bud” of new activity, it had been given time and room to emerge organically from the core structure. Thus its presence in itself demonstrated where the corporate entity as a whole might naturally and profitably move next.

In short, systems that deliberately introduce diversity into the product line – even at the expense of short-term proceeds – and allow activities to go on undisturbed in the margin of the field, have greatly enhanced chances of survival across the generations. These systems are tolerant. Tolerance systems survive.

Tolerance is a measure of openness of a system. The more tolerant a company, the more new people and ideas it can absorb and foster over time. Tolerance is a dynamic characteristic; it changes the composition of the company. Diverse people, products, and ideas require us to be patient with them; indeed, tolerance is patience. It requires time.

The long-term corporate survivors had made their changes in gradual, incremental ways – almost always in anticipation of customer needs. New business was not required to be relevant to the original business, and, above all, there was no central control over diversifications. They were often minimally financed or self-financing; often, they were simply the natural results of letting some group of inventors or creators within the firm have time to experiment and take risks.

Tolerance, in other words, is derived from value system. It can only exist in a company where people recognize the value of creating space for innovation. This is the reason why some companies set aside some pocket for innovation. In essence, these companies are creating pockets of organizational space in which innovation can emerge. The pockets tend to be hidden away in backwaters of the company. The senior managers trust them, don’t oversee them, keep them generally out of sight and out of mind and don’t worry about them - until they are needed.

As an example, in the early eighties the Japanese started beating Intel in the memory business. Intel’s performance started to slump when the entire industry weakened in mid-1984. Intel had been losing money on memories for quite some time while trying to compete with the Japanese producers’ high-quality, low-priced, mass-produced parts. But because business had been so good, Intel just kept at it, looking for the magical answer that would give Intel a premium price. However once business slow down, the losses really started to hurt. The need for different memory strategy, one that would stop the hemorrhage, was growing up. The senior managers had meetings and more meetings, bickering arguments, resulting in nothing but conflicting proposals. Meanwhile, as debates raged, Intel just went on losing more and more money. It was a grim and frustrating year. During that time the senior managers worked hard without a clear notion of how things were ever going to get better. Intel was bleeding and had lost its bearings. It was wandering in the valley of death.

The main question Intel faced was this: if Intel is not doing memories, what should its future focus be? Microprocessor was the obvious candidate. Its development was based on a technology developed in the corner of an old production plant. The process of adapting to change starts with the employees who, through daily work, adjust to the new outside forces. The Intel production schedules shifted wafer capacity from memories to microprocessors because the latter were more profitable. Intel was making its transformation from a “memory company” to a “microprocessor company.” Intel experimented with microprocessors for over ten years before the opportunity and imperative arose to make them the centerpiece of its corporate strategy. For number of years it spent more money on developing and marketing them than they generated in revenue. But Intel kept at it, its microprocessor business gradually grew and, when its circumstances changed in a big way, Intel had a more appealing business to focus its resources on.

Many successful moves were made when companies did not see themselves locked into a particular business, but in business with talents and resources that could be used profitably to meet a variety of consumer needs. Successful companies, in short, were free to go against the grain because they had been cultivating, within themselves, a wide variety of potential activities.

Life is path that you beat while you walk. This line embodies the most profound lessons on planning and strategy. When you look back, you see a clear path that brought you here. But you created the path yourself. Ahead, there is only uncharted wilderness. You do not navigate a company to a predefined destination. You take steps, one at a time, into an unknownable future. There are no paths, no road ahead of us. In the final analysis, it is the walking that beats the path.

This cycle of seeing, reflecting, concluding, deciding, and acting is, of course the cycle of continuous learning. In this sense, strategy is simply the development of the organization’s ability to learn. Without an effective learning, a company cannot hope to evolve effectively in an unpredictable world. The organization’s ability to learn faster (and possibly better) than the competitors becomes its most sustainable competitive advantage.

The Power of Simplicity

Marissa Mayer lives with that conundrum every day. As Google's director of consumer Web products, she's responsible for the search site's look and feel. Marissa is a blond 30-year-old with two Stanford degrees in computer science and an infectious laugh. She's also Google's high priestess of simplicity, defending the home page against all who would clutter it up. "I'm the gatekeeper," she says cheerfully. "I have to say no to a lot of people."The technology that powers Google's search engine is, of course, anything but simple. In a fraction of a second, the software solves an equation of more than 500 million variables to rank 8 billion Web pages by importance. But the actual experience of those fancy algorithms is something that would satisfy a Shaker: a clean, white home page, typically featuring no more than 30 lean words; a cheery, six-character, primary-colored logo; and a capacious search box. It couldn't be friendlier or easier to use. Here is how Marissa thinks about the tension between complexity of function and simplicity of design: "Google has the functionality of a really complicated Swiss Army knife, but the home page is our way of approaching it closed. It's simple, it's elegant, you can slip it in your pocket, but it's got the great doodad when you need it. A lot of our competitors are like a Swiss Army knife open – and that can be intimidating and occasionally harmful."

Business is not complex. It’s just because there are too many people that make it complex. The way to fight complexity is to use simplicity. The future belongs to simple oriented people because only by simplicity things get done. Only simplicity works. Simplicity has a big power. By simplifying a complex issue, you are making it easy for people to make a decision without too much thought. What obvious to you is obvious to many. That’s why an obvious answer works so well. In other words, you are seeing things as they really are. Complexity is not to be admired but it’s to be avoided because complex language can cloud people’s minds.

Einstein spent years with three different collaborators to make his theory of relativity accessible to the layman. What could be more simple than E = mc2?
What could be simpler than the idea of unconscious, subconscious, and conscious, organized into “es, über ich, and ich?”
What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand”?

You must be learning to simplify a complex world into a simple organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn’t matter how complex the world, we can reduce all challenges and dilemmas to simple - indeed almost simplistic – ideas and anything that does not somehow relate to this simple organizing idea holds no relevance. See what is essential and ignore the rest. The essence of profound insight is simplicity.

These management phrases that are described as „memo from hell“ by Fortune magazine circulate at Fortune 500 companies:

· Added value is the key exponentially accelerating profit curves. (simple: Let’s grow sales and profits by offering more of what customers want.)
· We need to dimensionalize this management initiative. (simple: Let’s all make a plan.)
· We utilize a concert of cross-functional expertise. (simple: People from different departments talk to each other.)

We sense that business people feel that by using these pompous words they will look as smart, complicated, and significant as possible. But all it really does is make them unintelligible.

Abraham Lincoln said, “You must draw on language, logic and simple common sense to determine essential issues and establish a concrete course of action. I determined to be so clear that no honest man could misunderstood me and no dishonest one could successfully misinterpret me.”

His strength lay in explaining complex ideas accurately and clearly. He advised William Herndon: “Don’t shoot to high – aim lower and the common people will understand you. They are the ones you want to reach – at least they are the ones you ought to reach. The educated and refined people will understand you any way. If you aim too high your ideas will go over the head of the masses, and only hit those who need no hitting.”

Lincoln deliberately chose illustrations and words that ordinary people could understand. After he became President, he decided to use the word “sugar coated” in one of his official statements. The public printer respectfully suggested that the President choose a more refined expression. Lincoln replied: “That term express precisely my idea, and I am not going to change it.”

He carefully studied and thought out the best way of saying everything as well as the substance of what he should say. This meant taking into account who his audience was and how much they could understand. His rejection of what it called fine writing was as deliberate because he felt that he was speaking on a substance which must be made clear to the lowest intellect. As communicator he liberally utilized stories and anecdotes, colloquial expression, symbols, and imaginary in order to influence and persuade his audience.

You can win the fight against fog of the mind by clear writing:
· Keep sentences short.
· Pick the simple words over the complex words.
· Choose the familiar words.
· Avoid unnecessary words.
· Use terms your readers can picture.
· Write to express, not to impress.

You have to encourage simple, direct language and ban business buzzwords not only in writing but also in talking.

Jack Welch, the highly successful chairman of General Electric, put it well when he said, “Insecure managers create complexity. They worry that if they are simple, people will think they’re simple minded. In reality, of course, it’s just reverse. Clear, tough-minded people are the most simple. Real leaders don’t need clutter. People must have the self-confidence to be clear, precise, to be sure that every person in their organization – highest to lowest – understands what the organization is trying to achieve.

Meeting and presentation that aren’t simple and to the point are a waste of time and money. Little will be communicated as people simply dial out. You have to be intolerant of intellectual arrogance. You should never let a confusing word or concept go unchallenged. Tell the presenters to translate their complex term into simple language. Never be afraid to say, “I don’t get it.”

Don’t be suspicious of your first impression. Your first impressions are often the most accurate. Don’t fight the feeling of looking foolish. In some ways the most naïve-sounding questions can turn out to be most profound.

Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it behind complex words.

TIME magazine commentary on a Stephen Covey’s book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ that has been sold 10 millions copies, capture this complexity phenomenon: “His genius is for complicating the obvious, and as a results his books are graphically chaotic without which his books would deflate like a blown tire.” So many people bought his books because they were impressed of the complexity of his books.

People admire complexity even though they don’t understand it. Remember, whatever we’re aware or not, we are all victims of suggestion through the never ending suggestive thoughts that come to us from all sides, in many cases almost to the point of being hypnotized. A mass hypnosis is seen around us in every human activity.

Henri Deterding, general director of Royal Dutch Oil said, “Whatever I have met a business proposition which, after taking thought, I could not reduce to simplicity, I have left it alone.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”

Have courage. Cut the nonsense! When you pursue simplicity you are on the side of the world leading thinkers. I believe simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for the body and the mind.


Information Age

Too much information can confuse you. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. Peter Drucker, the most profound Management Guru says, “Computers may have done more harm than good to managers by making them focused more on the world inside. Executives are so enchanted by their internal data that computer generates. They have neither the mind nor the time for the outside. Yet results are only on the outside. I find more and more executives less and less well informed about the outside world.”

Our beleaguered executives are armed with personal technologies that busy people lug around: two-way pager, portable printer, etc. Does all these inconsequential details make the executive more productive? More efficient? You are kidding!

President Eisenhower said, “I do not believe that any individual, whether he is running General Motors or the United States of America, can do the best job just by sitting at a desk and putting his face in a bunch of papers. Actually, the President ought to be trying to keep his mind free of inconsequential details, so that he can make clear and better judgments.”

As Forbes magazine wrote, “The secret of Jack Welch success is not a series of brilliant insights or bold gambles but an attention to the right things.” His management mantras are pretty simple. It’s all about doing the right things – not the fashionable things.

First, you tell your people that you believe in being number one or two in a field. If not, they run the risk of being sold.

Next, it was the boundaryless shares of ideas; a process that breaks down corporate hierarchies to make sure that information flows up and down.

He’s also pushing a defect-reduction program called Six-Sigma. The goal is to reduce defects to the point where errors are almost nonexistent. The benefits are happy customers and big cost saving.

Did Jack Welch need cell phone, notebook computer, two-way pager, and portable printer to get the ideas above? He does need communication tools (phone, cell phone, or email) and note computer to run his company but not many inconsequential details and paper works.

The first challenge to making the life more simple is to acknowledge that YOU CAN’T ABSORB EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU NEED TO KNOW. Cancel or get rid of what is only marginal. Ask yourself, “What is worth knowing and why?” Clear the desk from the unimportant stuff. If you unclutter your mind, you will think more clearly.

Use you mind wisely. The story is told that the greatest scientist. Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein’s replay, “I don’t know.” Why should I fill my brain with the fact that I can find easily in any standard reference book?” (Today using Internet it’s much easier to find any facts). Einstein taught us a big lesson. He felt it was more important to think than to use the mind as a warehouse.

Abraham Lincoln’s Characters – the words Lincoln lived by

He likes to describe himself as an ordinary man who made the most of himself. As a young man, he was anything but refined. But all that changed with the time, and the beauty of the Lincoln story is watching him grow in depth of his character. Lincoln became a genuine hero, something greater than being rich, famous, or powerful. His heroism involved sacrifice, generosity, bravery, and a vision that would transform America. He recognized the great power of words, which can produce light in the most unlikely places. The words of the Declaration of Independence, written by a man he considered his spiritual father – Thomas Jefferson, defined Lincoln, stirred him, and helped make him who he was. He gradually became a master of words himself. In fact, no American President has ever used words more effectively. Years later, when he was invited to the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg, he included an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence in his famous address when he reaffirmed that all men are created equal.

Determination
Lincoln believed failure, like success, comes from within. The ability to succeed depends on the strength of one’s own determination. Lincoln’s thoughts on determination have a metaphysical flavor. If you truly want something, you should act as if the object of your desire is already on its way to you. For example, if your goal is to become a lawyer, visualize yourself as a lawyer and you will be well on your way to achieving that dream. Seeing it happen, Lincoln believed, is the way to make it happen. In the process of seeing it mentally and felt the end, you begin to will the means to the realization of the end. You are visualizing the end and creating the means in mind for its manifestation. You will always receive what you actually expect. Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln’s lawyer friend and confidant recalled Lincoln’s conviction that he would one day become President: “It seems to him manifest destiny. ‘I will get there,’ he would say, seemingly in the fullest confidence of realizing his prediction.”

Courage
“Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” Lincoln’s personal friend and fellow lawyer, Joseph Gillespie, observed that “he was brave without being rash and never refrained from giving utterance to his views because they were unpopular or likely to bring him into danger. Courage is what one calls on in spite of fear of danger or fear of failure. Lincoln stated in a speech in 1839: “The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it will not deter me.”

Honesty
“I have always wanted to deal with everyone I meet candidly and honestly.” Lincoln was emphatic on this point: “Resolve to be honest at all events.”

Morality
“The true rule, in determining to embrace or reject any thing, is not whether it has any evil in it; but whether is has more of evil than of good. There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost every thing is an inseparable compound of the two so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.”

Patience / Timing
“Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. No good object can be frustrated by taking time.” By temperament Lincoln was a patient man, capable of bearing long delay and waiting for the right moment. Charles A. Dane, assistant secretary of war, remembered him as man who never was in hurry, and who never tried to hurry anybody. “I will go just so fast and only so fast as I think I’m right and the people are ready for the step.”

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.” Like all the successful leaders, he grasped the importance of timing. His very election as President relied on it; had he run four years earlier, the newly formed Republican Party would have been to weak and too unknown to win the race. Speaker of the White House said, “He always waited, as a wise man should wait, until the right moment brought up his reserves.”

Friends believed that this philosophy helped him bear his personal misfortunes as well as agony of the Civil War. “What is to be will be and no cares of ours can arrest nor reverse the decree.”

He observed as a lawyer and a politician that forcing an issue often spoiled a desired outcome. He came to the conclusion that political and legal processes, like flowers and trees, followed a natural sequence of development. Lincoln said, “A man watches his pear-tree day by day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap!”

. . . . Lincoln listened to all the arguments and concluded that the time had not come for such a move. Not yet. As a master strategist, he realized that many ideas fail not because they are bad ideas, but because they are broached at the wrong time. There were other factors in Lincoln’s decision. He reasoned that European nations, which were closely watching events in America, might conclude that Emancipation Proclamation was a desperate act by a government that had lost control. With Union forces suffering one defeat after another, that analysis would have been understandable. Lincoln realized he should wait for a victory, and when Union forces had finally repulsed the Confederate army at Antietam, Lincoln decided that the time had come. When the proclamation finally went into effect, morals remained high and, in fact, increased dramatically.

Magnanimity
“With malice toward none. . . .” The Gospel admonition “Bless them that curse you” was one of the principles he lived by.

Time Management
An early acquaintance remembered the first time he saw Lincoln with his stepbrother, John Johnston, he would pick talkative, outgoing Johnston to become the success. However Lincoln career was marked by steady growth, while Johnston could never get his life together. Lincoln wrote: “. . .They deceive nobody but yourself.”

It was imperative to make the most of every moment. Idleness was dangerous because it could lead to other vices. Make rest a necessity, not an objective. Only rest long enough to gather strength. If we rest too long, the weeds will surely take over the garden. The erosion of our values begins immediately whenever we are at rest. That’s why we must make rest a necessity, not an objective.

Momentum is really our best friend. Sometimes it’s the only difference between winning and losing. If we have no momentum, even the simplest tasks can seem to be insurmountable problems. Getting started is a struggle, but once you’re moving forward, you can really start to do amazing things. With enough momentum, nearly any kind of achievement is possible. Momentum puts victory within reach.

There is a time and a place for everything. There are times to act and times to reflect. Most of us don’t take the time for serious reflection. With our busy schedules we often neglect this crucial part of the formula for success. Take time to review, ponder, and reflect on everything that has happened in your life. In studying our lives be sure to study our failures as well as our successes. Our so-called failures serve us well when they teach us valuable lessons. Often, they’re better teachers than our successes.

Work
His father saw Abraham as an idler who preferred reading than physical labor. Because his narrow conception of work did not include intellectual labor. Later the son joked to a friend that his father taught him to work, but he never taught him to love it. Lincoln turned his energies to labor that, while different, was just as demanding: studying, visualizing, conceptualizing, problem-solving, and planning.

Diligence
No other principle comes closer to accounting for Lincoln’s success than diligence. Those who are diligent work steadily. They pay unremitting attention to the task at hand. They are careful. Still, diligence encompasses more than just work. It involves how a person works. It was a term with which Lincoln became familiar in his childhood reading: Idleness and sloth are dangerous, but diligence is a great virtue. Like Franklin, Lincoln’s diligence and mindfulness became legendary. The care that Lincoln consistently applied to his work can be seen even in his handwriting. The patient inquiry into details, the eager longing to know and do exactly what was just and right, the intensive working day, plodding, laborious devotion.
Lincoln recommended forming the habit of diligence: “The leading rule for the lawyer as for the man of every calling is diligence. Living nothing for tomorrow, which can be done today.”

Curiosity
“I knew of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything that is at once new and valuable.” Everything that he saw, read, or heard added to the store of his information because he thought upon it. No truth was too small to escape his observation, and no problem too intricate to escape a solution, if it was capable of being solved.

Vision
Great leaders are visionary thinker. They envision a future that can be achieved and they communicate this vision to their follower. Lincoln’s skill as a visionary was profound. “I can see that time is coming – whoever can wait for it will see it – whoever stands in its will be run over by it.” In his memorable “House Devided” speech he predicted that the nation would eventually become one or the other – a statement that many believed cost him his Senate bid. When they told him so, Lincoln replied: “Gentlemen, you may think that speech was a mistake, but I never have believed it was, and you will see the day when you will consider it wisest thing I ever said.”

In order to understand the world around him, Lincoln relied mainly on close observation and the relation between cause and effect. “There were no accidents. Every effect had its cause.” Once Lincoln had a sense of where events were moving, he positioned himself so to take advantage of the movement. His friend Leonard Swett observed: “His tactics were to get himself in the right place and remain there still, until events would find him in that place.

Assertiveness
Lincoln looked for military leaders who were as assertive as he was. He found an answer in Ulysses S. Grant, a general who had experienced stunning successes at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. But when Grant met with near disaster at Shiloh, he became enormously unpopular with the public. A journalist was with Lincoln when he decided Grant’s fate. He sat before the open fire in the old Cabinet room, most of the time with his feet upon on the high marble mantel. Lincoln reminded silent for what seemed a very long time. He then gathered himself up in his chair and said in a tone of earnestness: “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”

Tenacity
“I suspect to maintain this contest until successful or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress forsakes me.” Lincoln believed that sticking to a decision, once made, would strengthen individual. He saw the human will as a muscle that becomes powerful through exercise, but can becomes flabby and weak through lack of use. “Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret in all your life. Therefore stick to your purpose.

Self-Preservation
I have found that when one is embarrassed, usually the shortest way to get through with it is to quit talking about it or thinking about it, and go at something else. Lincoln certainly had his shares of unhappy experiences. Often they plunged him into depression so severe that his friends feared for him. Gradually, though, he discovered what to do when he was rejected, belittled, or attacked. He taught himself to view failures as experiences to learn from instead of disasters to be brooded over. He would retreat within himself using withdrawal period to gather his power. His secretary John G. Nicolay observed that when official business had ended, the President would shut the door and would sometimes sit for an hour in complete silence, his eyes almost shut.” By looking inward, he found the strength to continue. The famed Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote concluded, “Lincoln was his own psychiatrist.” Perhaps the most important was Lincoln’s growing ability to validate himself. He had no desperate need for others’ praise to be self-confident. That knowledge came from within.

Search for superior knowledge within you. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. That is a truth! You will look inside and recognize the guidance within. You will stop living by someone else’s thoughts and values and you will stop looking for your reflection in the eyes of others. You are coming home to your true self. You enjoy the freedom to be yourself and to be true to yourself. You develop what it called firmness of character. The firmness of character is to act on one’s belief.

Self-Reliance
A great leader is assertive, and he was confident in his calm decisiveness. The strong individuals Lincoln selected for his cabinet at first thought he was too weak for the job. Friends of his secretary of state, William H. Seward were boasting that Seward would rule Lincoln. The President replied, “I may not rule myself, but certainly Seward will not. The only ruler I have is my conscience – following God in it and these men will have to learn that yet.”
Justice
He knew justice must be tempered by compassion. The challenge was to find the right balance. Justice without cruelty was his goal.

Influence
“If you would win a man to your course, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause.” Persuade, he advised. Don’t ridicule or humiliate if you wish to change people’s behavior. They must be convinced that you have their best interests at heart. Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted.”

Responsibility
“I am here; I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.” He shouldered the blame during the long, dangerous years of the Civil War when his advisers bickered, his generals blundered, and Union forces suffered one disastrous defeat after another. However, whenever his men were successful, he gave them the credit.

Communication
“I determined to be so clear that no honest man could misunderstood me and no dishonest one could successfully misinterpret me.” His strength lay in explaining complex ideas accurately and clearly. He advised William Herndon: “Don’t shoot to high – aim lower and the common people will understand you. They are the ones you want to reach – at least they are the ones you ought to reach. The educated and refined people will understand you any way. If you aim too high your ideas will go over the head of the masses, and only hit those who need no hitting.”

Lincoln deliberately chose illustrations and words that ordinary people could understand. After he became President, he decided to use the word “sugar coated” in one of his official statements. The public printer respectfully suggested that the President choose a more refined expression. Lincoln replied: “That term express precisely my idea, and I am not going to change it.”

He carefully studied and thought out the best way of saying everything as well as the substance of what he should say. This meant taking into account who his audience was and how much they could understand. His rejection of what it called fine writing was as deliberate because he felt that he was speaking on a substance which must be made clear to the lowest intellect. As communicator he liberally utilized stories and anecdotes, colloquial expression, symbols, and imaginary in order to influence and persuade his audience.

Focus
He realized that the world greatest achievers were totally immersed in their respective subjects. In his quest to gain deep knowledge Lincoln sought out the finest teachers available. When he was President, his cabinet was made up of some of the nation’s most gifted individuals. One of them, William Henry Seward from New York, had been state’s governor and U.S. senator. A college graduate who had traveled extensively, Seward had experience that Lincoln lacked. Lincoln responded to Seward’s superior knowledge by asking for instruction. Many a Sunday, Seward would come over to the White House at the President’s invitation to tutor him. It was this kind of tactic that enabled a man with less than a year’s schooling to survive as the leader of the nation. He believed he could learn anything he needed to know.

Compromise
While Lincoln’s strength of character and principle were unshakable, he was nonetheless a first-rate compromiser. Lincoln understood that compromise is necessary in everyday life. His experience as a lawyer in some five thousand cases thought him that often half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. The nominal winner is often a real loser – in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a state legislator, Lincoln acquired the ability to deal with individuals who had widely different interests, motives, and agendas. As a wartime President Lincoln worked out one compromise after another to hold the nation together until victory could be achieved. He once commented that he had a gift for keeping discordant individuals and groups together.

Flexibility
“I will try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I will adopt new views so fast as they appear to be the right views.” If convincing new evidence appeared, Lincoln would change his position, even break a promise. Many people sincerely believe that promises must always be kept, no matter what. Not Lincoln. “Bad promises are better broken than kept, if keeping the bad promises is adverse to the public interest.” He stated.

On one occasion, a friend of Lincoln’s came into the room while the President was being shaved. The two chatted about several matters, and then the visitor commented, “Mr. Lincoln, if anybody had told me that in a general crisis like this the people were going out to a little one-horse town to pick out a one-horse lawyer for President, I wouldn’t believed it.” Lincoln response was so vigorous that at first his friend thought he was angry. Whirling about in his chair, his face white with lather, the President swept the barber aside and answered, “Neither would I; but it was a time when a man with a policy would have been fatal to the country. I have never had a policy; I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day as each came.”

Simplicity
“Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.” Certain self-made men become pompous or inaccessible with the advent of power or wealth. Not Lincoln. Judge David Davis, who had known Lincoln as a young lawyer, described him as the most simple and unostentatious of men in his habits, having few wants, and those easily supplied. When an acquaintance called him “Mr. President,” Lincoln stopped him, “Call me Lincoln. Mr. President is entirely too formal for us.” On one occasion when he was treated rather brusquely, he chuckled that there was no smell of royalty about his presidency. Lincoln appearance and style of dressing also reflected his lack of pretension.

Energy
His speech was full of fire and energy force.

Tact
Lincoln became the most tactful of men but the youthful Lincoln was often anything but tactful. Fellow Lawyer Abram Bergen remembered, “His tact was remarkable. He carefully studied and thought out the best way of saying everything, as well as the substance of what he should say.” Lincoln learned to use tactics that were appropriate to each individual. He could turn away an opponent’s wrath with just the right word, anecdote, or action, and had a remarkable capacity to imagine himself in the other person’s place.
Conciliation
“No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.” Perhaps the most important lesson Lincoln ever learned was to avoid personal quarrels. The lesson Lincoln had to learn was to disagree without being disagreeable, to argue in such a way that an opponent did not become an enemy. Lincoln illustrated the lesson with an example. “Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog will not cure the bite.”

Forgiveness
He came to the conclusion that time and energy devoted to getting even is better spent getting ahead. Lincoln said, when “any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.” Several individuals commented nastily about certain politician. Lincoln responded this way: “You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I have. Perhaps I have too little of it; but I never thought it paid.”

Ambition
“I’ll study and get ready, and then the chance will come.” Lincoln believed he was destined for great things, and it was his responsibility to get ready for them. Herndon wrote that he was always calculating and always planning ahead. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest. Though Lincoln was restlessly ambitious, it was not derived from lust for personal wealth or power.

Study
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key or one of the keys to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones.

His practice was when he wished to indelibly fix anything he was reading or studying on his mind to write it down. Robert B. Rutledge recalled, “I have known him to write whole pages of books he was reading.”

Even after he had achieved his ultimate goal – the presidency – Lincoln never lost his thirst for knowledge. He was following a principle that had served him well throughout his life: “Get the books and read and study them in their principles features; and that is the main thing,” he wrote an aspiring lawyer.

Resourcefulness
“Determine that the thing can and will be done, and then we will find the way.”

Ethics
“I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.” What was true and right and just, he would never surrender; he would die before he would surrender his ideas of these.

When a client came into his office and wanted advice, Mr. Lincoln listened to his story well . . . now and then breaking in by asking a question. After the man was done telling his story and after he was done asking questions, he would generally think a while before answering. When he answered, sometimes after he had taken time to do research, it as, ‘You are in the right, or you are in the wrong."
Altruism
“I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in.” Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana stated: “The great quality of his appearance was benevolence and benignity, the wish to do somebody some good if he could. For many people, a vocation is a way to make a living. For Lincoln, his vocation became a way to make a difference.

On compassion
On the whole, my impression is that mercy bears richer fruits than any other attribute.

Trust
He would greet a mechanic or clerk just as graciously as he would a governor.

Achievement
“The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can.” Lincoln was impressed by individual who, like himself, were self-made. Frederick Douglas, the former slave who became internationally celebrated as an editor and orator stated, “I account partially for his kindness to me because of the similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the lowest round of the ladder.”

Citizenship
Lincoln never abandoned his reverence for the law or his belief that obeying the law is the duty of every citizen.

Democracy
“We proposed to give all a chance and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorance, wiser; and all better and happier together.”

Tolerance
His acceptance of people unlike him in color, creed, or language was indeed impressive. Lincoln open mindedness was appearance even before he became President. For example, when an anti-immigrant and anti-Chatolic political organization called Know Nothings became popular, Lincoln was asked how he felt about the movement. He responded, “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are created equal. We now practically read it all men are created equal, except Negroes. When the Know Nothings get control, it will read, all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics. Though Lincoln understood that members of a diverse population will have problems adjusting to one another, he was also wise enough to see that diversity provides an enormous opportunity to utilize the strengths of many individuals and cultures.

Piety
“I have had so many evidence of His direction, so many instances when I have been controlled by some other power than my own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes from above. Looking up to Him for wisdom and divine guidance, I must work out destiny as best I can.”

Adversity
Over the course of his life, Lincoln realized that failure is essential to learning. Fascinated by science, he knew that scientific knowledge progresses by trial and error – through more experiments that fail than succeed. Lincoln commented, “Too often we read only of successful experiments in science and philosophy, whereas if the history of failure and defeat was included there would be a saving of brain work as well as time.” Often critical of Lincoln Horace Greeley admitted that “he was open to all impression and influences, and gladly profited by the teachings of events and circumstances, no matter how adverse or unwelcome. There was probably no year of his life when he was not a wiser, calmer, and better man than he had been the year preceding.”

Lincoln also saw failure as an installment on later success. Just because Lincoln learned to view failures pragmatically doesn’t mean they were pleasant. Often they hurt him deeply. Stephan Logan, one of Lincoln’ law partners, recalled a courtroom suffered at the hand of Edward D. Baker. I said to him: ‘It doesn’t depend on the start a man gets, it depends on how he keeps up his labors and efforts until middle life.’ Baker was a brilliant man but very negligent; while Lincoln was growing all the time. Nevertheless, Lincoln believed that one must struggle, simply because it is the right thing to do. Though Lincoln did in fact experience many failures, as all restlessly ambitious individuals do, far more important is the way in which he faced them. With the right attitude you can control every situation.

Deliberation
Lincoln was neither quick nor impulsive. By his own admission, he was slow to learn, but he was also slow to forget what he had learned. Many lawyers who worked with him agreed that he was neither brilliant nor genius, but instead systematic, painstaking, and careful. His habit was, before speaking or acting, to deliberately look through, around, and beyond every subject, fact, statement, or proposition to which his attention was called. Deliberation brought some important benefits, Lincoln discovered. He made fewer mistake by not rushing. “I am a slow walker,” he said, “but I never walk back.” In response to a letter urging him to stand firm Lincoln responded: “I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.

Research
Having superior information gives one an advantage over his peers. This lesson would be reinforced early when Lincoln worked as the junior partner of Stephan T. Logan, one of the greatest lawyers of his day. Logan urged Lincoln not to rely on his wits alone, but to prepare each case from the viewpoint of his opponent.

Conviction
“The world will know that I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will.”
Lincoln discovered what all great communicators know – that they can move others, they must themselves be moved. An observer remembered Lincoln speech “It seemed to me there came an eloquence born of the earnestness of a heart convinced of the sinfulness – the injustice and the brutality of the institution of slavery, which made him a changed man. So long as I live I will never lose the impression he made upon me.”

Freedom
Freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, Lincoln believed, among government, churches, slaveholders, or even parents.

Self-Discipline
Lincoln may well have come upon this maxim: “What avails the show of external liberty to one who has lost the government of himself?” In Lincoln quest to make the most of himself, he took on the arduous task of mastering English grammar and legal theory in order to become a respected lawyer. He recognized that his capacity to make a resolution and keep it was perhaps his most valuable asset. For Lincoln, self-discipline was inextricably liked to willpower: “By all means, don’t say if I can; say I will.”

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off! We cannot make progress without making decisions. Don’t say, “If I could, I would.” Say, “If I can, I will.”

Humor
Lincoln often would tell one droll story after another, leaving his listeners convulsed with laughter. He used humor to find a way to people hearts, a way to connect with them. Like any good salesman, he understood that smiling people are more likely to make purchase or accept ideas than frowning ones. Long before scientific evidence proved laughter can actually prevent disease and sometimes cure it, Lincoln spoke of laughter as medicine. Laugh has been the President’s life-preserver.

Friendship
People recognized that Lincoln has their best interest at heart. If he could not help them, they correctly sensed that he certainly would never deliberately hurt them. He could be trusted with a secret or with money, and he was neither greedy nor envious. He was a grateful man and showed his appreciation for any little kindness in memorable and appropriate ways. He took the time to write a personal letter to a young girl named Grace Bedell, thanking her for advising him to grow a beard.

These fundamental principles of care, loyalty, and generosity, Lincoln added his skill as a conversationalist, which also made him a sought-after friend. He knew how to listen, and he listened attentively.

Lincoln cherished solitude. His practice of regularly withdrawing from other’s company. During those quiet times, Lincoln would recharge himself.

Charity
“With charity for all. . . .” A charitable person was kind, patient, and liberal in judging the behavior of others, never haughty nor greedy, always generous. Charity is part of his greatness – both as a man and as a leader.

Life’s Brevity
With Lincoln, time consciousness was almost an obsession. Keenly aware of the brevity of life, he himself was constantly surrounded by death. He observed firsthand how quickly life could be snuffed out. When he was two years old, his infant bother died; he lost his mother when he was nine. When he was ten years old, he was near death: he was kicked by a horse and, in his own words, was “apparently killed for a time.” He lost his sister Sarah when he was eighteen. Ann Rutledge, his first and best love died when he was twenty-six. In 1850, his son Eddy died at ages three. During the course of the Civil war, scores of relatives and close friends were slain in battle. And in 1862, his beloved eleven-year-old son Willie died, a loss that devastated the President. Lincoln often quoted a passage from Gibbon’s “Philosophical Reflection,” which contains the statement: “In a composition of some days . . . the duration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeing moment, the grave is ever beside the throne.” His favorite poem, “Mortality,” by William Knox, dwells on the transient nature of life.

Afterword
“If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

Lincoln’s life was always a work in progress. Who indeed could have predicted that the barely literate youth would grow up and engrave Jefferson’s words on the hearts of the world at Gettysburg?

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA.


The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, PennsylvaniaNovember 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.