Quite simply, why I love Teddy Roosevelt&#39;s &quot;Man in the Arena&quot; is because the world needs more resilient, scrappy doers and fewer critics.






His comments are presented here, with unique audio (will play on everything but iPhone).&nbsp; Depending on your connection speed, please allow 15-30 seconds for the file to load, then click the green play button beside Teddy&#39;s photo:






<a href="/blogging/file.axd?file=2013%2f1%2fPresidentTeddyRooseveltManInTheArenaInteractiveAudio11-16-2012_LeathGroup.pdf">PresidentTeddyRooseveltManInTheArenaInteractiveAudio11-16-2012_LeathGroup.pdf (4.24 mb)</a>

Teddy Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" (with audio!)

Oh my gosh, <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Radiolab</a>, how did I not know you existed?
You are literally 10 years old and yet I'd never heard your name until YESTERDAY!&nbsp; ARE YOU KIDDING ME?&nbsp; HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?
Well, we've corrected that problem, PRONTO.&nbsp; STAT.&nbsp; ALREADY.
I have now consumed three podcasts, proselytized them,&nbsp;and the kool-aid effects are well underway and flooding my system like adrenaline.&nbsp; I'm officially an acolyte, a fan, an advocate and will sing your praises&nbsp;as if I were&nbsp;Captain von Trapp&nbsp;serenading&nbsp;the last&nbsp;remaining meadow of&nbsp;edelweiss.
Your <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/2012/dec/17/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">12/17/2012 episode on Bliss</a> made me laugh, cry, ponder...and ultimately left me slack-jawed.&nbsp; 
Your reference to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC8gJ0_9o4M" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aleksander Gamme's cheese noodle video</a> made me howl and snort longer than I have in months.
Your story about Charles Bliss (aka Karl Blitz) and In the Land of Invented Languages left me, well, speechless.
Your use of music, storytelling and&nbsp;creative mixing is nothing short of art.&nbsp; And, as far as I'm concerned, high art at that.&nbsp; I finally understand (emotionally) how and why families once huddled around their radios as if they were fireplaces on&nbsp;cold, barren nights.
To prove the point, my wife, daughter and I sat motionlessly enraptured&nbsp;in our car outside&nbsp;a restaurant tonight and listened to your show for thirty minutes.&nbsp; And, on the way home,&nbsp;we eagerly&nbsp;picked up where we left off.&nbsp; Arriving home too quickly (!), we sat again in the garage for another&nbsp;twenty minutes&nbsp;to relish the end without delay.&nbsp; 
When you can successfully captivate the attention of one hungry man, one hungry woman, and one&nbsp;voracious ten-year-old girl, well, that's something.&nbsp; No iPhones, no games, no tablets...just the desire to sit quietly and listen to a radio program...Wow.&nbsp; That's crazy, right?&nbsp; I mean...it's 2013, for cryin' out loud.&nbsp; Who in the world listens to "talk radio" anymore?&nbsp; The far right, the far left,&nbsp;rabid sports fans, and NPR types or chair-rockers tuning into Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, that's who.&nbsp; And that's about it.&nbsp; 
Well, add me to the converted and faithful.&nbsp; 
But next time, I'll bring my own rocking chair, knife, whetstone, sapling branch, egg salad sandwich and sweet tea&nbsp;and plan on sitting a spell.&nbsp; A nice, long, unrushed spell.&nbsp;
I am indebted to my beloved Charlie Rose for <a href="https://charlierose.com/videos/17886" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bringing you to my attention</a>.&nbsp; 
Gosh, I'm glad I found you&mdash;and look forward to tuning in for years to come.
XOXO

Radiolab—Radiolab—Radiolab!

Intriguingly,
I&rsquo;ve had four separate yet equally intense interactions recently with clients
who have identified themselves&mdash;or been identified by others&mdash;as
&ldquo;workaholics.&rdquo;&nbsp; 




Too
much of anything, be it rest/relaxation, exercise, eating (regardless the meal)
can be a bad thing.&nbsp; After all, it&rsquo;s the opposite of balance and
moderation.




So
when does work broach holism (Greek
for &lsquo;all, whole, entire, total&rsquo;)?&nbsp; At
what point does one&rsquo;s love for work become more destructive than constructive,
more toxic than healthy, more problematic than advantageous?




Well
first, let me share what four clients recently said about work, and explain why I
found it fascinating:

<ul>
	<li>
	<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt">
	Client 1: &ldquo;I rise early, stay late and often skip lunch because I&rsquo;M A MAN POSSESSED AND LOVE WHAT I DO!&nbsp; My wife will hound me, &lsquo;What did you eat for lunch today&rsquo; and I have no defense.&nbsp; Lunch never crossed my mind.&nbsp; I sat down at 8:30 and the next time I looked up it was past 2:00.&rdquo;
	</div>
	</li>
	<li>
	<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt">
	Client 2: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m the guy who gets pumped on Sunday because TOMORROW&rsquo;S MONDAY!&rdquo; 
	</div>
	</li>
	<li>
	<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt">
	Client 3: &ldquo;Is it a problem that I love what I do and would do it every waking hour if no one stopped me?&rdquo; 
	</div>
	</li>
	<li>
	<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt">
	Client 4: &ldquo;[Malcolm] Gladwell writes about &lsquo;10,000&rsquo; hours to mastery.&nbsp; Piece &lsquo;o cake; blew by that a long time ago!&rdquo;
	</div>
	</li>
</ul>

&nbsp;&nbsp;


Here
we have four people, representative of others, to be sure, who obviously love
what they do, become consumed by it, and wonder what all the fuss is about
&lsquo;work&rsquo; and &lsquo;since when&#39; did it became a dirty word?




I&rsquo;m
not sure I&rsquo;m the best person to submit any counter-arguments to their
attestations, because they actually sound a lot like me, but I will say this:
work becomes workaholism when it crowds, clouds and chokes other people and
interests in &lsquo;exclusionary&rsquo; ways.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s
not the work itself that&rsquo;s the problem, it&rsquo;s the consequences and collateral
damage.&nbsp; 




To
say it most efficiently: when work so defines one&rsquo;s personhood that it
prohibits the flourishing of anything else, Houston, we have a problem.




Loving
one&rsquo;s work, one&rsquo;s job is actually not a curse.&nbsp;
Quite the contrary, it is a blessing.&nbsp;
One becomes absorbed, possessed, and time literally flies by.&nbsp; This is a wonderful, zone-y state in which to
perform, excel, love, live.




But
when your spouse, children, or significant others rarely see you&mdash;or rarely get
to visit with you because you always have your nose in your phone, your eyes
on the screen or your butt in the office, well, that simply won&rsquo;t do.




Not
for long.




There&rsquo;s
certainly burnout, though more likely for workaholics is to experience the
inevitability of dropped relationships.&nbsp;
Late arrivals.&nbsp; Missed
appointments.&nbsp; Slipped schedules.&nbsp; Leaky end-times.&nbsp; Broken promises.&nbsp; Eroded reliability and credibility.&nbsp; 




There
are few blessings more deep and rich than to love one&rsquo;s work.&nbsp; In fact, as I&rsquo;ve written before and you may
recall, the word &lsquo;vocation&rsquo; derives from the Latin &lsquo;vocare,&rsquo; which means &lsquo;to be
called.&rsquo;&nbsp; And Viktor Frankl, author of Man&rsquo;s Search for Meaning and progenitor
of logotherapy argued decisively about the importance of &lsquo;finding meaning in
one&rsquo;s work and life itself.&rsquo;&nbsp; 




I
find that for those who truly love what they do for a living, work is a career,
not a job.&nbsp; Effort and time simply fly
by.&nbsp; In short, their entire life is
richer because their work-life is rich.




In
such instances, I think of work as &lsquo;vocare-therapy,&rsquo; because one is abundantly
fulfilled by work and derives great joy from it.




But
to love one&rsquo;s work at the price of family, of spirituality, of outside
interests, hobbies or personal pursuits is to&nbsp;ski along the edge of a
razor.&nbsp; Sooner or later, one will lose
his or her balance, slip and pay the inevitably high price.




In
the words of Henry David Thoreau, &ldquo;Know
your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it,
unearth it, and gnaw it still,&rdquo; but don&rsquo;t do so in isolation, at the expense of
relationships that matter, or to the detriment of yourself and all that you
might be&mdash;were you to broaden your horizons.




And for heaven&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t be the fool who
strives to work so tirelessly, valiantly, or sacrificially from the age of 18
to 58 in the hope of collecting seashells for thirty years thereafter.&nbsp; These people often forfeit too much along the
way and, with little to do in their twilight years that &lsquo;gives back&rsquo; or &lsquo;adds
to others,&rsquo; they generally find &lsquo;retirement&rsquo; to be the most onerous season of
all.&nbsp; Especially in light of declining
health and barely-known children who have long since moved on and whose wings eclipsed any shallow roots.




Don&rsquo;t wither and fade in the 4th
quarter of your life; find something to do that is altruistic and contributory, just as Bob
Buford describes so wisely in Halftime.&nbsp; After all, if the first forty years are
about success, you owe it to
yourself&mdash;and others&mdash;to make the final forty about significance.

When is Workaholism...Bad?

Check-check, test-test...is this thing on?
&bull;&bull;&bull;
After 180 days offline, Blake's Blog is&mdash;once again&mdash;cooking with propane!
Sorry about that. Wonderfully consuming projects that keep the lights on and fridge full, a quick summer vacation, a server crash with nefarious tendrils, work trips, concerts, campus visits, covering for a beloved colleague on maternity leave, Homecomings, Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday preparations, Homeland and Downton Abbey midnight marathons with my bride, droll doctor visits, standard errands, year-end altruism, ruminations (and procrastinations) about website re-designs...such things, evidently, trip a man up and slow things down.
Heck, we never even got around to writing (much less publishing) our autumn or winter LEATHLET newsletters. Again, our collective and my personal apologies.
But here we are again, and ringing in a New Year. The Hobbit is released, Django is enthusiastically unchained, the Trip is Guilty of hilarity, Jack has successfully Reached, Les Mis is jubilant, Life of Pi is infinitely inscrutable and only rarely computes, Lincoln was a phenomenal tele-play, the Guardians Rose (but did anyone see or hear them?), Skyfall rocketed, This is 40 is right, the controversial Promised Land is coming and, most excitingly, The Impossible and Zero Dark Thirty and Beautiful Creatures are calling our names. I love the guilty pleasures of pop culture. They (along with dinner rolls slathered in cinnamon butter) are such pleasant reprieves, however small and insignificant.&nbsp;
One of my 2013 personal aims is to read several works by Charles Dickens. Born 200 years ago this year, Dickens carols my name each and every Christmas, but I'm most eager to read American Notes for General Circulation and see how he walloped America upside its head like Billy Jack.&nbsp;
&bull;&bull;&bull;
I hope 2012 was your best year yet, and that 2013 will top it.
Momentarily, I'm off to read the transcript of a dear friend's forthcoming book, The Good Will Leader. (More about that next year.)
Then, just a few more holiday excursions, a couple remaining parties, evasive movies, gift returns, automobile repairs, financial closings, and then it'll be time to yank the starter-rope once again and rev-up the engine for another leg of the journey.
&nbsp;
Hugs to everyone in your life. Enjoy your moments, relish health, and count your blessings. They are typically more bountiful than meets the cursory eye.

...and We're Back!

Sorry; I&#39;ve just tweeted about Hank Haney&#39;s The Big Miss, but 140 characters is too small a tapestry to capture all that I want to get off my chest.&nbsp; But still, I&#39;ll keep it relatively short.










I just wanted to add that, sadly, Tiger&#39;s career (and professional and personal life) appears to be a staggering display of self-absorption.&nbsp; It is the pinnacle of narcissism.&nbsp; A modern day Greek tragedy describing a sailor lost at sea.&nbsp; A man with no north star, no sense of perspective, and no acceptance of any meaning, purpose or&nbsp;possibility beyond himself.










In reading it, one is blinded by the array of missed opportunities to build bridges between sports, health, research, education, ages, races, cultures.&nbsp; Tiger could have positively impacted and improved the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of men, women and children through virtuous, altruistic efforts.&nbsp; But he failed to lift a finger to include people in his life, on his board, on his team who had the wherewithal, connections, funds and vision to do so properly because he insisted on maintaining control and focus on that tiny white ball.










I am reminded of the maxim, &quot;He who is wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.&quot;










He proved a faithless husband who chose vitriolic misogyny (sorry, it&#39;s much more than &#39;just&#39; philandering) over marriage and&nbsp;traded his name, reputation, potential and legacy for temporary, vacuous thrills.










Hank&nbsp;reaches deep to explain or&nbsp;excuse Tiger&#39;s behaviors,&nbsp;seduced himself into the abyss of awe.&nbsp; I don&#39;t care&nbsp;one iota about&nbsp;Tiger&#39;s&nbsp;swing, his record, his endorsements, his wealth, his fame, his legend, Stanford, his Navy SEALs training, his friendships with pro athletes and celebrities, his estates, his private planes, his Nike sporting goods, his Learning Centers, his sponsored tournaments, his video games or his popsicles.










What I care about is the fact that this potentially extraordinary human being, blessed with&nbsp;talent more than sufficient to raise the water level for others, did not.










He could have established a&nbsp;sports program in this country that might have reduced childhood obesity or diabetes.










He could have brokered deals to establish sports&nbsp;scholarships in every state.










He could have been an ambassador for character.










He could have been a role model.










He could have been an authentic&nbsp;friend.&nbsp; An encourager.&nbsp; An inspiration and a guide.










What Hank justifies as &quot;The Package&quot; (Tiger&#39;s combustible combination of strengths and weaknesses&nbsp;that define&nbsp;who he is and why he&#39;s good) don&#39;t pass the sniff test.&nbsp; By any textbook, 10 x 0 = 0, so no matter the quality of Tiger&#39;s swing or golf game, he has proven, to date, to simply be an &#39;athlete,&#39; and a distracted one at best.










Athleticism and Wins&nbsp;are zero substitute for an honorable&nbsp;life well lived.










I sincerely hope that Tiger experiences a true awakening in his life but, as we know, without a change of heart, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.










Tiger did not become a better person with the perspective of having lost his beloved father; he did not become a better person when he&nbsp;lost his marriage; he did not become a better person when he completed therapy after being vilified so publicly for sex addiction.&nbsp; But perhaps he still may.&nbsp; He&nbsp;remains young. 










Should the lightbulb go off and everything click, he could very well experience five coming decades of tremendous social and societal contribution.&nbsp; He sits at a very unique nexus, one from which he could do a great deal of good.










Let&#39;s pray that he chooses the right path; the one of selflessness, humility, love, contribution, true excellence&nbsp;and life rather than self-destruction.

The Bigger Miss

A
tale about toothpaste manufacturing&mdash;from which we all can learn a thing or two.
It comes to me by way of a client, who has submitted it to snopes.com, in the
hope of getting to the bottom of it. 




A
toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes without
the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and
people with experience designing production lines will tell you how
difficult it is to have everything&nbsp;occur&nbsp;so precisely that every
single unit coming&nbsp;off the line&nbsp;is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in
the environment (which can&rsquo;t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean
one must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed&nbsp;throughout the line so
customers all the way down&nbsp;at the supermarket don&rsquo;t get&nbsp;angry and buy
another product instead.




Understanding
how important this is, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in
the company together and they decided to start a new project in which they
would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem,
as the engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra
effort.




The
project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP,
third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a
fantastic solution&mdash;on time, on budget, high quality and everyone&nbsp;involved&nbsp;in the&nbsp;project
had a great time.




They
solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell
and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box&nbsp;weighed less than it should. The
line would stop, and someone&nbsp;would walk over and yank the defective box off
it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.




A
while later, the CEO decided to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing
results!&nbsp; No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were
put in place. Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market
share. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s some money well spent,&rdquo; he said, before looking closely at the
other statistics in the report.




As it
turned out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three
weeks of production use. It should&rsquo;ve been picking up at least a dozen a day,
so maybe there was something wrong with the report? He filed a bug against it
and, after some investigation, the engineers came back&nbsp;and said&nbsp;the report was
actually correct. The scales really weren&#39;t picking up any defects, because all
boxes that got to that point on the conveyor belt were good.




Puzzled,
the CEO traveled down to the factory and walked up to the part of the line where
the precision scales were installed.&nbsp; A few feet before the scale, there was a
$20 desk fan blowing the empty boxes&nbsp;off the belt and into a bin.




&ldquo;Oh,
that,&rdquo; remarked a worker, &ldquo;One of the guys put it there &rsquo;cause he was
tired of walking over every time the bell rang.&quot;




&nbsp;

What Wondrous Things One Can Learn from Toothpaste Manufacturing

What a clean, simple little <a href="https://charlierose.com/videos/14409" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview by Charlie Rose this past week with Danny Meyer</a>, one of NYC's most successful restaurateurs.&nbsp; (And all around nice fella.)
Danny&nbsp;tells a neat story about a doctoral student who, years ago, approached him and asked, "Why do I feel a certain way in your restaurants, that I don't feel anywhere else?"
"Come work for me," he proposed.
She did.
And ultimately, some 10-12 years later, her dissertation became the foundation of <a href="https://www.ushgnyc.com/creatingraves/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a new company</a>&nbsp;(predicated on the notion of 'hospitality quotient'),&nbsp;whose sole desire is to propagate hospitable cultures.&nbsp; Into all sorts of organizations.
Cool stuff.&nbsp; 
I hope you'll check it out.

Need More Hospitality?

"Why, when I point to the moon, do you stare at my finger?"
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&mdash;Chinese Proverb
&nbsp;
Having seen the innards of many organizations, I&rsquo;m sometimes flabbergasted (as you are)&nbsp;by&nbsp;a periodic&nbsp;myopia that handicaps good decision-making.&nbsp;&nbsp;
For example, I once observed a $12 million dollar problem with a $60,000 solution get waylaid, nitpicked, delayed&nbsp;and ultimately kyboshed by a 24-year old power-tripping new&nbsp;supervisor in the Finance department.&nbsp;&nbsp;
And I once sat in a plane at the gate for nearly two hours&mdash;along with 184 other passengers&mdash;as flight attendants waited for a member of the ground crew&rsquo;s union to arrive with latex gloves and a trash bag to remove a broken plate that had been found in a seat-pocket in First Class. &nbsp;There&rsquo;s a $35,000 problem with a $2 answer if I ever saw one.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Where tacticians see costs, strategists should strive to see the price of a problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Here are two examples that may help illustrate the point.&nbsp; The first is from a client (thanks, Mark!) and the second is hearsay&mdash;but makes the point nonetheless.
&nbsp;
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">* * * 
A company&rsquo;s new Operations personnel were having difficulty getting a piece of equipment back up and running. &nbsp;It had changed over the years to a computer-based operating system and, despite bringing in the experts, the equipment continued to break down. 
One of the newbies remembered hearing about a guy named Frank who had left as part of a re-org after running the Operations department for a number of years. &nbsp;Being desperate, they gave Frank a call.&nbsp; Frank said that, although he was enjoying playing a lot of golf and while it might require him to push back his tee-time, he would see what he could do to help. &nbsp;The manager said that he would make it worth Frank&rsquo;s while.
Frank arrived at the plant, went to the unit, and asked everyone to leave the room while he listened to the equipment. &nbsp;After about ten minutes, he pulled a piece of chalk out of his pocket and placed an 'X' on the equipment before calling the manager back in the room. &nbsp;Frank told the manager that if he opened up the shell where he put the X, got down on his knees, and looked up at a 25&deg; angle underneath the pulley, he would find where an arm had broken and that everything would run just fine after the arm was replaced.&nbsp; In a matter of another fifteen minutes the machine was repaired and running great.
The manager asked Frank how much he owed him. &nbsp;Frank thought about it for a minute and said, &ldquo;$100,000.&rdquo; &nbsp;The manager was shocked but didn&rsquo;t want to show it, so he decided to ask Frank to itemize the work and deliver an invoice to him in the morning so he could submit it to his boss for payment. &nbsp;Not only did he want to pass the buck, the manager thought Frank would see how unreasonable that amount of money was for the short period of time he spent on the job.
The next morning he found a handwritten invoice with Frank&rsquo;s name and address at the top. &nbsp;Underneath it read,
One white chalk&nbsp;X...................... &nbsp;&nbsp;$1.00
Knowing where to put it.............. $99,999.00
&nbsp;
Total........................................... &nbsp; &nbsp;$100,000.00
&nbsp;
Moral of the Story: 
Strategic leaders see the price of a problem rather than the picayune cost of solving it. &nbsp;As a leader once said to me, &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t charge by the bullet, we charge for the kill.&rdquo;
&nbsp;
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">* * *
Here&rsquo;s the second story to drive home the importance of&nbsp;having the right strategic perspective&nbsp;(I&rsquo;ve adopted dollars instead of francs to make the value obvious): 
A young mother and her daughter ran into Picasso in a Paris bistro. &nbsp;&ldquo;Would you be so kind as to draw a picture of my daughter and me?&rdquo;
&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; he replied. &nbsp;With that, he grabbed a piece of paper and sketched away. &nbsp;A few minutes later, he handed the mother the paper and smiled warmly.
The mother looked at the drawing and thanked him.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s beautiful!&rdquo; she exclaimed.&nbsp; Thank you so much. &nbsp;How can I repay you?&rdquo;
&ldquo;You cannot. &nbsp;The picture you hold in your hands is worth $10,000.&rdquo;
&ldquo;$10,000?&rdquo; she gasped. &nbsp;&ldquo;How can it be worth $10,000? &nbsp;It took you less than ten minutes to do this!&rdquo;
&ldquo;Actually, it took me fifty years.&rdquo;
&nbsp;
Excerpts courtesy&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-Strategic-Mind-Visionary-Architect/dp/0979883016/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1334954355&amp;sr=8-3" target="_blank">Cultivating the Strategic Mind</a>, 2007, pp. 88-89.

The Value of Strategic Perspective: From Frank to Picasso

Earlier this week, perhaps our most beloved client expressed the difficulty their organizational leaders have "incorporating strategic thinking into their daily routine."
Because this challenge is more universal than unique, I thought I would offer up some suggestions that might remind each of us how to do this&mdash;and more consistently.&nbsp; After all, it&rsquo;s tough to see "the theatre of war" within the fray and fog of it.
Attached is a <a target="_blank">seven-page, 3000 word summary with 15 recommendations</a> for how you can be Strategic...Now.
<a href="../../blogging/file.axd?file=2012%2f4%2fBeingStrategicDaily_v3.2.pdf">BeingStrategicDaily_v3.2.pdf (449.10 kb)</a>
Tally-ho!

Being Strategic—Now!

102 years after his death, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (&quot;Mark Twain&quot;) is still lecturing and teaching&nbsp;as effectively as if he were here.&nbsp; 


Sunday afternoon, I stumbled across Ken Burns&#39; 2001 PBS documentary: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/">http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/</a>


I finished watching it last night, and&nbsp;it&#39;s still reverberating.


I&#39;ve stood in his Hannibal, MO home&mdash;which is unfit for a hobbit,&nbsp;whereas his Hartford, CT home (splendid in every way) and&nbsp;Stormfield (the home of his passing in Redding, CT) both show how far he progressed.&nbsp; He began as a&nbsp;journeyman printer and cub-pilot on the Mississippi, then&nbsp;proceeded to become&nbsp;a&nbsp;reporter earning $25/week in Nevada, then $40/week in San Francisco...penultimately becoming&nbsp;the nation&#39;s most well-known writer (spending $30,000/year on household expenses at a time when most Americans earned less than $500/year) and&nbsp;ultimately the world&#39;s most well-known writer (the result of a &#39;round the world lecture circuit conceived to help him&nbsp;climb out from under $200,000 in staggering debt created through a number of ill-conceived &#39;get rich quick&#39; schemes and speculative NYSE investments).&nbsp; 


Along the way, he lost his infant son...his eldest daughter...his wife...and a second daughter.&nbsp; He is heralded today as &quot;The Lincoln of Literature,&quot; primarily because&nbsp;he stands (figuratively) head and shoulders above other writers.&nbsp; But I can&#39;t help but attribute a portion of this title to their shared number of tragedies.&nbsp; 


His work, as everyone notes, became darker and angrier and more bitter in his final years.&nbsp; Gone was the Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog author of 1865.&nbsp; 


The pen-name he chose for himself, &quot;Mark Twain,&quot; is a river term meaning &quot;two fathoms,&quot; or twelve feet...the depth at which&nbsp;a boat can proceed and&nbsp;safely navigate.&nbsp; But interestingly, the term can be looked at conversely, as well.&nbsp; Two fathoms is, depending on one&#39;s perspective, also the depth at which water becomes too shallow to navigate.&nbsp; After all,&nbsp;12&#39; is the demarcation and, depending&nbsp;on one&#39;s perspective, it&#39;s deep enough...or&nbsp;just this side of sufficiently deep.&nbsp; 


Were he all knowing, I&#39;m confident Sam couldn&#39;t have chosen a more perfect pseudonym for himself.&nbsp; After all, his writing, like his life, was a confluence of joyous highs and cataclysmic lows.&nbsp; On the one hand,&nbsp;his name was a household name the world over.&nbsp; At the same time, he was financially bankrupt.&nbsp; And one year, he, his wife and&nbsp;three of their four surviving children are celebrating a magical Christmas in their Hartford home, and the very next&nbsp;Christmas they are continents apart&mdash;and&nbsp;Camelot is lost.&nbsp; 


As a morality tale, Clemens&#39; life is rather banal. Sure, he had a volcanic temper, a&nbsp;frequently depressive mood, drank too much and smoked 40 cigars a day for most of his adult life. But other than losing his wife&#39;s inheritance and his own personal fortune through a handful of bizarre&nbsp;&#39;inventions,&#39; he was a straight arrow.&nbsp; 


More to the point, I believe, he is&nbsp;a reminder of&nbsp;the ephemeral nature of life, how elusive &#39;success,&#39; and how precious and fragile our time on this tiny orb.&nbsp;&nbsp;Though I might imagine he&#39;d remark, &quot;I&#39;m merely&nbsp;signpost&nbsp;1.75 billion, so far.&quot;&nbsp; 


I see the series re-broadcasts on Thursday, April 12th.&nbsp; Do yourself a favor and record it.&nbsp; Or, if so inclined and anachronistic enough to still own a player, snag&nbsp;yourself a copy of the DVD and enjoy.&nbsp; It&#39;s 3+ hours of brilliant quips and quotes that, with the exception of Will Rogers, are one of a kind.

Mark Twain: Still Teaching

The following comes to me via email from a dear friend and client.&nbsp; In the words of Mark Twain, &quot;I am&nbsp;repeating it word for word as I heard it.&quot;&nbsp; I hope it informs you as much as it informed me.&nbsp; Happy Reading, &mdash;blake.


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&nbsp;


Intriguing
piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day by Jonah Lerner, based on
a book he has written entitled &quot;Imagine: How Creativity Works.&rdquo;&nbsp; In
essence, he argues that &ldquo;Creativity is not magic, and there&#39;s no such thing as
a creative type.&nbsp; Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a
blessing bestowed by the angels.&nbsp; It&#39;s a skill.&nbsp; Anyone can learn to be creative
and to get better at it.&rdquo; 
 
Some excerpts: 
 
&ldquo;New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing
products and to solve the toughest problems.&nbsp; A surprisingly concrete set of
lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves
and our work.&rdquo; 
 
&ldquo;Imagination was once thought to be a single thing, separate from other kinds
of cognition.&nbsp; The latest research suggests that this assumption is false.&nbsp; It
turns out that we use &lsquo;creativity&rsquo; as a catchall term for a variety of
cognitive tools, each of which applies to particular sorts of problems and is
coaxed to action in a particular way.&rdquo; 
 
&ldquo;The new research also suggests how best to approach the thorniest problems.&nbsp; We
tend to assume that experts are the creative geniuses in their own fields.&nbsp; But
big breakthroughs often depend on the naive daring of outsiders.&nbsp; For prompting
creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination
with fields outside our areas of expertise.&rdquo; 
 
The story makes the point that there are different kinds of creativity&mdash;the
kind that comes from sweat and hard work, and the kind that comes suddenly,
without warning, because the person in question has put himself or herself in a
position to be receptive to inspiration.&nbsp; (Apparently, relaxation helps.&nbsp; So do
booze.&nbsp; Though the combination is not a guarantee of creative genius!) 
 
Indeed, Lehrer makes the point that the human brain is incredibly adaptable and
able to be creative: 
 
&ldquo;If different kinds of creative problems benefit from different kinds of
creative thinking, how can we ensure that we&#39;re thinking in the right way at
the right time?&nbsp; When should we daydream and go for a relaxing stroll, and when
should we keep on sketching and toying with possibilities? 
 
&ldquo;The good news is that the human mind has a surprising natural ability to assess
the kind of creativity we need.&nbsp; Researchers call these intuitions &lsquo;feelings of
knowing,&rsquo; and they occur when we suspect that we can find the answer, if only
we keep on thinking.&nbsp; Numerous studies have demonstrated that, when it comes to
problems that don&#39;t require insights, the mind is remarkably adept at assessing
the likelihood that a problem can be solved&mdash;knowing whether we&#39;re getting
&lsquo;warmer&rsquo; or not, without knowing the solution.&rdquo;




KC&#39;s
View:
I&rsquo;m particularly fascinated buy the 10 rules for lighting the creative spark
offered by Lehrer; apparently, one is more likely to be innovative if one is
relaxing in a blue room located in a big city,listening or watching stand-up
comedy, after having just come home from a trip abroad.&nbsp; Go figure. 
 
At any rate, it is a fascinating piece, and it looks like a great book. 
 
You can read the entire article <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_10_1">here</a>. 
 
And you can find out more about the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Creativity-Works-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0547386079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1331615411&amp;sr=8-1">here</a>.

Igniting The Sparks of Innovation & Creativity

The following (also) comes to me via email from a dear friend and client.&nbsp; In the words of Mark Twain, "I am repeating it word for word as I heard it."&nbsp;&nbsp;I hope it informs you as much as it informed me. &nbsp;Happy Reading, &mdash;blake.
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&nbsp;
Fortune has good piece about Amazon.com, noting that &ldquo;If such a thing as corporate DNA exists, it has animated the rise of the last decade's most successful technology companies. Google had a relentless focus on data, Apple a Zen-like obsession with simplicity, and Facebook a world of social connections to mine.&nbsp; Amazon has relied on an altogether more prosaic trait: thriftiness.&rdquo; The theory is that by being frugal internally, Amazon can charge its customers less, which becomes one of its keystone competitive advantages. &ldquo;For Amazon, savings are more than a competitive matter,&rdquo; the story says.&nbsp; &ldquo;Indeed, the company holds &lsquo;frugality&rsquo; up as one of 14 leadership principles.&nbsp; (It &lsquo;breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention,&rsquo; the company says on its corporate site.)&nbsp; That goes back to 1994, when CEO Jeff Bezos jump-started the e-commerce company and jury-rigged a desk out of a door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Door desks&rsquo; became a popular staple within the company years after it went public, and remained &lsquo;the quintessential example&rsquo; of Amazon's frugality, ex-employee Greg Linden explained in 2006.&nbsp; The company still hands out the &lsquo;Door Desk Award,&rsquo; a title given internally to select employees who have a &lsquo;well-built idea&rsquo; that creates a significant savings for the company and enables lower prices for customers.&rdquo;
&nbsp;
KC's View: The complete story is worth reading by <a href="https://fortune.com/2012/11/16/amazons-jeff-bezos-the-ultimate-disrupter/">clicking here</a>. Frugality is not a new corporate virtue; it certainly has been a core value at Walmart for decades.&nbsp; But at a time when there are a lot of stories out there about companies where top executives seem more concerned with their own compensation packages and the trappings of office than they are with the people on the front lines and the very real day-to-day problems that they face, maybe it is fair to suggest that some folks ought to rethink their priorities.