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Throughout my career I have experienced various situations in organisations and business where there is a ‘boss’ that thinks he is right.  Now from here I want to take a really big leap to how a boss that thinks he is right is causing capitalist slavery.  You see, if all the guys that think they are right and are really successful (don’t you just love that word) come together and form a club I would call that the Killer Club.

So obviously I am relishing in gross exaggeration here but give me a second to explain:  We live in a world where economies are highly interrelated and for them to succeed they need to offer products to consumers and use resources to get it done.  One of these ‘resources’ is human beings, yes, we have successfully reduced the human being to an input factor of production.  Never mind what we are producing or why the business exists; that is irrelevant.  As long as the cogs in the machine are turning and profit is continuously maximised.  Mission, vision and values adorn the walls of glitzy corporate headquarters and even smaller business nowadays.

Now, at the helm of these capitalist ships are men who are many times revered for their vision, determination and guts to stand up and do something different.  Most of all they are seen as heroes because they are creating work and building businesses that contribute to the economy.  Now there is a sneaky paradox that comes and nestles itself in the midst of our collective conscience.  I will call this paradox Rupert.  Now Rupert is a very likeable character because on the one hand he represents the progress of the economy and we like more jails. Uh, I mean jobs.  You see what I mean – sneaky.  It seems like you need the Killer Club that goes about doing business in a egotistical fashion stomping on people – in order to move forward you need to hurt people.  Some even believe it is good for people because ‘it stretches them’.  Phrases like “you won’t get anywhere if you are not willing to make sacrifices” are used as shileds of denial.  They love you if you can sacrifice as much family time as they do and if you should ask them why they are doing it they mask their personal ambition with visions of ‘great’ leadership.  On the one hand it seems good that we are creating more jobs for more people that want to own SUV’s and three flat screens to watch 225 000 television channels on but herein lies the seeming contradiction that expresses a truth:  In order to grow the economy and increase the levels of ‘happiness’ in society we need to reduce our happiness at work.

After all it’s just business, don’t take it personal.  So let’s finish of the gross exaggeration that we started earlier.  The Killer Club gets together and decides to use their favourite pet Rupert in order to seduce many people in society into giving up their freedom in order to produce things that society does not really need in order to make us ‘happy’.  They destroy the environment in the process and create wealthy elites that reinforce their interests through investments and continue the vicious cycle.  If you realise what the game is and play hard enough you could perhaps create your own jail where people come to.  I mean what is better than being in jail?  It’s being the jailer.  You step out and create something for other people you did not want for yourself – you escape in order to enslave others.

Seen from this perspective you would think that I am a tree-hugging, rabbit-loving activist but in fact I am a capitalist at heart.  I do however believe that, like Ken Chenault said, we need to review capitalism and think about the role of business in society.  I strongly believe that we can do business differently and that it is not profit that is so important it is the ability to make profit.  Here I am referring to businesses that are transforming the face of capitalism, such as the Grameen group and Semco, that has people at their core reason for being.  Are you considering how your belief that you are right is impacting others around you?

Quite a while back I wrote about setting goals and how people are afraid to do so because they might not be able to achieve their goals.  So they imagine setting a goal and then doing everything they possibly can and then not achieving it.  What will people think?  Perhaps you should not be sharing your goals to start with.  Watch this if you want to get the inside scoop. 

You might also recall that I spoke about the principle of ensue not that long ago.  From this perspective you should stop chasing things like happiness because in the pursuit of happiness you actually never attain it.  You might therefore ask what is more important than happiness?  According to Victor Frankl the determination of meaning for yourself is much more important.  Not the meaning of life in general but the meaning of your life.  A very subjective approach.

What I take from this is that having an idea or vision of where you want to go is much more than setting out specifics of how this should happen – just move!  Some people need goal setting to help them along and track their progress.  Others, like myself, are more intuitive and work to serve a greater purpose.  Another approach that some follow is to engage in what they are good at with their whole being and as time goes by they realise they are engaged in very meaningful work.

There are many options that suit many different people.  The danger is that if one person finds a way that has worked for them and such a person is a leader he/she can enforce that solution on everyone.  What I however find is that a lot of people are in fact reluctant followers.  Let’s back off and let everyone set their own pace and become truly great (whatever that might mean)!

In the previous post I expressed my indignation at how we are going about our selfish ways and I ended with the intent of how to get out of that trap.  Well I went back to some of the roots I have and looked back to a powerful Aristotelian concept: phronesis.  Any of you heard of it?

In society today we are herded by many rules.  Rules that supposedly keep us safe and safeguard our freedom.  We find however that rules can in fact be much more enslaving than liberating.  We have so many rules that we stop thinking for ourselves.  The reality is there is no set of rules that can get us what we want.  We have to have rules because we have lost phronesis.  In the simplest terms phronesis is practical wisdom.  It is strongly related to prudence, i.e. being wise and prudent in practical affairs.  Instead we are caught in a consumer world totally consumed by consumerism (check this out: The Story of Stuff).

From my point of view we have simply lost the desire to be virtuous.  People are not interested at identifying core values that guide their actions in order to do good (I know the word good is contentious but hang in there).  It is a focus on here and now and relating it to the bigger picture in regards to society and our responsibilities.

In a different way it has been expressed as having gravitas (read this: Gravitas).  It all comes down to the same thing.  We don’t become quiet, reflect and take the long way around because we will learn more and become better human beings.  We are rushing forward but it is as Gandhi said: There is more to life than increasing its speed.  We must use phronesis to focus on the journey and the relationships we build.

I have been on facilitator training the last two days.  One of the take-aways from the session is that a key part of being a true friend is indignation.  What do I mean?  Simple:  Sometimes  in order to be real with the people you care for you need to be indignant toward someones actions or a situation.  Through this you can help people realise that what they are doing is harmful to themselves and/or others.

So this morning I woke up feeling very indignant about the way that we are going about business and life.  I look around and feel disgusted and the greed and selfishness that pervades society.  What is worse is that so many of us simply shrug our shoulders and say well, what can we do?  That is the way things are.

Well I am here today to use this public space to raise my voice and firstly remind myself and secondly remind you to ask the question:  What is all of this about?!  Why the rush, the fear, control and waste?  We have lost touch with spiritual intelligence.  We have lost touch with our neighbours and in the mad dash to the finish line everyone has become our competition.  I feel tired of this world.  I feel tired of running trying to ‘meet the deadline’.  I know we have to work and I agree that work can be something beautiful; something creative.  We have however enslaved ourselves to greed and work is the slave master.  Why do you work?

In the next post I will look at ways to get out of this mindset and I ask you to help me.  So look at what you have just read, reflect and watch this space so you can share from your wisdom.

My previous post ended with reference to a moral compass.  I truly wanted to write about this during December but I never got around to it.  I could give you a soppy story about how the last days at work were really busy and when I went on holiday my focus was on relaxing and that writing the post seemed less important.

The reality however is that I was not acting in alignment or as some might say attunement.  What does that mean?  Simple; moral compass refers to your core principles, values and beliefs.  From there they should lead to some formal or informal goal setting.  Finally goals should lead to behaviour which consists of thoughts actions and emotions.  If you therefore live in such a way that your goals reflect your moral compass and your behaviour reflects your goals you are living in alignment (some use the term alignment for the same kind of process in relation to systems and processes and attunement for the internal personal process).

Here lies my problem.  I resolved in my goal setting to write a post once a month and then did not do this at the end of 2010 – I was not acting out of alignment; I was in fact out of alignment.  This experience in combination with other experiences (such as observation about my relationship with colleagues and family) have been valuable as reflective information.  This information I could also only really process during vacation time because it was in fact one of my objectives for the festive season – perspective!

From here I had really good conversations with my parents and my wife over a period of two weeks which have empowered me in a surprising manner for 2011.  Although the adjustments are small habitual things it is about getting back into alignment and using my strength (discipline) to catalyse greater release in the rest of my life.

Are you ready for 2011?

In my preceding posts I spoke about the one impossible thing as well as BHAGs.  Both of these topics are related to one another.  It speaks to the construct that this blog is based upon – being fully alive or going from survive to alive.  Perhaps it is more of a continuum on which you can oscillate but the construct of fully alive holds.

So what am I going on about?  Simple: Through my personal journey as well as the professional work that I do I find that having purpose and focusing on it catalyses the principle of ensue.  In the professional work that I do we are focused on assisting entrepreneurs to set goals and then work along side them in order to achieve the goals.  For some this works just fine but for other entrepreneurs goals are actually just a pain in the butt.  What I have however realised in my own life is that if I keep my eye on a clear purpose – fire in my belly, reason for getting up and living strong – the goals kind of have their own way of happening.

I have also noticed the exact same thing for my clients.  The ones with purpose are the ones that let their goals ensue.  There is a much stronger sense of being all they can be versus having or getting everything they want.  Focusing on being is when the motivation truly comes from inside.  No-one can ever take this away from you.

The strongest example of the principle of ensue that I have come across is in the work of Victor Frankl who was a prisoner in a Nazi prison camp and wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning.  This is not an easy read but one of the most profound works of the 20th century – I dare you to read it.

Bottom line is that once you can see past the shallow desires of the lower self and start to search for meaning instead of things a deep seated life is catalysed through the principle of ensue and your actions and behaviour become attuned with your moral compass.  More about that next time…

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the work of Jim Collins but he has made a rather big impact on the business world in the last few years.  In one of his books he talks about something called a BHAG (pronounced B-Hag).  What does it stand for?  It stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

If you read my previous post you would have read about the one impossible thing.  You see I am what they call a hedgehog thinker – I look at the world from an overarching perspective when I try to form a paradigm in order to understand the world that I live in.  This means that I simplify things and bring them into perspective to one another rather than get lost in the detail.

That is what both of these interesting perspectives have in common.  Both a BHAG as well as the one impossible thing summarises all the challenges you could encounter and challenges you to put them into one great endeavour for yourself.  Is the fire in your belly and the reason to get up for.  You see, it really works for me because whenever things feel like they just don’t fit I take a step back and look at my BHAG – pretty scary sometimes.  This is something really big and when I say big I mean BIG!  It could possibly even be something you cannot do alone or even completely achieve in your own lifetime.

What I am suggesting in other words that you be a little idealistic.  Yip, dream, go wild and think of a world that could be changed by you! It is a hairy beast that few attempt to wrestle, will you?

(For any more info on Jim Collins’ work please visit www.jimcollins.com)