Teaching A Cat To Fetch

You can't teach a cat to fetch. ~Steve Jaworski


I had an interesting conversation with a colleague this week. The conversation centered around the leadership training class I am both creating and teaching to individuals at my company, individuals viewed as up and coming leaders who have the potential to improve the organization. With 4 of the 6 training sessions complete, the response from the seven attendees has been overwhelmingly positive and, the real test, they are applying some of what they have learned and are affecting positive change in their teams. The gist of the conversation that I found particularly interesting came from a single comment. And I paraphrase:

"Of course the training is going very well. You hand picked the cream of the crop for your first group of trainees. The real test would be to take person 'X', a person assigned a leadership position because of technical skills, and turn them into an effective leader."

The underlying implication is that I cherry picked a situation and that anyone in my shoes working with talent would easily experience success. This minimization of my accomplishment aside, the comment is based, in my opinion, on a misunderstanding of the situation and, perhaps, a misunderstanding of motivation as it applies to human nature.

There are two schools of thought on how an individual can be most valuable to an organization and achieve personal success. One school says a person should develop their weaknesses to make them well rounded, a sort of, Jack of all trades. The problem with this school of thought is contained in the rest of the phrase, that is, a Jack of all trades and a master of none. The individual is seen as a generalist. In some situations, a generalist will do just fine. In this day and age, what really sets a person apart from everyone else occurs when they excel at their personal art, when they maximize their strengths and apply that which makes them unique.

Our strength and value to society or an organization comes from our individuality, is borne of the uniqueness that makes us unlike anyone else ever born or ever to be born. The other school of thought, the one to which I ascribe, is based on each of us being a unique individual with skills and giftedness that should be maximized. The maximization of our giftedness will bring about personal satisfaction and, the enjoyment we get from maximization our gifts, will enable us to uniquely influence the organization moving it toward success.

In my case, I must understand some principles of accounting for my role as a Manager in my company. However, no matter how much I learn, accounting will never be something I enjoy, something in which I excel. The reason I will never really excel is that I hate accounting, it bores me, it drives me to watch the clock and scurry out of the office at the end of the day. The topic of leadership, on the other hand, is a topic that fascinates me, a topic I have been studying and applying for over twenty years. Leading teams and developing leaders is something that I enjoy immensely, I find deeply satisfying and, from the feedback I have received from my teams and trainees, something at which I am good. Working in the area of leadership generally finds me looking at the clock long after quitting time and wishing it wasn't so late because I am having too much fun to go home.

Now, back to person X from the conversation with my colleague. Person X is a brilliant software developer who revels in finding unique solutions to software problems. In addition, person X gets great satisfaction out of being the hero, of being the go to person to solve a problem that no one else can find. Leadership, sacrificing so others can excel, others can be the hero is not an area which brings him joy. In fact, other's being the hero is in direct contradiction to one of the ways he derives personal satisfaction.

As suggested, I could run person X through my leadership training class. It's an experiment I would undertake though, I believe, it would be a poor investment of time on my part and on person X's part. I would not expect any more than a marginal change in behavior if any change at all. I would not view this lack of change in any way indicative of the quality of my training class or in my abilities as a trainer of leaders. The reason is very simple. Person X is not intrinsically motivated by being a great leader. Person X does not have a DNA inclined toward the sacrifices required of someone in leadership.

For someone to really develop a skill, they need to have an aptitude for that skill. If I wanted to teach an animal to play fetch, I would find myself a dog, preferably a dog bred for retrieving, and work through the necessary steps such that dog would track a thrown object and bring it back to me for a repeat performance. 

To attempt this same training with a cat would be justifiably seen as folly because it's not in the cat's DNA to fetch an object. A cat is simply not motivated by chasing a thrown ball and bringing it back to the thrower. However, I don't believe any sensible person would judge my abilities as a trainer of fetch on not being able to teach a cat to fetch. That would be like someone giving me carrot seeds and saying I wasn't a gardener because the seeds failed to reap watermelon.

Mask of a Hawk

The bird hunting a locust is unaware of the hawk hunting him ~Proverbs

There was a time in my life when I couldn't get enough of the outdoors, couldn't get enough of all things wild and free, couldn't get enough of nature and camping and back backing, couldn't get my fill of birds. I would spend hours walking in the forest preserves imaging what it would be like to run with Deer, stalk with Coyote, wear the feathered coat of Hawk and soar above the trees in search of a meal, in search of solitude, in search of peace for my tormented soul.

For I was tormented, tormented from within, tormented by an angst which seemed never to be satisfied, never tempered, a seemingly ravenous apetite consuming my soul for all but the briefest of moments when I was lost somewhere deep in the halls of my mind. It was a time when I sought peace from the outside, sought comfort in the external. I lived this way for many years, lived this way until I learned that peace comes from within, learned that the external can never satisfy the hunger of the internal.

It was during this time that I experienced one of the greatest periods of creativity in my life. It was during this time that I was walking in the woods and happened upon the empty shell that used to be cedar waxwing. This poem grew of that experience.




Mask of a Hawk

On the muddy bank of a silt laden river,
Beneath a plant laughing in white and purple flowers,
Lies a splintered shell

Ebony eye captures sunlight
Falling through broad leaf trees

Soft, silvery down supports
Resting black and russet head

Beak parted
Frozen
In final, futile
Scream

Crimson painted hollowed skull lies vacant in decaying leaves

Severed, single, black leg, hides
Beneath pink tipped and yellow fringed feathers

Gently curved talon
Caresses nonexistent branch

Some weep at your passing
But not I,
For you are yet alive

Death
The keeper of the costumes,
Has merely bestowed a new guise

You donned the masks of countless insects,
Before enjoying the mask of a cedar waxwing

For a brief moment,
You'll wear the mask of a high flying hawk as it
Ascends toward the Sun on the breath of Earth

The Wonders of Nature

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry. ~Muriel Rukeyser


There was a time in my writing life, early in my attempts to make sense out of life by putting thoughts to paper that I dabbled in poetry. It was a time when I was lost as an individual flitting about trying to make sense of life. I possibly would have floated away into oblivion had it not been for the anchoring effect, the stabilizing effect my children brought into my life. The poem below, written in the late 1980s, was the result of their influence of my life.









The Wonders of Nature




I took you to the woods to show you the wonders of nature


We strolled together down dirt path
I had to walk slow because you kept stopping to put
Stones in your pockets and collect sticks


I showed you a high flying bird
You were examining a pile of plucked cedar waxwing feathers,
Holding the pink tipped and yellow fringed ones in separate hands


I showed you the leaves in the trees
You were tracing the red veins of a discarded maple leaf
With your slender, tanned fingers


I showed you a deeply furrowed tree trunk
You were petting a black and yellow spider
Hidden in the valleys of the bark


I showed you a squirrel
You were busy collecting acorns
Saving the capped ones in the pock of your jeans


I showed you a mushroom at the base of a tree
You placed your nose next to the mushroom
And partook of it's earthy aroma


I showed you a river
You were lost in the lakes
Formed in the knotholes of a beaten wooden fence


I took you to the woods and you showed me the wonders of nature

The Unlived Life

When Inspiration touches talent, she gives truth to beauty. ~Unknown

In his wonderful little book, The War of Art, Steven Pressfield muses on those things that keep us from our creating our art. This is not necessarily art in the typical sense of the word, though it can be painting, writing, dancing or any of the traditional art forms.

The art to which he is referring has a broader definition. The art to which he is referring is the art of our lives. It is the art living within us, the beauty we want our life to be, it is the untapped potential of our dreams. The question can be posed as, what is  the unlived life trapped inside the life we are living? Steven Pressfield sums it up:

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. ~Steven Pressfield


The enemy keeping us from realizing our unlived lives he terms Resistance. He goes on to call Resistance the most toxic force on the planet.

Resistance is the obstacle keepings us from going to the gym, it's the enemy that keeps us from praying, the opponent that blocks us from taking a seat in front of the computer and writing our blog, from writing the novel we have dreamed about since we first cradled book in our hands.

Resistance is an internal, invisible force that surfaces when we are called to any sort of action, to any activity designed to enhance our soul, to any form of personal growth.

Do I start my training regimen today? Is this the day I start eating more healthily? Should I begin a Masters program? Is today the day I start attending church? Resistance increases in force the more important a call or action is to our heart.

Have you ever procrastinated? Have you ever watched TV for no particular reason? Have you ever binged to avoid something? Have you ever criticized another's success? Have you ever avoided an all consuming dream to be great out of fear you may fail? Have you ever hidden your poetry because someone criticized, or might criticize the art that ebbs from your soul? All are faces of resistance.

How do you overcome resistance? By an act of will. By walking up to that keyboard and typing without worrying if the creation is good enough. By turning off the TV and going for a run despite only being able to last for a few blocks. By dipping the brush onto the palette and touching it to a canvas. By purchasing a one way ticket to a far away location and getting on that plane without knowing how, when, or if, you will ever return home. In short, by just doing it whether or not we feel like just doing it.

What face of resistance is keeping you from your unlived life, from living the life you have always wanted?

The Answers

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Albert Camus

The answers to life's questions are printed on the inside of my eyelids, of your eyelids, of mankinds eyelids. Not just one answer is inscribed there. All answers to all questions are written on the insides of our eyelids. The answer to the same question is uniquely scribed on each individual's eyelids because each of us has a soul that shines with a different light of the rainbow.

Normal light does not allow us to see the answers. Sunlight in all it's glory does not have the power to overcome the noise of everyday busyness so that we can see the answers to our questions.

The answers are revealed in silence. The answers are revealed in prayer. The answers are whispered in our souls by that still small voice rising up from our hearts that can only be heard when our mind is stilled. The answers are revealed in our dreams. Our dreams are the answers acted out under the haze of sleep. The tricks are to remember the dream and figure out which question the dream is answering.

Dream Wake

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~H. Jackson Brown Jr



As a boat travels it leaves a wake, waves the result of the boat cutting through the water, disturbing the tranquility of the surface. The waves spread outward from the source, continue ad infinitum or until some other force causes them to stop. Creating the wake is unavoidable and the size of the waves is directly proportional to the mass of the object cutting through the water and the speed of the object. Sometimes that wake results in gentle waves lapping a sandy shore while at other times the force of the wake can overturn a boat.

Pursuing one's dreams is typically portrayed with more than a hint of romanticism, dream quests tend to be romanticism epitomized. Pursuing one's dreams is seen as the quest of the brave, the actions of a conqueror, the adventure of someone with eyes firmly set upon the future instead of stuck in the present or, worse, a victim of the past. For the dreamer, the world is a blank slate into which the dream will be etched. However, the pursuit of a dream is not only the journey of the dreamer. There is another side to dream pursuit and that is the story of those left behind, those for whom the dream brings emptiness instead of fulfillment, sadness not joy, those for whom the dream is decidedly unromantic.

I learned that the pursuit of one's dreams also has a wake, a wake that affects everyone it touches, a wake that can also wreak havoc on the lives of those tossed and turned when the wake crashes into their world. I am experiencing first hand that the pursuit of my dream, which is living and working in a foreign land, has created a dream wake which, for another, is akin to being in a boat that is capsizing and there are no life preservers.

I have learned that pursuing one's dream can create casualties of  those caught in the dream wake.

Bold Moves

Realize that ultimate success comes from opportunistic, bold move which by definition, cannot be planned. ~Ross Johnson


I have been given a lot of thought to the new leadership challenge awaiting me, pondered night and day the tactics I need to undertake to help these 5 workgroups become a team again. Again? I am not really sure they have ever truely been a team in the sense of the word that depicts people sacrificing for each other to achieve a common goal.

I have been watching them from the outside for some time so am familiar with their foibles. I have started compiling a list of actions that will help them escape the deep rut they have been traveling in which will allow the to forge a bold new path to success. I am saddened by their lack of success because they are good people, intelligent people, creative people with a desire to perform at the highest levels. But, they are so deep into a rut that they cannot break free.

Bold moves are what they need. Only radical change will enable them shed the shackles that have hindered them for the past few years, break free of the prison defined by attitudes and ingrained habits that have bound minds needing freedom to enact radical change.

They have tried incremental changes from project to project without ever achieving true, sustained success in their endeavors. Incremental changes simply will not work when the rut is so deep minor course corrections are swallowed whole. Incremental changes simply will not suffice when the light of success can't be seen over entrenched behaviors.


My job is not to provide solutions to their problems but to give them the gift of boldness, give them the gift of boldness that will allow them to find creative new solutions within themselves, give them the gift of boldness which will set them free to discover the greatness lying within them, give them the freedom that comes with acting boldly.

New Challenges

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. ~Bernice Johnson Reagon


In the next few weeks, I will be taking on a new project. It is not one of the 'glamorous' international projects most employees at my company aspire to. No. In fact, I will be moved off of the glamorous international project where I have high visibility, have a respected name, have the opportunity to work with people of many nationalities on three different continents across 11.5 time zones. I am being reassigned as a Project Manager to a legacy project. A project that makes lots of money but one that is based on older technology making it less attractive to Engineers seeking to grow skills and remain competitive in the marketplace.

The project I will be leading is a project with teams that have not seen success for two product development revisions spanning almost three years. It's a project populated with good people but they are people struggling mentally, struggling emotionally, and struggling physically because they were on a 60 hour per week death march for a few months in an attempt to meet a very challenging schedule.

From what I have seen from the outside, the culture of the team is leaning toward the toxic. The five teams (3 in India and 2 in the US) are not particularly healthy. Too often, I hear of finger pointing. To often I hear the exclusive terms us and them instead of the inclusive we. This is a project team that does not see itself as a team thus has become work groups and are missing out on the joy of people bonded toward a common goal, a common vision, are missing out on the glory of achievement.

This struggling project with struggling people is the situation I am inheriting. Many people would be unhappy to inherit a struggling legacy team instead of riding the waves of glory associated with the glamorous international team. Truth be told, I am very excited about leading this team. I am excited because I am a leader and I love the challenge of helping people see the best in themselves, love the challenge of helping people achieve more than they thought was possible. Truth be told, the glamorous international project had become routine for me, had ceased to fully utilize the leadership talents I believe lurk in me, talents that need to be stretched to new limits if I am to continue grow my leadership skills. A leader must grow, must learn to continue being an effective leader.

In the next few weeks, I will be the Project Manager for this team and I couldn't be more excited because, as a leader, I thrive on new challenges.

What If We Acted?

A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind. ~Daisaku Ikeda


What if it was my responsibility to change the world? What if it was yours? What if that little voice we continually ignore, the one that tries to nudge us into action, the one we drown with the drone of the TV, the one we squeeze out with incessant business, was, if we only listen to it, inching us toward our destiny and that destiny would start a revolution that changed the world?

This is absurd you say. It's too far fetched. I'm just one person. I'm a nobody in the grand scheme of life. To this I say, Mother Teresa was just one, just one tiny woman who acted on the whisper from the quiet voice and changed the life of the downtrodden, the marginalized, the forgotten, the despised. She was one unimposing woman who loved her way to a Nobel Peace Prize because she refused to stifle the quiet voice urging her to help the unloved.

It all begins with one. The power of one person standing steadfast as the tanks of tyranny roll in. One person to share an idea so radical it seems absurd. One person to lend a helping hand to someone in need.  One person with the courage to listen to that subtle little voice and take action. Just one person sacrificing personal comfort is all that is needed to start a revolution.

It has happened many times in history, many times the need was there, history was ripe for revolution and someone acted despite fear, someone risked their comfortable life, someone stood up to be counted while others were silent. And, once that person stood up, like minded individuals, one by one, joined in and the revolution, sparked by one brave individual spread like wildfire to change the face of the world.

Perhaps we are the next Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King. Perhaps you are the next Mandela, Churchill, Che Guevara, or Mother Theresa. Perhaps we are the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or John Lennon.

Perhaps, if we mustered the courage and acted on this quiet voice nagging at our conscience we would not change the world directly but our child, our grandchild, someone inspired by our action, encouraged by our bravery, became the next Malcom X or Dalai Lama or Desmond Tutu, our offspring would be the one to start a world changing revolution.

What if it was our responsibility to change the world and we let the responsibility slip through our fingers because we wasted our time watching TV? What is the world missing because we are not acting upon the quiet voice urging us to use our unique gifts for the benefit of all?

Worshiping God

Dear My Friend David, 
We are all children of the same God. ~Kenan Ozcan, Inscription in the English Quran he gave me as a gift

During my time in Turkey, I had the opportunity to enter two Mosques, Mosques that are actively used as places of worship in the modern day and have been continuously active going on 400 years. They were the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, commonly known as the Blue Mosque, completed in 1616 AD and the New Mosque completed in 1660 AD. Besides the stunning architecture, the elaborate internal decoration, and the lack of any seating places (they worship god from their knees) the aspect of the mosques that most intrigued me was the separate worship areas for men and women. The men worship in the front of the mosques while the women worship completely separate from the men in the rear of the mosques.

I understand why they do this, understand that having a woman supplicated on her knees in front of a man could induce his mind to focus on her assets instead of on worshiping god. I understand that this is an unneeded distraction as man attempts to commune with his maker. I understand but, still, it is not my preference for worshiping God. It is not my preference because God exists in community and has created us to exist in community.

In the Christian world view, the triune Godhead is a community, a community consisting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are three distinct persons yet coexist in unity and are co-equal, co-eternal.  God created us in his image so as people, as the human race, we are only complete when we are in community, a community with God as the central figure in that community. This understanding of community is a driving force in how I, a Christian, prefer to worship my creator.

I prefer attending Christian services with my woman at my side, prefer it when we worship together. I feel more connected to God and to my woman when we are worhipping side by side, hand in hand, hearts intertwined with God's heart. For me, it is the three of us in community, a representation of  the Trinity, a three corded braid of God, Me, and her, a braid of far greater strength than any of us alone. It is within this braid that I most sense the awesomeness of God. It is within this braid that I most feel God's love.

Leadership Training #04 - Vision

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there. ~John Buchan


 I recently gave my fourth leadership training class at my company. It is a training program I have created from scratch based on my many experiences and studies over the past 25+ years. In many ways, it was the best of my training sessions. I believe, my part, is improving because I had three training classes under my belt and I am becoming a better trainer. I also believe this one was one of the best because it was on a topic, Vision, which excites me and that excitement came across in my presentation.

However, what made the class particularly exciting was that the 7 participants are becoming comfortable with the environment and each other and opened up for some meaty conversations. Each training session includes time to discuss leadership situations encountered between sessions. Generally, that time barely fills the 15 minutes which I allot. For session #4, it lasted almost 45 minutes as each of the participants shared leadership challenges and we discussed ways to address the particular situations. It was powerful.

Within the framework of the vision training, I had each of them select one value from a list of values and explain why it was important to them. The list contained: Collaboration, Meaning, Tolerance, Creativity, Perseverance, Continuous Improvement, and Kindness. The reasons behind the choices were as unique as the individuals. However, a common thread amongst them all is exceptional performance. Each one of them is a high performer in their respective disciplines.

I also had them create a common vision statement, albeit in a very short time span, on a topic of their choice. I left the room for a break while they pressed on with the exercise. They did not come up with a final vision statement but their work was headed in the direction of a vision for their combined leadership and how they want to transform the company. 

I was very excited at the direction of their vision statement because it is in alignment with the concepts I have been training for the past four sessions. It was validation that my training has been effective and well received.

Because they did not finish their vision statement, they planned on meeting on their own time to create a vision statement, a vision statement they will present to Senior Management. A vision statement, once written and spoken out loud, is more likely to be achieved than one safely tucked away inside their heads.

I am very excited they are going public with their vision and am excited for the future leadership of the company.

For me, this is one more step in the direction of my personal work mission and vision statement. They are:

Mission:

Train up effective Servant Leaders who place a priority on growing others in to be fully effective individuals that continually grown their own leadership skills and get outstanding results through people.

Vision:

Create a leadership university in my company whose alumnae are trained so well, they are the first choice to fill the leadership roles both within in my division and at other divisions of my company by 01-Jan-2020.

Fire Memories

One can enjoy a wood fire worthily only when he warms his thoughts by it as well as his hands and feet. ~Odell Shepard



There is a primal connection to the universe when sitting by a campfire, a connection that goes back to our earliest ancestors who sought safety, who sought refuge, who sought warmth against the cold when huddled around the warmth of a campfire. In a sense, it is a return to the warmth of the womb, a return to the place that served all our physical needs when we were but helpless embryos floating comfortably in amniotic fluid, a return to a time when we wanted for nothing.

For me, fire brings peace in solitude, fire stokes intimacy in relationship, fire livens conversation with cherished family & friends, fire evokes joyful memories, memories of many faces, smiling faces highlighted by the flickering light of a dancing campfire, memories of my children laughing raucously in the backyard as we bonded while flames voraciously consumed the wood we fed to it over countless hours of conversation (while my kids fed on raw cicadas).

The fire I sit by tonight consumes the last of my pile of wood while simultaneously filling my heart with the joy of memories, memories of the many lives that have crossed mine, some which blessed me briefly, some that continue to bless me 51 years into my journey, so many lives have touched mine, so many lives have left an indelible print on my heart, a print I frequently recall when the subtle light of a fire illuminates them, so many lives that have enhanced my existence, so many lives that live on in my cherished memories.

So many lives yet not so many that any one of them is superfluous. If even one of those, just a one, had not crossed my path, I would be incomplete.