Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by my friend Marc Marmino, defense analyst, coffee lover and resident of the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Those of us fortunate enough to live near Seattle (if only for the coffee) have the opportunity to visit the original Starbucks in Pike Place Market. If you too live in Seattle, or are visiting sometime in the near future, I strongly recommend forgoing the opportunity to see the “original Starbucks” in the market. Instead, visit the nearby newly “de-branded” store caddy-corner to the market on 1st and Pike. It is a throwback to the original conception of Starbucks, and a concept that has a lot of merit in my eyes as to what the company should strive to return to.

Also, you may be disappointed after waiting in the long line and flustering amongst the impatient crowd at the “original Starbucks” only to learn that it was actually the 4th store built and operated by the company. Actually, you’d never learn that unless I told you, because its location simply lends to a feeling of originality. So Starbucks actually goes along with the white lie that it’s the company’s first storefront. It’s great for business as several thousands of visitors flock through the market daily after disembarking from their cruise ship in the Seattle Harbor.

Speaking of Starbucks, what’s going on with that company nowadays? Last I’d heard: Howard Schultz had returned to the company as CEO after the stock price was greatly diminished, stores were closing all over the globe, and employees were laid off in droves. It seems that regardless of these facts, I still loyally buy almost 3 cups of the best Joe on the planet per week from the store. So where are they now in the face of their recent challenges? I did some research to find out…

As a quick recap of the company’s woes: The company was a part of the massive boom in the coffee industry following the turn of the century when the US retail coffee market recorded a growth of 157% in value terms between 2000 ($3,258 million) and 2005 ($8,372 million). As a leading coffee retailer during this lucrative period for the industry, Starbucks accumulated a large amount capital at a rapid pace. Accordingly, the company began to offer outstanding salaries and benefits to their employees while opening new stores at a feverish-pace. Starbucks was expanding globally and the company’s stock price rose quickly up until FY2007. At that point in time, Starbucks ran into a series of difficult circumstances that ultimately led its financial performance into a downward spiral.

Starbucks Corporation faced several challenges in recent years including:

• intense competition
• low employee productivity
• changing consumer habits from the global economic downturn.

As a result of these challenges, “the company’s profit margin decreased nearly $500 million (an approximate 50% decline) during FY2008 in comparison to FY2007”.

Accompanying this fiscal crunch was the closing of many stores and the termination of thousands of jobs within the organization. Additionally, the anticipated growth of the company came to an abrupt halt in the face of diminished capital. The retained employees received massive cuts to their pensions and a seemingly hollow promise from the revived CEO Howard Schultz that the company would return to its once prominent spot atop the food and beverage industry. While it is apparent that recent results suggest that he is on the right track…some observers remain skeptical.

What has the company done to correct itself?

The coffee giant has taken several steps to address their current problems. First and foremost, it underwent a major restructuring effort that included downsizing the overall size of the company. To improve their balance sheet, Starbucks executives decided to cutout several liabilities in the form closing nearly 700 stores, both existing and under construction. In addition, the company made the difficult decision to lay off several thousand employees in the midst of a recession. The company has also attempted to shed their monopolistic-faux image by undergoing a “de-branding”.

The brand itself began as a local-niche-firm, one that was incredibly inviting and sparked the interest of millions of customers. Inevitably the firm grew quickly and eventually became a global brand that has lost its once niche appeal. According to one coffee advertiser, the relatively rapid success of the company “led to issues of brand depersonalization”. Now, in an attempt to return to its wildly successful roots, the company is de-branding in an effort to regain a community personality and the image of the neighborhood coffee shop.

There is an incredible urgency for this company to return to profitability. Mainly, competitors both small and large threaten to take over the majority of the market share in coffee retail and production. According to Data Monitor, “Starbucks faces intense competition in coffee beverage segment from other specialty coffee shops, restaurants, and doughnut shops”. Namely, McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts have increased their share of overall coffee sales worldwide.

In an effort to not miss out on the market of consumers thirsting for better quality coffee beans, grocery markets have adopted the practice of selling their company’s own higher-quality coffee-beans. In addition, coffee bean companies (i.e. Folgers) that have traditionally used lower-quality beans began offering a higher-quality bean choice to consumers. The urgency in this market shift deals with the risk associated with the recent economic downturn.

Consumers are now making more decisions based upon a cost-benefit analysis vice brand-name recognition. If an organization puts forth a product that is nearly equivalent to a traditionally higher-quality product for a lower price, the consumer is increasingly more inclined to choose the former product. In the case of Starbucks, competitors are doing just this, at a lower price. While the strong brand-name has seemingly protected Starbucks thus far, if they cannot fix their problems soon, many industry experts expect the company to fall further into irrelevancy in the eyes of the global consumer.

Motivation is one of the key elements towards positively changing the progress of the company. No one is more in tune with this concept than the resurrected Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Starbucks most recently dropped only 5% in year-on-year sales in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008 (beating analysts’ expectations).

Schultz sees hope in the progress made thus far, but is quick to not discount the work that lies ahead of the company and its employees. This sentiment was readily apparent in Schultz’s rhetoric when he recently stated that “There’s no victory lap going on at Starbucks here…We have a lot of work to do, one quarter [of improving sales] does not make a trend”. This cautious optimism that Schultz maintains is critical towards ensuring that the company does not become overly confident or complacent in its change effort.

If it fails to make the necessary changes, the coffee company will likely lose its majority stake in the marketplace to competitors, and ultimately lose money for its shareholders. A publicly-held company exists solely to make money for its shareholders, and a shrinking company fails to achieve its mission. Such an outcome would draw down levels of capital within the company from outside investors. Lower levels of capital equate to more job losses and store closings. In the worst case scenario, Starbucks would go bankrupt or even become obsolete. These reasons are indicative of why it is so important for Starbucks to make the necessary changes to ensure its viability for years to come.

In these times of financial uncertainty for so many companies, one thing is for certain…God they make great coffee…

Popularity: 4% [?]

Fear of failure is something many of us struggle with individually, but within an organization it can be magnified in a way that leaves everyone paralyzed as they attempt to go about their day-to-day work.  Not only a terribly inefficient way to do business, this state of fear stifles creativity and innovation, creating a very unhealthy setting for growth.  Being conservative is one thing, but when a fear of falling short leads to the refusal of members to push the envelope, organizations are destined for stagnation and eventual failure.

This conversation came up in my squadron at a recent training day.  The issue involved pilots and loadmasters trying to accomplish the mission with the constant fear of a Q3 (Air Force speak for a documented failure or breech of standards doled out by squadron leadership) hanging over each of their heads if they messed up.  A Q3 isn’t necessarily a career-ender, but it stays in your permanent record and can have negative consequences for future assignments or promotions.

Many pilots and loadmasters voiced a similar complaint that went something like this, “Q3’s are handed out like candy in our organization even for small mistakes, no other community gives out Q3’s as much as ours.  Basically, we know that if we mess up in anyway, we’re going to get hammered, no matter what.”

The squadron leadership countered that they held us to a higher standard than other organizations and accepted less margin of error.  Additionally, they were concerned that by easing up or taking Q3’s off the table that we would take advantage and become lazy or disregard procedures.

The debate went on for over an hour and centered around one question:

How does an organization cultivate healthy risk-taking without losing control?

Obviously organizations can’t take the Q3 (fill in your own organization’s hammer equivalent) away completely, as there are times when people do something very stupid or dangerous and must be held accountable.  There must be a negative incentive for recklessness and negligence or it will slowly become acceptable to take unreasonable levels of risk.

On the other hand, when Q3’s are the go-to punishment for even the most minor mistakes it causes every pilot and loadmaster to second-guess every move they make, call home for every decision and seek cover from leadership before ever even thinking about stepping out on the limb.  It’s like swatting a fly with a hammer. Hammers aren’t very precise and should only be used as a last resort, not the go-to instrument of punishment when things go wrong.

Innovation requires risk and inherent in risk is the occasional mistake. In an environment where every mistake is severely punished, the career field stagnates, no new techniques or methods are developed and leaders turn into cowards rather than heroes.

This isn’t the first time an organization has wrestled with this type of dilemma.  Every day leaders must make decisions on how to react to missteps and poor decisions made by their employees.  Come off too weak and the fear is that people will walk all over you.  Be too harsh and people will either begrudgingly toe the line or simply walk away – neither helpful to the organization.

The military presents two additional dilemmas:

- You don’t have the option of quitting (unless you’ve fulfilled your obligation) so the default mode when faced with an environment of heavy-handed punishments is to be ultra-conservative and never go beyond the minimum required for fear of failure.  The attitude becomes one of survival rather than professionalism.

- Unlike some organizations where the cost of failure can be measured in dollars, ours has the potential to be measured in lives.  Every time we turn on the jet we hold people’s lives in our hands, not to mention a $200 million piece of equipment.  Risk must be taken, but at some point it becomes criminal.

Needless to say, these characteristics present a very fine line for military leadership.  How does one encourage troops to push the boundaries of their career field, develop new techniques, improve processes and take risk, but at the same time keep people from getting killed?

A very similar predicament can be found in the medical profession.  As a surgeon, how does one develop their skills or new techniques when the consequences for making a mistake often mean a dead body on the table?  Cadavers are great, but can only tell you so much.  Sooner or later a life has to be put on the line to advance the medical profession.  How does a Chief of Surgery manage his people in a way that encourages this advancement, but avoids taking on an unacceptable amount of risk?

After discussing these things and doing some thinking of my own, here are a few solutions I have come up with.  The following are a few ways that organizations involved in life and death missions can encourage innovation and risk-taking without being negligent:

1)  Accept the Little Mistakes – If you are going to create a system of risk-taking and innovation, you have to accept that mistakes will be made.  In his book “Product Innovation Strategy Pure and Simple,” Michel Robert explains that not all mistakes are equal, nor should they be treated as such.

When I worked at Johnson & Johnson in the early 1960’s, a motto permeated the organization: ‘If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not making decisions.’…that is how J&J encourages risk taking.  3M does it in a similar fashion.  ‘Make a lot of little mistakes, but try to avoid big ones,’ is 3M’s way of doing the same thing…Innovative thinking requires risk taking.  Prudent and calculated risk taking, but nevertheless, risk taking.

2)  Practice Harder, Much Harder Than You Play – In our profession we have multi-million dollar simulators whose sole purpose is to replicate our actual flight experience as close as possible.  On top of this we have local training missions in the actual jet, but minus passengers or valuable cargo.  These are the best places to push the envelope, make mistakes and try new techniques.  Unfortunately they are often treated like another box to fill, rather than an opportunity to push the limits.

While organizations may not have actual simulators most have some sort of training mechanism available to hone the skills of its members.  Any leader seeking to create an innovative environment must establish the precedent that training time means pushing oneself beyond one’s limits.

Training is the time for experimentation, mistakes and failure…not just another routine mission.

3)  Celebrate the Risk-Takers - One of the quickest ways to decipher the values of a company is to observe the people they celebrate.  If the qualifications of people receiving quarterly and yearly awards are measured only by the absence of mess-ups, it sends a strong message that sticking one’s neck out on the line and trying something new is not valued or encouraged.  Better to toe the line and hope you’ll be recognized someday for showing up to work on time in the right uniform.

Instead, an organization trying to encourage risk taking should be quick to recognize and celebrate those who are doing just that, taking risks!  Who cares if they’ve failed a few times along the way.  Mistakes made in the attempt of pushing boundaries and testing new ideas (very different than mistakes made by incompetence or negligence) are prime indicators that innovation is occurring, or as J&J was quoted above, “…decisions are being made.”

Hold these people up as an example to the rest of the organization and people will soon realize that risk is something to embrace rather than shun.

4) Trust Your Employees – It is imperative that organizational leadership trust their personnel.  If you don’t trust the people working for you, replace them with people you do.  This does not mean that it is blind.  Like anything in life, trust is something that is earned over time, but some leaders never make it to that point, always choosing to assume the worst, rather than the best.  This is a problem.

Part of this trust involves a belief that everyone is working for the betterment of the organization as a whole.  As a leader it’s your job to give those working for you the benefit of the doubt when mistakes are made.  If the same mistakes happen repeatedly, then address them as such, but the standard posture must always be trust.

At the end of the day every organization must understand that the behavior of each of their members is a direct result of the system they have in place (hat tip to USAFA’s Mgt 303).  Leaders can chant risk-taking mantras all day to their employees, but if they punish the first member that falls short in his or her endeavors members will read their call for change for what it really is, lip-service.

In order to cultivate an innovative environment, leaders may have to initially bite their tongue at mistakes they may have punished in the past, whether they like it or not.  Until members feel confident that the default mode in their organization is for leaders to back up their employees rather than punish them nothing will change and risk-takers will be replaced by 9-5 sheep.

Popularity: 2% [?]

“Life’s about choices,” said a college professor of mine.  He taught finance and would impart to my classmates and me the importance of the decisions we all have as to how we use our money, time and resources.  It was his mantra and something that he passed on, not only to his students, but his children as well.

For instance, he recalled an experience when his 8-year-old daughter and him were going on a walk around the neighborhood.  He had told her to take her jacket because it was cold outside. “No, I don’t need it,” she proclaimed.  He explained to her that she would get cold if she didn’t have her jacket, yet she still insisted she didn’t need it.  “O.K.,” he said and they went on the walk.

A few blocks in she began grumbling about how cold it was and rubbing her arms.  What did my professor do?  Did he cut the walk off short?  Did he take off his jacket and lovingly place it around his daughter?  No, he made her walk the rest of the way home freezing her butt off.  “Life’s about choices,” he explained to his daughter.

60 years ago people reading this article would say of this example, “Well done, he taught his daughter a valuable lesson.”  But today, many reading this would cry, “Child Abuse!”  “It was the father’s fault for not making her take her jacket!”  “You can’t blame the daughter, she didn’t know, she can’t be held responsible!”

This is what’s wrong with our society.  We’ve become a people that hold everyone responsible, but ourselves.

Never before have I seen so much blame being placed on everyone, but the person in the mirror.  People waving angry fingers at big oil companies for high gas prices rather than blaming themselves for owning two S.U.V.’s and a boat.  They completely ignore the law of supply and demand expecting that somehow prices will remain stagnant as consumption drastically increases.

This is like writing an angry letter to Hostess snack foods complaining about your recent weight gain while shoving 30 Twinkies in your gullet.  Life’s about choices.

Or how about the debt-ridden homeowner’s shouting about the foul play of mortgage lenders who “deceived them” (code for I didn’t do my homework) and gave them their houses much too easily then DEMANDING government bail out for a house they had no business purchasing in the first place.  Since when is your poor financial planning and decision making the government’s problem.

As Justice Casey Percell said, “It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself.“  You made a poor choice, take your lumps and move on.

Is the economy in a slump, yes.  But, who is really to blame?  “Most of our economic wounds are self-inflicted, stemming from our inability to live within our means,” says Knight Kiplinger, Editor in Chief of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

Many Americans live in a house — and drive a car — that eats up too much of their monthly budget. They dine out when they could be eating at home, and they indulge their children with trendy clothes. They mistake wants for needs.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love America.  I believe in America and what it stands for.  This is why something needs to change – and instead of demanding it from everyone else it has to start with us.  Government bailout is not the answer, it will only prolong and maybe even exacerbate the problem.

As Herbert Spencer aptly spoke, “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”

Punishing corporations for their profits is not the answer, this will only send the message that in America you can try to be successful, but if you are too successful we’ll start taking your money.  The answer lies in doing our homework and making the right choices.  After all, at the end of the day it’s about taking a coat when it looks like it’s chilly outside.  You can choose not to, it’s true, but don’t whine when you get cold.  Life’s about choices.

Popularity: 10% [?]

This was the title of a recent sermon I heard last Sunday at church. It struck a chord because it put into words an often overlooked reality: real change takes community.

Many of today’s most popular authors, talk-show hosts, and life coaches preach that YOU have the power to change yourself. If you just look inside yourself, focus on enough positive thoughts, profess the correct words over yourself, than you can do it. And why not? The thought strikes an emotional chord in all of us. We desperately want to believe that we hold the power of change inside of us. But we don’t.

All of us have tried to change things on our own and how has that worked out? Maybe you are a superman or woman, but I would be lying if I told you that my solo-attempts at change resulted in great success. From working out more consistently, to becoming more patient, to sticking to a budget…constant failure. Each time was like running my car into a brick wall, backing up, pressing harder on the gas pedal and running into it again. Why? I was ignoring an inconvenient truth:

Change does not happen in isolation, change happens in the midst of quality human relationships.

Why do we run from this reality? Could it be that in our pride we don’t like the idea of exposing our weaknesses to others? Does it hurt our ego’s that maybe we can’t do everything on our own?

There is a toxic idea being preached in modern society that the strength of a man or woman is found in their independence. It’s a false and destructive idea.

We are the strongest when we are connected to others.

Since creation, man has been meeting together in groups whenever something needs to be accomplished. And in the process of meeting a need, each member of the group is strengthened. The local church, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Freemasons, political parties, book clubs, and bowling leagues just to name a few. In all of it, there is a common understanding that two heads are better than one and the strengths and weaknesses found in a diverse group of people can be matched in a way that makes everyone better.

But lately this trend of civic, religious, political and every other type of community involvement has taken a nosedive. Robert Putnam’s landmark study of American community in “Bowling Alone,” showed a distinct trend of more isolation rather than connectedness.  This dangerous pattern must be reversed, and quickly.

If you want lasting, meaningful change, you must surround yourselves with people who can help guide you in the right direction. In my own life, the local church has provided a crucial role in helping me develop into the type of person I want to be.

Without the relationships I experienced in this setting I would still be stuck fighting the same personal struggles I was 6 years ago…no progress. Instead I have been able to grow, develop and in doing so help mentor others in the same areas in which I used to struggle.

Real development and real change because of real relationships.

The following are just a few benefits of being part of a community:

1) Empathy – in a community of diverse people with various backgrounds, the chances of meeting someone who has already gone through the very things you struggle with are quite high. Someone will understand where you’re coming from and this will provide you with encouragement and a feeling of safety and trust.

2) Accountability – As I have blogged about before, there is no use developing a personal goal unless you plan on having someone hold you accountable. Someone to call you each week and make sure you are staying on track, someone to walk through the process with you. Being a part of community automatically gives you a support team ready to hold you accountable.

3) Collective Wisdom – Great decisions happen in the counsel of many advisers. The “wisdom of the crowds” makes being connected to a strong and intelligent crowd incredibly important when trying to navigate through life. If you don’t know the answer to a question, someone in your community probably does. Your weaknesses are offset by community’s strengths.

4) Networking – Ever met those people in life that have “a guy” for almost everything? They navigate through life with ease because they know the right people. Are they just lucky? Chances are, they have discovered the power of networking. Being part of a healthy community offers countless opportunities to network and in doing so make connections that will greatly benefit every area of your life.

Being a part of a community like your local church, reading group, or running club is the quickest way to make the changes you desire in your personal life a reality. By connecting with like-minded people and being open and honest, real change can and will happen. So quit trying to do it on your own and become an active member of a community because life is meant to be shared with others.

Popularity: 1% [?]

As I mentioned several weeks ago, I have been thinking a lot about failure.  Why are most of us so afraid of it?  How does it really impact our lives?  How do some types of failure impact us more than others?  And why don’t we discuss it as much as we do success?

Failure happens all around us. As British economist Paul Ormerod points out in his book, “Why Most Things Fail,” failure impacts every area of life.

Failure is pervasive.  Failure is everywhere, across time, across place and across different aspects of life.  Ninety-nine point nine nine per cent of all biological species which have ever existed are now extinct…On a dramatically shorter timescale, more than 10 per cent of all the companies in America disappear each year.  Large and small, from corporate giants to the tiniest one-person business, they fail.

But, most of the time we would rather focus our attention on the winners.  Think of how many books on the business shelf at Barnes & Noble highlight companies, investors and products that are succeeding; each book offering ten easy steps to replicate their incredible path of victory whether or not they are accurate or even relevant.

It’s understandable.  Winners make us feel good and feed the fire of our hopes and dreams as we attempt to learn their secrets and imitate their actions.  And talking about failing, well, it’s just depressing.  The simple act of reading this post will probably cause some uber-positivity bloggers to commit hara-kiri.

Yet, when we dismiss the losers and focus all our study on the winners, we are missing out on an incredibly rich source of information and wisdom–the very wisdom necessary to avoid making the exact same mistakes in our own lives AND the wisdom that is often more relevant and applicable than the “10 Easy Steps” path to success.

What did the guy learn who came in second place, or last for that matter?  Do you really know what caused the collapse of Enron or are you guessing?  What were the steps in the chain that led to the Challenger and Columbia disasters?  Why did your Grandfather end up broke and living off welfare?  These are questions we need to be asking.

The key to all of these questions is realizing that they could happen to any of us…unless we learn from them.  No one wakes up one day and says, “Today, I plan on completely failing!  I’m going to cheat on my wife, then run my business into bankruptcy so one day I can be a homeless alcoholic begging for food outside of McDonalds.”  I’m not suggesting we quit studying success stories altogether, but failure is much sneakier than it’s counterpart.

Failure is insidious by nature, no one expects it will happen to them and therein lies its power.

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore, the heroic commander portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie “We Were Soldiers,” understood this principle well. In one of my favorite scenes, Moore is reading late at night in his study about what else?  Failure.  Specifically, the bloody defeat of the French at the hands of the Viet Minh, quickening the end of French rule in Indochina.  Moore knew he would soon be neck deep in the Vietnam conflict and the lessons learned from the French failure would be of great value to him as he led his men into a similar environment.

At multiple points throughout the conflict, Moore has flashbacks to his previous studies and makes decisions based on what he had learned.  In doing so he ensured that him and his men would not suffer the same fate as the French.  Moore had already seen failure through the eyes of the French commanders a decade earlier, so he had no need to see it himself.

Failure is always the result of something else. If you look at almost every famous failure throughout history you will see a chain of seemingly insignificant events, a destruction chain that had may chances of being broken along the way, but ultimately grew unchecked until judgment day.

Check out some of the factors at play in the Columbia disaster which killed 7 astronauts, destroyed $4billion of spacecraft and left debris scattered over 2000 sq miles of Texas:

From the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, see full presentation here

Physical Factors:

• Insulating foam separates from external tank 81 seconds after lift-off
• Foam strikes underside of left wing, breaches thermal protection system (TPS) tiles
• Superheated air enters wing during re-entry, melting aluminum struts
• Aerodynamic stresses destroy weakened wing

Flawed Decision Process:

• Foam strike detected in launch videos on Day 2
• Engineers requested inspection by crew or remote photo imagery to check for damage
• Mission managers discounted foam strike significance
• No actions were taken to confirm shuttle integrity or prepare contingency plans

You may be asking, “Why did the mission managers not feel the foam strike was a significant enough issue to warrant a new plan?”

Easy, foam shedding had come to be viewed as normal because it had occurred on so many missions before.  This in spite of the fact that a Ground System manual stated, “…No debris shall emanate from the critical zone of the External Tank on the launch pad or during ascent…” The unspoken doctrine became, “Foam shedding hasn’t hurt us before, so why should we expect it to in the future.”

All this and we haven’t even looked at the issues with budget cuts and haphazard safety inspections.  What am I getting at?  The Columbia disaster did not happen on re-entry, it happened over many years as deviations became normalized and a culture was produced that viewed non-failure as success. The disaster chain could have been broken many times along the way, but it was not.

By studying why things fail we get a chance to see our own flaws, weaknesses and blind spots before they become a long and complex destruction chain.  If we can do this we then free ourselves to focus on the intricacies of success in a much more realistic context.

Failure happens whether we like it or not.  Those who deny it’s existence and pretend that happy thoughts and a few self-help books will give them a free ticket to success soon discover that we live in a fallen world.  By confronting and studying failure at every step we don’t fall victim to it as easily.  And if we’re thinking about it and planning accordingly, it ceases to have the same power over us.  So, one last time, let’s hear it for the losers.

Resources:

“Why Most Things Fail” by Paul Ormerod

Lessons Learned From the Columbia Disaster, “Safety & Organizational Culture” American Institute of Chemical Engineers.  2005

Popularity: 2% [?]

Smart people think about how they think…and why. I have had a feeling about this for some time now, but not until picking up de Bono’s, “Six Thinking Hats,” a couple days ago was I given the words to describe this idea with clarity. I had heard of de Bono from my mother-in-law, a PhD in talented and gifted education and blog author, but knew nothing about him or his field of study.

After reading the first 50 pages of his book I found myself hooked. Dr. Edward de Bono is the leading authority in the field of conceptual thinking and is an advocate of teaching thinking as a skill. Here’s a snippet from the preface that sums up his approach to the human mind:

Thinking is the ultimate human resources. Yet we can never be satisfied with our most important skill. No matter how good we become, we should always want to be better. Usually, the only people who are very satisfied with their thinking skill are those poor thinkers who believe that the purpose of thinking is to prove yourself right – to your own satisfaction. If we have only a limited view of what thinking can do, we may be smug about our excellence in this area, but not otherwise (Preface 2, emphasis mine)

The part of this quote that struck me the most was how often we find ourselves pursuing learning and thinking for the sole purpose of proving ourselves right. What a terrible habit, yet it’s such an easy trap to fall into. It’s only when we’re challenged that we find ourselves scrambling to do research or looking up data to support our claims…yet, shouldn’t that come beforehand?

We can only start to scratch the surface of intelligent thinking when we humbly admit that we know very little; that the unread books on our bookshelves greatly outnumber the ones we have read.

So what is the purpose for which you are trying to learn and expand your ability to think? Is it simply to prove yourself right or is it an authentic and innocent pursuit of truth, whatever it may be?

More on De Bono’s, “Six Thinking Hats,” to come….

Popularity: 1% [?]

When I was young there was a show I watched on Nickelodeon called, “Are You Afraid of the Dark,” a horror-themed kid’s series which basically portrayed various ghost stories and urban legends each week to millions of wide-eyed adolescents like myself. The show was quite a hit because it focused on something that most of us had in common at that age, an unexplainable fear of the dark. Like most, I was constantly consumed by the idea that a whole new evil world existed in my closet as soon as my mom kissed me goodnight and switched off the lights.

Most kids have this fear and eventually grow out of it. Lately, though, I have begun to believe that the average college and 20-something has replaced this fear with an entirely new one, the fear of silence.

How many times have you been alone at home and turned on the television, not to watch anything, but simply for the background noise? When you hop in the car you turn on some music. Going on a run…can’t forget the iPod. I know friends that have to have some sort of noise just to fall asleep at night!

Our lives have slowly become enveloped by a white noise that all of us feel quite naked without. Noise has become for us at age 24 what a night light was at age 5. Don’t believe me? When is the last time you drove to school or work in complete silence? Or spent a day without turning on the t.v. or stereo?

While many brush this fact off as a funny quirk, I contend that this phobia is a destructive one, keeping us from the deeper things of life, the things buried deep down in the soul…the things that only come out in solitude and the heaviest of silence.

In, “Death by Suburb,” author David Goetz explains, “The deeper spiritual life is never a direct route…In the toxic dump of efficiency and control, though, the first act must be countercultural — a decision not to act.” Silence is hard and scary and aggravating because it’s nothing in a world that is constantly seeking something.

Many of the great thinkers and philosophers throughout history have grappled with the effects of silence’s partner solitude. In “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau revealed, “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

Someone sitting in a small apartment in New York City is now reading this going, “Walden! Anyone could explore the richness of silence and solitude, ‘along the shores of Walden Pond,’ but I live in a city that never sleeps, among people that never shut up!” True. But maybe exploring the deeper life of silence and solitude is has nothing to do with geography.

Maybe exploring the things of the soul, the things of God and self requires nothing more than stopping. As Goetz puts it,

For spiritual development and entrance into the thicker, more reflective life, solitude is more inside space than it is outside space. Solitude isn’t something to consume, like a summer vacation at Lake Tahoe…It begins incrementally with the practice of becoming still. For a minute, for two minutes, for five minutes–not necessarily in beholding a snowcapped mountain peak, but simply in stopping the pursuit of efficiency…And to stop the scheming inside my head.

As I’ve tried to practice these times of silence and solitude I’ve discovered that often they are not so calming or relaxing as many would have you believe. In fact, sometimes they are miserable, a battle with myself…my mind wandering and me chasing after like a nagging headmaster to reign it back in…then me wondering things like, “If I am chasing my mind, does that mean my mind is chasing itself, like a dog chases it’s tail?” Ridiculous! Silence and stillness often don’t produce grand revelations…only more question marks. But every once and a while…it’s worth it.

Why do I tell you all this? Because being scared of the silence keeps us away from some of the greatest treasures in life. Our soul is an incredible thing, something God placed in man to make him like God. But the soul is mysterious…and can only be thoroughly examined in solitude and silence. Our lives, in many ways will depend on these moments of soul searching. And who would want to miss out by trading these moments for a little more background noise?

If you liked this article why not subscribe via RSS or e-mail so that you don’t miss out. Also, consider bookmarking this to delicious or Stumble. I’d appreciate it!

Popularity: 2% [?]

A couple days ago I began reading, “Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War” by Robert Coram, the biography of Col John Boyd, one of the most controversial figures in Air Force history. Boyd is most famous for his Energy-Maneuverability Theory a huge breakthrough in fighter tactics and design, the OODA Loop and several other contributions to aviation and military theory and tactics.

Much of the book displays the constant fight between the mad warrior-scientist Boyd and the toe-the-line military establishment at the time, consisting of generals with little interest in change or original thought. Boyd was constantly being cornered by the soul-crushing monster of a bureaucracy at the Pentagon, spending more time convincing the leadership to challenge long-held assumptions than actually working on his theories.

While reading about the struggle of implementing change in a large bureaucracy, the following exchange between a Colonel and a newly appointed Secretary of Defense caught my attention. Secretary Schlesinger was looking for some wisdom on leaving a legacy and Colonel Hallock, a highly respected combat hero offered the following:

You must understand that if you want to leave a legacy it is vital for you to make a quick decision about what you want that legacy to be. If you don’t make a quick decision, you will have no legacy. Because after several months you become so caught up in the business of the Pentagon, so enmeshed with the generals, so overwhelmed with the scope and enormity of the job that it will be too late. Pick a few projects and put the full weight of your office behind them. Guide the projects. Nurture them. Know from the very beginning that they will be your legacy. Force them through the bureaucracy (Coram 279).

I wonder how many Fortune 500 CEO’s could have been saved from incredible failures if they’d had their own Colonel Hallock’s to keep them on track? The fact is large, established organizations are incredibly difficult, if not impossible to significantly change.

It is the desire of most leaders to jump into their role and start a revolution on day one, throwing out the old and bringing in the new…in reality, this very rarely happens. A leader would do much better to focus on two or three key things to change and throw their whole weight and energy behind those…this is the path to truly impacting an organization.

If you liked this article why not subscribe via RSS or e-mail so that you don’t miss out.

Popularity: 1% [?]

History is full of the narrative fallacy, our desire as humans to package well-known events and people into pithy, oversimplified stories. It makes sense for us to think that great things happen due to great people rather than ordinary people doing nothing more heroic than showing up to work every Monday; or that events are shaped by a few moments of incredible magnitude rather than a series of seemingly insignificant and otherwise dull sub steps. It is this weakness in human logic that Glenn Packiam takes aim at in his book Butterfly in Brazil: How Your Life Can Make a World of Difference, stressing that greatness is not achieved by that “one moment in time,” but rather over years of faithfulness in the small things…an idea not too attractive in today’s culture of instant success.

Packiam delves into this idea with precision, using the story of Nehemiah as an example of, “an ordinary man who ended up making an extraordinary difference.” Showing how God has chosen to intertwine himself and His supernatural nature into our mannish and gritty lives, Packiam paints a clear picture of how we should go about living a life of lasting impact…as participants in a divine improv, not chained to a script, but nonetheless completely ineffective and awkward outside the director’s basic framework.

Most of all this is a book about creating lasting change. His main points: 1) change is small 2) change is local 3) change is gradual 4) change is costly. He explains that while Christian culture often encourages its youth to change the world, “Trying to change the world is the surest way to guarantee that we won’t.” Instead Packiam encourages us to be faithful in the small things over a long period of time and as Jim Elliot so simply, but profoundly put it, “Wherever you are, be all there.”

Popularity: 2% [?]