Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Know Pride is Universal

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped the last four years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Remy and Tara, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Know Pride is Universal:  I serve on the board of Eden Reforestation, an organization that plants trees to save lives in Ethiopia, Madagascar and Haiti.  On August 14^th, 2013 several board members were with President and Founder Steve Fitch in Ethiopia and had an opportunity to visit World Vision’s Humbo Project.  This is a reforestation project near Sodo which is ironically close to our daughter’s birth village of Areka.  Like many reforestation projects, the origin of Humbo’s issue is increased population density in subsistence farming communities which causes people to encroach into the forest for expansion of farms, grazing land, charcoal production, and collection of firewood and construction materials.  And when the forest dies, the people suffer.

Highland! Highland!

We wanted to visit this World Vision site because they have a community based approach in which the entire community owns the land and elects leaders to run the project.  Worknesh Mekonnen, the Deputy National Director led the two-truck caravan that navigated three to four hours of bone-jarring ruts punctuated by squealing children racing alongside our truck yelling, “George Bush! Highland, Highland, Highland!” Highland actually makes sense – it is the original bottled water in Ethiopia and kids collect the bottles.  George Bush?  George don’t get worry about identity theft, two years ago the children yelled “Obama, Obama” when I rode through rural Wolayta.   Mr. President, I promise I won’t mislabel any selfies…

We dismounted the ancient Land-Cruisers and prepared for our two mile walk into the project.  But first, a short visit with the man who leads the community effort; the Elder of the Forest Development Cooperative Society. I feel underdressed as he shakes my hand through the sleeve of a suit jacket.  We stoop to enter the one-room headquarters of the Society.  A dozen people cram into the 70 square foot structure.  The first thing that catches your eye are charts and graphs of progress.  Directly in my line of sight awards decorate the walls, “Worknesh, please tell the chairman congratulations on his accomplishments, he and his people have done amazing work”

The cool part about translated conversation is you get the same broadcast delay used in live TV.  I was watching the chairman, who sat between two of his deputies, who were in turn flanked by more members of the team.  I could see the exact second the information transmitted, his eyes flicked briefly to the pictures on the wall, his back straightened slightly, chest out just a bit and he blinked quickly at each ‘side’ deputy, “Amesegënallô”.  Thank you.  There are few faces stitched on a human more beautiful than satisfaction in job well done.  Not the bad kind of “pride goes before the fall”; but the good kind of pride.  The pride in looking at the thing you have created with your own hands and knowing it is good.  I saw that same face 8,551 miles away several months earlier.

A little over an hour after she opened Are You My Mother, Remy haltingly spat out, “Yes, I know who you are,” said the baby bird.  “You are a bird, and you are my mother” She lay back in her bed mentally exhausted.  Remy had arrived in the States having never been to school and with no more than a few words of English.  Adding to the degree of difficulty rating, the Amharic alphabet does not really give you a frame of reference when trying to read in English, “እወድሻለሁ።” Got it? Of course! This actually means “I love you” – one of the few phrases I have learned.

“Remy – congratulations on finishing your first book!” Her eyes flicked briefly at the book, her back straightened slightly, her chest puffed out just a bit and she blinked quickly at her sister, “Thank you Dod” Same face as the Society Chairman.  Pride. 

What does a man planting trees in Sodo and a girl reading her first book in Austin have to do with leadership?  Money does not motivate. Sure it can attract people and maybe keep them. It might even provide short term bursts of energy.  But pride?  Pride in your own work?  Pride is universal and it is a deep sustaining motivator of the soul.  The leader’s job is to provide people with the anticipation of being proud of their work and the resources to help them create something wonderful.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me” – Steve Jobs

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Love Equal Opportunity

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped the last four years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem (Remy) and Tarikua (Tara), to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Love Equal Opportunity:  On January 3^rd, 2013 my wife and I were in the car with the girls and had ‘one of those moments’.  ‘One of those moments’ are the flip-side on the 45 rpm called adoption with an A-side titled ‘what the heck did we do?’.  The first time I spun that vinyl was on March 9^th, 2012 getting on Ethiopia Airlines flight 702, the same flight that was just hijacked about a week ago.  I looked across the airplane aisle as my wife and I book-ended our two new daughters and mouthed the words, ‘what the heck did we do?’  If you knew ahead of time the cost to adopt you might not do it.  I don’t mean the financial cost, I just mean the emotional cost. 

The A-side gets more playing time, but much like You Can't Always Get What You Want – by the Stones or God Only Knows by the Beach Boys, the B-side can surprise and bring great joy.  Last January we got an amazing B-side.  The type of tune that makes every difficult moment worth it; the song that wipes away the cost.  The girls were in the back of the car chatting in Eng-haric…they were losing their Amharic but were not yet fluent in English.  They were talking about “what they want to be when they grow up” Remy announced loudly, “I will be Doctor” and Tara murmured softly, “I will be Teacher”  Brettne (my wife) and I looked at each other, her eyes shining and we exchanged thoughts with no words….are you kidding me?  From the streets of Awassa to Doctor and Teacher?  Yes they can.  As Remy once told me, “Dod, I can do anything except become the President of the United States”.

As an adoptive parent you consume all the information you can get about the world of your new children.  Our girls come from a part of the globe were it is tough to become Doctor and Teacher.  The regions that started the decade with the largest challenges in education, the Arab States, South and West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, have all made progress.  But there is still work to be done, more than half of the world’s out-of-school children live in sub-Saharan Africa.  Even though it is fourth on the list, Ethiopia has made dramatic progress.  From 1999 to 2008, Ethiopia reduced the number of children out of school by about 4 million, and it now has a real prospect of achieving Universal Primary Education by 2015.

The challenges for girl’s education are more complex; fifty-two countries have a ratio of girls to boys in primary school of 0.95 or less, and in twenty-six it is 0.90 or less.  In Afghanistan there are 66 girls enrolled for every 100 boys and in Somalia only 55 girls are enrolled for every 100 boys. Had the world achieved gender parity at the primary school level in 2008, another 3.6 million girls would have been in school.  3.6 million Doctor and Teacher…

Equal treatment in education for girls and boys is a source of economic growth, job creation and increased living standards.  But it also saves lives. Evidence from household surveys points to maternal education as one of the strongest factors influencing children’s prospects for survival. If the average child mortality rate for sub-Saharan Africa were to fall to the level for children born to women with some secondary education, there would be 1.8 million fewer deaths – a 41% reduction.  Equal opportunity equals growth and life.  Equal opportunity equals hope.

What does girl’s education in sub-Saharan Africa have to do with leadership?  Napoleon said, “A leader is a dealer in hope” Hope is confidence that tomorrow will be better even if we are not quite sure of how it will happen.  Hope is the glue of every great organization…to create the future you have to believe it can happen.  As the leader, why would you risk it all by denying someone on your team equal access to hope?  Winning requires the best from everyone; the highest use of their talent.  Winning requires that all believe they can be Doctor and Teacher.

“All of us do not have equal talents, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents” – John F. Kennedy

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Don't Ask 'What Are You Doing For Me?'

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped the last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Don’t Ask ‘What Are You Doing For Me?’ Waikiki Beach is located on the south shore of Honolulu in the middle of the world-famous neighborhood of Waikiki; once a playground for Hawaiian royalty. Known in Hawaiian as “spouting waters,” Waikiki was introduced to the world when its first hotel, the Moana Surfrider, was built on its shores in 1901.  It was from here that the famed five-time Olympic medalist swimmer Duke Kahanamoku revived and re-introduced the world to the sport of surfing.  Duke even brought surfing to Australia in 1915 by demonstrating the ancient Hawaiian board riding technique at Freshwater near Sydney.

Learning to surf off of Waikiki is fairly easy.  The waves come in gently and reliably, one to two feet high or knee to thigh height.  In addition ‘the coach’ can walk pretty far out into the ocean and still be chest to shoulder depth in the water.  Perfect position from which to give a longboard a gentle nudge.  Ready to nudge 100 yards offshore of Waikiki is where I found myself on July 4^th, 2013.  My oldest son Will was far out in the ocean, already putting his snowboard prowess to the test on some bigger waves.  My youngest son Sam was debating whether or not to surf and I was frustrated.  I had just realized that my five year old shoulder surgery was going to keep me from surfing.

I am from Hawaii; Kama'aina not Kanaka Maoli but my grandfather did move to the islands in 1908 so we have some roots there.   We have brought our family ‘home’ often yet this was the first trip the land of my ohana since the girls arrived and I was committed that they experience all things Hawaiian.  Being home and not trying the surf was like going to Island Snow in Kailua and not having shave ice.  Meskerem (now Remy) must have seen me looking like Eeyore…she stepped up, “I’ll try Dod”.

Remy Kahanamoku

Natural.  Second time up Remy rides to shore.  Five more times she catches a wave with a slight push from the winged surfer and I am over-the-moon excited.  I walk across the water to the beach in my exuberance to congratulate her on this new found and critical life skill, “Remy – one year ago in Africa did you ever imagine that you would be surfing?!” 

Remy looked at me as an entomologist might study an odd walking stick.  Actually, I am being kind to myself.  She really just looked at me like I was the village idiot, “Dod, in Africa we don’t think about surfing” Uh, of course not Remy, what was I thinking?

Zap! Pow! Bam! I realized in her comment that I was excited because I got Remy to do something that was important to me.  Sure she had fun.  But the entire time I was coaching her in the waves my intent was getting her to do something for me.

What does surfing off of Oahu have to do with leadership?  There are only two types of leaders in this world.  There is the leader that somewhere down deep in their core walks in every day thinking, “What will my team do for me today?” and then there is the leader wired right, “What will I do for my team today?”  By this I do not mean, “What will I do for my team today that will make them like me?”  Your team does not need to like you; they need to be successful and your job is to do the things necessary for them to be proud of their work.  Sometimes those are things that may not make them like you.  But with the right intent it is still service.  Leaders don’t ask ‘what are you doing for me’

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant” – Max de Pree

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Don't Dwell on the Differences

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped the last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Don’t Dwell on the Differences:  There is a great Ethiopian restaurant in Austin called Aster's Ethiopian Restaurant and I found myself in their parking lot 72 hours after we brought the girls to Austin.    Meskerem and Tarikua opened the car door and became giddy with excitement and not because they could magically divine the sign.  They were hypnotized by the smell.  The scent of authentic Ethiopian food is unique; much like a curry tells you the food is Indian or strong garlic announces Italian food.  Berbere is the spice mix in Ethiopian food that makes it smell and taste, well – Ethiopian (if you make the spice, don’t leave out the Fenugreek).  Smell is the oldest sense and some maintain it has the ability to bring back memories.  Aster’s took the girls back to home to Ethiopia and the news spread rapidly in our neighborhood that berbere was comforting to the two new Americans. 

We are fortunate to live in Austin with its’ Keep Austin Weird state of mind.  Austin has a friendly accepting culture of artistic and individual expression.  But how would our neighbors react to the adoption?  We really did not worry about bigotry, but Ethiopian children in Westlake Hills?  The racial makeup of our area of the city is 95.60% white, so even if folks were accepting, it was still new.  Tarikua tested them (and me) quickly.  Early one morning I was washing my car and she decided the bucket was her bathtub.  She stripped down, sat in the bucket and then took off down the street like a character in a Sandra Boyton book.  I found myself running down the street chasing a naked Ethiopian girl yelling, “Come back to daddy!” This was not my original plan on introducing my daughter to the neighbors but no police were called to the scene; I was grateful our neighbors were accepting and supportive. 

The support came to full bloom in the meal parade that hit our house.  For at least six weeks the smell of berbere spice was ever present.  Every night a different neighbor came by with food for the family; they had all learned about the magic of injera, doro wat, sega wat, allicha, and fir-fir.  My wife and I enjoy a good glass of red wine from time to time and soon our back patio became a combination wine bar and play scape. 

One of my favorite moments of the journey came during one of those early evenings.  Our next door neighbors came over; they have two children and their youngest daughter is the same age as Tarikua (they have since become best friends, the picture is from the first night they met).  As we enjoyed a great glass of cabernet, a baker’s dozen kids scrambled onto the trampoline.  Loud laughter filled the spring evening.  We looked up and my older daughter was directing some new game.  My neighbor shook his head in amazement, “All those kids are from two different worlds, they cannot even talk to each other and somehow they have immediately found a way to play together – they don’t even know they are different” 

The cheapest way to lead is by building a wall around your team saying, “It is us against them” We are good, they are bad.  We work hard, they do not.  We know the answer, they are stupid.  You see these types of self-important teams everywhere.  Since the beginning of time leaders have used the tribal nature of humans to build walls and lead from position of ‘different’ but real leaders don’t do that. 

Diversity is great and should be celebrated.  But celebrating diversity of humanity is different than leading by highlighting differences.   Our organizations are made up of functions, roles, levels and geographies.  It is all too easy to say, “We are doing great in marketing, but sales is not doing their job” or “The Americans just don’t understand how things are done here in Europe”…I have even heard, “The third floor gets more work done than the fourth floor”

What do trampolines have to do with leadership?  The application is Leaders Don’t Dwell on the Differences.  Leadership brings different people together and points them towards something worthy.  Leaders are for something, not against others.   Leaders find and celebrate unity.

“Where there is unity there is always victory” - Publilius Syrus 

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Explain

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped the last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Explain:  Some of the mind-bending aspects of the adoption arrive in common events of everyday life.  For example, if I tell you I will meet you on Thursday and today is Tuesday your brain creates a container of time that you understand.  The concept of time is self-evident.  An hour consists of a certain number of minutes, a day of hours and a year of days. We may define time, but we rarely think about the fundamental nature of time.

Ancient cultures such as Incan, Mayan, Hopi, the Babylonians and others have a concept of a wheel of time, a non-linear view of time as cyclical and consisting of repeating ages.  The western world tends to follow the Roman concept that time is linear.  Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian Time.

Meskerem and Tarikua arrived with no concept of time; wheel or line.  They are from a small town called Areka in in the Wolaita Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia.  Did they know what a year was?  Nope.  A calendar?  They had never seen one.  Clock or watch?  Might have been a Eudiometer for all they knew.  Where do you start?  Fortunately that pliant organ called the brain seeks to understand.  If it was Friday and we talked about something happening Sunday the girls would say, “We eat?” Yes “We sleep?” Yes “We wake?” Yes “We eat?” Yes “We play?” Yes “We watch TV?” Yes…You get the picture.  The girls created time by counting events that would occur.  If they understood the events and knew the number of events, their brain could create a container of time.  We had to fight the curse of knowledge to explain a basic concept like time to someone who does not know the notion.

Chip and Dan Heath wrote a book called Made to Stick and outlined the danger of vague strategy statements.  They contend leaders love directives like “Delight Customers” or “Improve Sales Productivity” because of the curse of knowledge. A leader may have years of immersion in the logic of certain subjects.  When s/he speaks abstractly they are summarizing the wealth of data in their head. But to folks not familiar with the underlying meaning it sounds like Charlie Brown's Teacher.  As a result, strategies don’t stick.  “I want you to focus on the Customer Journey” to someone on my team can be as abstract as “I will be gone at work for three days” is to an Ethiopian daughter.

A leader can add an unintended accelerant to the curse of knowledge by blocking the ability for an employee to seek to understand.  I made this mistake at a software company a few years ago.  I started with a vague strategy statement, “I want us to focus on managing the pipeline, not just the forecast” and then increased the degree of difficulty for the team by inadvertently blocking their ability to ‘not understand’.  How?  When I talked to the team about the new strategy I used words like, “Really, this is not complicated…this is one of the most basic task of field leadership” My intent was honorable, I was trying to tell them it was easy.  Yet making statements like, “This is a low IQ task to master” built a barrier to their ability to understand.  If I thought it was simple, how could they come to me and admit they did not get it?

What does a wrinkle in time have to do with leadership?  The application is “Leaders Explain” A good leader takes the time end effort to explain issues, strategies and plans in language and stories that the team can understand.  And that leader will give the team the freedom to ‘not understand’.

“A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it”- Marcel Proust 

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Tell Stories

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Tell Stories:  September 5^th, 2012 was a crisp evening for an al fresco glass of wine in Dallas.  Being outside in Dallas was odd; I live in Austin and spend a lot of time in Dallas – just never outside.  If you travel by air from Austin to most anywhere, all flights lead through sprawling DFW Airport.  Rumor has it that there are more top-tier AA Executive Platinum flyers living in Austin than any other city.  Could be; @AmericanAir is the Roman Road of the sky for those of us from the Keep it Weird city.

That evening was a gift to me, I was flying back through Dallas and needed to see a customer the next morning so I was able to have dinner with two of my oldest and dearest friends.  Over a great Malbec, we talked for a long time about the adoption process – at one point I apologized.  I apologize often when I talk to people because there are so many stories, “I am sorry you two, I have to stop telling you stories, I am turning this into a conversation about Remy and Tara”.  To which my dear friend said, “Alex – we want to hear these stories, they are all new to us and we have seen the pictures but we want to know about this”.  Was he just making me feel good?  I don’t know but there were a couple of times I looked at my bestie and thought I saw mist in his eyes.

What do the adoption stories do for these two close friends?  Truth be told, I really don’t know.  Only in their heart do they know.  Why do stories move us?   What stories move us?  Donald Miller, wrote a great book titled A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  In it he said, “If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to be meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either”

Many people, teams and companies set goals.  We are taught this in Business School.  Attention class, today we will learn how to establish specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted (S.M.A.R.T ) goals.  We set goals we want to accomplish, but how many teams or companies live stories worth telling? 

The leader owns and tells the story.  The story has a character; it is your team.  There is a plot.  There is desire – what is it the character wants?  There is a reason for the desire…a deep unquenchable ‘why’.  And there will be conflict – people and situations will conspire to keep your character’s desire from being fulfilled.  The more you overcome the greater the ending.

Leaders don’t just set goals, they ask their team to live a story worth telling. 

“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” - Harold Goddard

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Problems with Posing

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Problems with Posing:  Our older children, the biological boys named Will and Sam, have nicknames born of their personalities.  Will is Socrates, the enigmatic founder of Western philosophy and Sam is Lancelot, King Arthur’s greatest champion and the first to slay an injustice.  Lancelot started life as Caveman but in one glorious moment the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly.

On December 9^th, 2005 Disney released The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.  Brettne and I sat with members of our extended family in a packed theater watching good triumph over evil.  In the pivotal scene right after Aslan’s Christ-like resurrection, the good guys are losing the battle against the Witch and Aslan is playing with Susan and Lucy.  Caveman is agitated.  Caveman leans forward. The battle rages.  The lion gets tickled.  Caveman cannot take it anymore. 

Five year old Sam leaps up on the theater chair bouncing as if it is his own personal trebuchet and bellows in his new found Lancelot voice, “Aslan – Get in the War!”  To which Aslan dutifully complies.  Caveman came into the theater and Lancelot departed.  Since that day, Sam has become the expert on the greatest warriors of all time; Aztecs, Mamluks, Samurai and Spartans.  He knows them all.  He longs to be one with them.

Fast forward seven years.  The girls have just arrived from Ethiopia and the weather breaks in Austin.  With the mercury finally dipping below 107⁰ we are able to turn on the hot tub.  Neither girl knows how to swim at this point so the combination of the heat and head-high water has them tiptoeing about daintily. But not Lancelot.  He is provoking.  He is beginning the joust. He is testing his sister Meskerem.  Sam begins to make a series of highly choreographed moves reminiscent of Chow Yun-Fat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

“Sam, esstoppit.  Sam, estoppit” Meskerem chants.  But Lancelot continues.  Samurai becomes Ninja and Ninja morphs to Karate Kid Crane Kick.  “Sam, estoppit!” Then Meskerem gets quiet, widens her stance, drops low, brings both hands out in front of her, beckons Lancelot to her with five fingers and lunges with a feline speed and fury.

“Whoa, Dad – what the heck was that” a wide-eyed Sam sputtered as he tripped over himself backpedaling.  “Well Sam, you learned to fight playing Assassins’ Creed on XBOX 360 and Meskerem learned to fight, well….fighting” Posing did not pay off for Sam.  The balance of power between brother and sister shifted ever so slightly.

Lancelot?  Hot tubs?  Kid’s judo?  What does that have to do with leadership?  The application is “Posing Causes Problems” There are all sorts of things your folks are better at doing than you are.  They do not need you to be better than them at the things that make them great.  That is not leadership; that is playground ‘one-upmanship’.  Don’t pose, lead.  Provide hope.  Define the future.  Set the tone.  Model the culture.  Reward the doers.  Own the ‘What'.  Delegate the ‘How’.  Lead.  Don’t pose. 

“Authenticity is the alignment of head, mouth, heart, and feet - thinking, saying, feeling, and doing the same thing - consistently. This builds trust, and followers love leaders they can trust” – Lance Secretan

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: To Die For

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

To Die For:  On December 5^th, 2011 my wife Brettne and I were at the AWAA Transition Home to meet with our girl’s doctor for the first time.  This home houses children in the process of an international adoption.  The home itself is an oasis; you cannot imagine how difficult it is to maintain a structure in Ethiopia.  Beyond just the home as a haven the staff is amazing; skilled in medicine, therapy, counseling and the greatest of all…love.

We sat with the girls in silence outside the doctor’s office as if waiting for the principal.  A stern looking woman in her late 40’s or early 50’s, white coat, hair pulled back tight and Granny Glasses perched on the tip of her nose walked in crisply.  The girls sat up straight.  The doctor began to mechanically read through the girl’s health report, medications they had been prescribed and results of visits.

As she chirped in a staccato manner I saw her eyes come across something.  She pulled off her glasses allowing them to hang below her neck. Her face broke into a warm smile and her body language moved from professor to mother.  She dropped the report, put both of her hands over her heart and said, “Oh – the girls are Wolaita, as am I; they are my people, my tribe…they are mine!” She started talking to the girls, switching from Amharic, the statutory language of Ethiopia to Wolaytta, the girls tribal language.  I watched the girls physically change at the sound of their language.  The immediate connection was palpable.  I wanted it.  I wanted tribe.

What is a tribe in Western Society?  The Encyclopedia Britannica defines a tribe as “a notional form of human social organization having temporary or permanent political integration, and defined by traditions of common descent, language, culture, and ideology” We don’t have that here.  What must it feel like?  To die for; I think that is how you might describe a tribal feeling.  Your tribe is the people for whom you would willingly die.  Family yes.  Who else?  One of the most famous lines in history is greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

But you say, “Alex – die for our tribe?  Die for those we lead?  What does that have to do with business?”  Hang with me for a minute.  I am not in the military and I therefore never risk it all as do the men and women in the armed services.  But there is lesser way you have to be willing to ‘die’.  One of my favorite books is The Book of Five Rings – by Miyamoto Musashi.  It is a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy that is still studied today.  Through the book Musashi defends his thesis: the one who conquers themselves is ready to take on the world.  My main take away from this book has always been, “Live your life as if you are already dead and you will always take the right risks”

“Die?  Live as dead?  Five Rings?” The application for us is “Are you willing to be fired?”  When you lead you have to be willing to lose your job every day or you will never make the right decisions for the success of the organization and the people under your authority.  Tribe.  We can have it, but only if we are willing to ‘die’ for it.

“I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion” – Mia Hamm

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Navigating Scars

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the voyage has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Navigating Scars – The return flight from Addis to Austin may not be the longest flight in the world but it is close. Addis to DC is the first leg.  Wheels up at 10PM, which puts you at the airport at about 8PM.  Better eat before that, as there is no McDonalds at Bole Airport.  You land at Fiumicino at 3AM for fuel and then arrive at Dulles in DC the next morning, a short 17 hours in a metal tube.  Wind your way through immigration and customs to an empty airport and sit in the Admiral's Club for about an hour waiting for the next leg to Dallas followed by a short hop into Austin Texas.  All in, counting airport time, it is about 28 hours en-route.  Try that on your first ever plane ride.

The trip started with the girls’ first ride on an escalator, which was a doppelganger for a scene from The Lost Boys of Sudan.  It ended through the back door of our house with a welcome by the family Labradoodle, Copper and then all hell broke loose…let me fill in the gaps.  Children are scared of dogs in Ethiopia, in Addis alone there are an estimated 250,000 stray dogs and our youngest daughter has scars on her back that until a few weeks into her arrival at our house were a mystery.  Sense a slow motion train wreck?

When sweet Copper wiggled up to Tarikua, my daughter became terrified and climbed up me like a pacific islander scaling a palm tree.  This surprised us as we knew about the dog terrors and had spent time showing the girls pictures of our dog and watched both girls hug and kiss the picture.  What was going on?  I attributed it to nerves and kept trying to press Tarikua to be next to our dog so she could see Copper was no threat.  For some reason this was an accelerant to her terror and for 72 hours her feet did not touch the ground if Copper circled.

About three to four weeks into the girls’ American journey my older daughter Meskerem strung together enough English to tell us the story about Tarikua’s scars.  It seems that at some point a couple of years ago, the girls were playing and a wild dog crashed through the underbrush.  The kids ran, except Tarikua tripped and the dog attacked her.  She tucked into the Pillbug position defending against the mini Cujo.  The dagger in my heart?  The dog that attacked Tarikua was the same color as our dog Copper.  As Paul Harvey would say, “Now I knew the rest of story”

Cormac McCarthy wrote, “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”  The moment I learned of the copper colored attack I understood a past.  As leaders we sometimes ask our folks to do something logical and doable but they do not move or they scamper up the palm tree to safety.  Before we write them off as incapable we should take the time to look for scars.  It may just be that we have to help them navigate their scars to get them to where they want to be.

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Stimson’s Sagacity

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Stimson’s Sagacity: On April 4^th, 2012 I walked my oldest daughter into Bridge Point Elementary School.  I was feeling guilty.  Since our kids go to public school and Meskerem is my daughter the school could not say ‘no’.  At this point the girls were about six weeks in the States and their vocabulary was only up to about 50 words; this was clearly not going to be your normal ESL situation.  I had my English: Amharic Cheat Sheet prepared for the teachers; they all had my mobile number in hand.  But I still felt remorseful, like I was dumping a decision my wife and I made upon a decidedly non-volunteer army.

I could not have been more wrong about the situation. 

I walked into the main office area to check Meskerem in for the first time and by coincidence most of the school’s leadership team was there, “Meskerem, we have been waiting for you!”  There were five adults in the room and they were bursting with joy.  But it was a unique joy…a joy I did not recall seeing prior to this moment.  I am sure you’ve had moments when you were happy for someone else, “I am so happy you won the business!”  Or you’ve also experienced happiness when someone did something for you, “Wow – that was so nice of you, that makes me so happy!”

But this was different; they were filled with joy based upon the part they were going to play in the restoration of an orphan.  They were getting to do what they were trained to do, what they love to do and see it make an incredible, indelible mark on someone’s life.  It was an inner joy that they could not contain.

Henry Stimson, Secretary of War under President Taft and FDR said, “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him”

People will rise up or sink down to our level of expectation in them.  I am an optimist and believe that the 96% of humanity who are not sociopathic want to work hard and do the right thing.  But there, in that school office on that date in April, I underestimated the staff at my daughter’s school.   I thought I was handing them work; they believed they had been given a gift.

Don’t deny someone the opportunity to do something great.  One great lesson in this adventure is that work is not a four-letter word if someone is convinced that what he or she does makes a difference and they have the opportunity to be proud of their work.

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” ― Mark Twain

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Stockdale Paradox

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Stockdale Paradox:  A great friend and former boss Chip Nemesi had many truisms; one that always stuck with me was “You can’t learn to swim in the front yard”

The agency we used for the adoption insisted that we pursue the adoption in a manner consist with the Hague Adoption Convention even though Ethiopia has not ratified this treaty.  This meant quite a bit of on-line education, books to read and counseling from very gifted social workers.  All of the pre-work instilled in me a belief that we were ready, but in reality we were just doing the butterfly stroke in the tall grass.

One can read all the material they want and then they are face to face with two young children aged 5 and 9 from rural Ethiopia with no English, no real concept of indoor plumbing and an ability to look at a fork as if it was some sort of mystical ancient Jedi talisman.  Mix that in with a couple of American boys and all hell broke loose. 

Napolean said, “A leader is a dealer in hope” The leader’s job is to paint a picture of a better future but how do you bring hope into difficult situations?  In  Good to Great, Jim Collins writes about a conversation he had with Admiral James Stockdale regarding his time in the Vietnamese POW camp. “I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

When Collins asked who didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied, “Oh, that's easy, the optimists. They were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Stockdale then added, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

See the truth, but not for worse than it is.  One great lesson in this adventure is that we were always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks the reason for the hope that we had…but it was hope grounded in the reality of the moment.  

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” - Emily Dickinson

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Judge Not

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Judge Not:  On November 29^th, 2011 we left dinner at the Habesha Cultural Restaurant and headed back to the Yebsabi Guest House for our first full night sleep in Addis Ababa.

The dinner was great, although I felt my alligator arms sprout as I parted with 400 Ethiopian Birr (ETB).  Seemed expensive until I did a quick calculation, it was only about $25 at home.  I was congratulating myself on the dining bargain when the reality of what we just spent hit me.  According to the World Bank, the average wage in Ethiopia is $30/Month.

As I am contemplating the reality of spending a month’s income on dinner I got hit with a profound one-two punch.  Our route back to the guesthouse took us through the red-light district of Addis.  After meeting our daughters for the first time that morning, the sight of girls standing on the corner waiting to get into a car wrecked me.  What kind of terror must that be for a girl that age?  Why are they doing this?  Did they volunteer?  Is someone making them?

The life expectancy in Ethiopia is about 60 years, which puts it at 150^th or so in the world.  The top two causes of death are influenza/pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.  For perspective those are number nine and thirty-eight in the United States.  This means a lot of young adults die and leave widows and orphans behind.  Add to that a 47% literacy rate for women and you being to see the challenges in just making it to tomorrow.

Who has the right to judge other people?  Whom should I judge?  To judge is to form an opinion or estimate.  But to observe is to see, watch, perceive, or notice, especially so as to learn something.  Judge = subjective.  Observe = objective.  When I judge someone by default I am putting myself above him or her.  Is it possible to observe the facts of what they have done without placing them in a lesser position then me?  Can we hold someone to a standard of performance without judging?

When we were at the orphanage meeting our girls we saw a mom arrive with a baby and wait for a couple of hours.  We did not know what was going on.  Then we saw her walk in and leave with empty arms; sobbing.  She had dropped her baby off, likely to never see the child again.  Ripped my heart out watching her make a choice for the child to be somewhere else.  Who am I to judge?  I have never tried to raise a child on less than a dollar a day.

Judge Not. Many things at work drive me nuts.  Stupidity, laziness, lack of ethics, lack of motivation, sloppiness, sloth, poor treatment of a customer…the list goes on.  But if I call you lazy, I have judged you.  The leadership lesson to me is to navigate the tension between observing, having expectations, holding people accountable, calling them out when they don’t get something done AND not judging.  For that is what I want to do: Judge Not

Deepak Chopra, “If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up.” - Ah Deepak, without these three, what would I do all day long?  Lead?

Back to the blog

The last time I wrote in this blog was over three years ago and at that point I merely pointed to the Eloqua Blog.  I left Eloqua on Friday the 13th and am now returning to this blog.  I thought I would start with my goodbye letter to my 'Feloquans' and then will probably move on to some musings on the adoption of our daughters which has been the greatest adventure of my life

Feloquans,

“My wife and I have been together for 26 years and she tells me that my clothing comes back in style about every eight years.  My sons tell me I went to school ‘back in the day’.  The TSA laughs at the shoehorn I pack in my carry-on”  If you weren’t here three years ago you probably missed that opening line in one of my favorite blog posts, Am I Old School?

While I did get the double pleats out of my pants, I still wear cuffs and the most played song on my iTunes account is Boston - Don't Look Back, “Don't look back, a new day is breaking, it's been too long since I felt this way.  I don't mind where I get taken the road is calling, today is the day”

My iTunes is screaming Old School at me.

The little band out of Boston reminds me that today I say goodbye to you.  But unlike the ode to the future by the incomparable Tom Scholz, I do want to look back.  A wise person once told me when leaving an organization you should contemplate three questions.  What have you learned?  What do you believe will happen in the future?  What do you hope for the people on the team?

What have I learned in my time at Eloqua?  Culture matters.  Culture really does eat strategy on a cold plate for breakfast.  Culture is the shared values of a group of people and when those values are good and right teams do amazing things.  Eloqua was, is and will always be about our customers and Getting it Done and Doing it Right.  Why Eloqua?  “We really do care about our customers being proud of their work.  It is why we exist and it is Doing it Right” – I wrote that to you after Eloqua Experience one year.  It was true then and it is true tomorrow.  My greatest lesson at Eloqua is that people want to be in an environment that honors honorable values.  When each of us believes deeply that doing the right thing matters we become incredibly motivated, passionate and achieve greatness

What do I believe will happen in the future?  Charles de Gaulle said, “The graveyards of the world are filled with the tombstones of irreplaceable men” Eloqua is bigger than any person.  The world of marketing is changing and Eloqua has the technology the world needs.  Oracle touches every corner of the earth and over 300,000 customers.  Through Oracle, Eloqua can impact marketing more than it ever could by itself.  I know that Oracle will continue to invest money, time, people and technology and greatly expand Eloqua’s impact.  Every legitimate business request we brought to Oracle has been funded enthusiastically.  Oracle is the accelerant to the goal we always had; to change the way the world does marketing.

What do I hope for the Feloquans?  Many people set goals worth attaining…few people live stories worth telling.  To quote Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, “Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life” I hope you live a story worth telling and you are passionate about what you are doing.  The path to passion is to know what you are doing, know why you are doing it, believe that it matters and be proud of your work.  Don’t ever settle for anything less.  Don’t ever be willing to let someone else write a boring story with your life.  Insist that the story you live has passion and remember that the greatest stories ever told are ultimately about someone who overcomes something to get what they want.  Run toward the obstacles and the challenges; if there is nothing to overcome; the story is dull.

I want to leave you with one final word.  Kinship.  Seven months ago at our kickoff meeting in Toronto we talked about kinship and I defined it as ‘when the things that hold us together are stronger than the things that can tear us apart’.  Ultimately at Eloqua what we have is Kinship. 

Kinship is Old School.

Thank you for letting me be a Feloquan.  This has turned out to be one of the greatest experiences in my life and I am grateful.  I have to bring this to a close or Nick Bell will start charging me for excess words…so I’ll end with some Old School Tom Petty off of Into the Great Wide Open,

“You and I will meet again when we're least expecting it.  One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face.  I won't say goodbye my friend for you and I will meet again”

PS – Many of you have asked me, “Alex – what are your plans?”  I have big plans.  On Monday, I plan on driving two little Ethiopians princesses that call me ‘doddy’ to school.  If you want to stay in contact I welcome the opportunity – I can be found at ashootm@mac.com or on mobile at 512.968.4503.  

Where am I writing these days?

I appreciate those folks who have continued to follow this blog. For a period of time, I am spending my time contributing to the Eloqua blog at http://blog.eloqua.com/.

In the beginning….Setting Priorities (I)

A friend and colleague, Mike S, recently wrote to me, “I enjoy reading your thoughts on leadership and know you have dealt in the past with how a leader sets an example, acts and lives, but I was wondering if you have considered the topic I will call ‘how a leader starts’. This topic intrigues me because I am about to start something new and the timing is appropriate.”

I am starting a new role as well so this is a great moment to explore the subject of ‘In the beginning’. In a series of posts I will outline some of my thoughts as I start this new role. If you follow this blog you know I took a time out for Bill Taylor a couple of weeks ago. Before my eulogy for Bill, the previous blog was titled “Ask Questions”; I will pick back up here with “Setting Priorities”. This will be the first of several posts on this topic.

How many business books have you seen with a sub-title, “How to do everything all at once”? None; in fact usually we read statements like this from Peter Drucker, “Do first things first, and second things not at all.” I have long considered strategy to be more about what you decide NOT to do, rather than what you decide TO do. We all know we should focus, we all know we should be Setting Priorities, but how should we go about doing it?

In photography, a filter is a camera accessory that is inserted in the optical path. Filters allow added control for the photographer of the images being produced. Sometimes they are used to make only subtle changes to images; other times the image would simply not be possible without them. Likewise, we have a filter as we begin Setting Priorities. Like the photographer, our filter sits in our field of vision and controls our image of the future. Sometimes our filter makes subtle changes to the future and sometimes our view of the future simply would not exist without our filter. The filter we choose to put in our field of vision is critical. In general, I have seen two very different types of filters; serve or be served.

Serve or be served relates to the overall posture you or your organization will maintain. Serve or be served defines your frame of mind which affects all your thoughts and behavior. As I hire managers, the first thing I look at is their posture related to their people. Does this person arrive at work and think, “What will my people do for me today?” Or do they arrive at work and think, “What will I do for my people today?” The same can be said of an organization; does it exist to serve or be served? Long term the posture that succeeds is the “serve” posture.

Therefore, the first step in Setting Priorities is to place a “serve” filter in your field of vision. How is that done? Recently I got my management team together as part of “Setting Priorities” and asked them to identify our constituents; essentially I asked them, who do we serve? They identified four key constituents; employees, customers, partners and investors. Then we went through a process to identify how these constituents see us today and how they will see us in the future if we do a great job of serving them. Here is the output of that session:

• For employees we want them to have a stock that is valuable, we want them to attain their bonus targets and feel engaged and part of the success of the sales organization.
• For customers we want them to say we understand and transform their business, they have a great buying experience, we provide great solutions to their challenges and they are enthusiastic about being references.
• For partners we want them to grow their business, be self-sufficient in driving sales and build successful marketing automation practices.
• For investors we want them to say we are accurate in our forecasts, we perform consistently, we are growing faster than the market and we are the clear market leader.

We now have our filter in place. Our view of the future is seen through that filter. Everything we do next in “Setting Priorities” will be shaped by a future state thought process surrounding those we serve.

“No wind favors him who has no destined port.” - Michel de Montaigne French Philosopher and Writer, 1533-1592

In the beginning….Time Out for Bill Taylor

A friend and colleague, Mike S, recently wrote to me, “I enjoy reading your thoughts on leadership and know you have dealt in the past with how a leader sets an example, acts and lives, but I was wondering if you have considered the topic I will call ‘how a leader starts’.  This topic intrigues me because I am about to start something new and the timing is appropriate.”

I am starting a new role as well so this is a great moment to explore the subject of ‘In the beginning’. In a series of posts I will outline some of my thoughts as I start this new role. The last blog was about “ask questions” this one was going to be about “setting priorities”. However, last week was interrupted by the death of two important men in my life. A man named Jack Johnson, a second father to me and my best friend’s dad and Bill Taylor, my wife’s father who has meant much me.

So, I am taking a time out from the blog and instead I want to share with you an excerpt of some comments I made at Bill’s funeral service. I was honored to have the family ask to speak on their behalf.

Bill Taylor was a man. Thomas Carlyle the eighteenth century Scottish essayist who wrote extensively about various heroes who have walked the earth said, “Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are, for it shows me what your ideal of manhood is and what kind of man you long to be”.

Now, I don’t claim to be the man that Bill Taylor was, but Carlyle’s words ring in my ears as I think about my ideal of manhood and why I honor Bill Taylor, because he is the man that I and many others long to be. What words describe that ideal? When you talk to his family and friends you keep hearing these words to describe Bill Taylor; Bravery, Courage & Strength.

These words are evident in the stories that they tell about Bill; particularly how he battled a raging melanoma to stand by his daughter Whitney’s side as she got married. Bill had Bravery, Courage & Strength. But, it was a fourth word, Love that made him the man we all knew. It was Love that made Bill Taylor a complete man.

You see, Bill Taylor was a transformed man. Those of us around him saw him grow in wisdom, stature and compassion over the last quarter century. Bill Taylor was a man transformed by two things; first, his own “Road to Damascus” moment, but most of all transformed by Love; the love of his wife Sarah Taylor. Sarah Taylor completed Bill Taylor.

For those of you that do not know the reference to “Road to Damascus” it is about Saint Paul’s transformation from Saul to Paul, Acts 9:3-6 reads,

As Saul neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul why do you persecute me”? Who are you Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

It was in that moment faced with a new truth, that Saul became Paul and the greatest persecutor of Christians became the most prolific church planter, apostle and teacher of the early Church

We all have our Road to Damascus moment, where a truth confronts us and everything that happens next is different. For Bill it was twenty-three years ago; he received what for most people would be a death sentence. He was diagnosed with melanoma and given six months to live. Well Bill proceeded to teach all of us what Mark Twain said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Fortunately for Bill, by the time he got this diagnosis he was married to Sarah Taylor and her love gave him the power to live fully; though the love of Sarah, Bill had no fear of life.

Easter and Christmas are some of my best memories. Bill and Sarah gathered their entire family around them and even those not in their immediate family. Once you got to know Bill and Sarah, you were going to spend at least one Christmas or Easter at their house.

And in those moments, when they thought no one was watching, maybe one of them was opening a gift, or handing a plate to the other, hiding an Easter egg or just picking up wrapping paper, you would see a glance, a wink or a touch on the arm and through those moments you could see love.

You could see the love that same Saint Paul tells us about in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

This is the type of Love that connected Bill and Sarah

Bill was a man. To describe Bill you have to use the words Bravery, Courage & Strength, but the greatest of all was Love.

One last story – Bill’s name, once he became a grandfather, was a great word picture of everything that was Bill. His name was Growl. He got the name from one grandchild and it was changed by another. His grandson Will Shootman gave him this name after arriving home from Italy. We had lived in Italy for a while and Will began to learn to talk in Italy. On final approach to the airport back in the States, I tried to teach Will to say, “Gramps”. But as he ran to his beloved grandfather, the only words that came out were “Growl”. Bill wore that with a badge of honor for 10 years until his granddaughter Honore renamed him. Out on his land one day, little Honore came up to Growl and shyly said, “Growlie, can you take me out on the lake?” Bill said, “What if I do not want to be called Growlie?” And Honore replied, “But that is what you are – you are my Growlie.” That was Bill – the full measure of the man – He could be both Growl and Growlie

In closing, I am reminded of a scene in the movie, The Lord of the Rings, a great story about the triumph of Good vs. Evil and the promise of Everlasting Life. In a pivotal scene, Frodo the little Hobbit is dejected after many terrible things that have happened. He is with Gandalf, the Brave, the Courageous & the Strong.

Frodo: “I wish none of this had ever happened”

Gandalf: “So do all who live to face such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us”

I know at this moment, Bill is in the presence of God, and as we sit here together, feeling like Hobbits and say to ourselves, “I wish none of this had ever happened” Bill, who taught us how to live with Bravery, Courage, Strength & Love is looking down at us saying, “So do all who face such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time God has given to you”

Bill – we love you and we honor you and we will use our time well.

And for all of you that took the time to read this, thank you for honoring Bill Taylor and I challenge you to use your time well.

In the Beginning…Ask Questions

A friend and colleague, Mike S, recently wrote to me, “I enjoy reading your thoughts on leadership and know you have dealt in the past with how a leader sets an example, acts and lives, but I was wondering if you have considered the topic I will call ‘how a leader starts’. This topic intrigues me because I am about to start something new and the timing is appropriate.”

I am starting a new role as well so this is a great moment to explore the subject of ‘In the Beginning’. In a series of posts I will outline some of my thoughts as I start this new role. The last blog was about “listen” this one is about “ask questions”.

Before you can listen, you sometimes have to ask questions. There are all sorts of techniques to asking questions:

• Open and closed ended questions
• Using a funnel
• Probing questions
• Leading the witness
• Rhetorical questions

While these are useful, they are merely the manner in which you try to elicit input from an individual or group. No matter what technique you use, your posture becomes the most important attribute when you “ask questions”

I want to be clear about the use of the term posture. I do not mean the position of your limbs or the carriage of your body as a whole. In this context I am talking about the definition whereby posture is a mental or spiritual attitude. Your internal attitude as you ask question, no matter what technique you use, will have profound impact on the way the organization operates.

It is human nature to be fault finders. In our natural state we run around, seek out imperfections and crush them. Think about almost every strategy or planning meeting you have been in. It usually has this question somewhere in it, “All right folks, let’s figure out what is broken and let’s go fix it!” I am at the front of the parade, completely guilty of this approach. Of course, this is sometimes necessary in every business or endeavor, so I am not advocating that we never look at what is going wrong and put plans in place to recover, fix, turn around or eliminate the brokenness of an organization.

That said, we have to be careful that we do not fall in a trap where all of our questioning comes from a posture of, “what’s wrong?” Why not? There is an important principal at work here; human systems grow in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about. If I continue to ask questions from a “what’s wrong” posture, the organization will focus its time, energy and ultimately its attitude around broken things. It will grow towards what is wrong. We need to invert this outcome, instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, we must send our organization in the direction of discovery, dream, and design.

How do we do this? How can we send our organization in the direction of what works? There is a fairly significant body of work around the field of Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry joins two powerful words.

Ap-pre’ci-ate, v. valuing; the act of recognizing the best in people or the world around us; affirming past and present strengths, successes, and potentials; to perceive those things that give life (health, vitality, excellence) to living systems

In-quire’, v., 1. the act of exploration and discovery. 2. To ask questions; to be open to seeing new potentials and possibilities.

How does appreciative inquiry manifest itself as you ‘ask questions’? Think of these two questions; “We are trying to grow this business, what is wrong? What is broken? Why can we not seem to grow the business?” Or; “We are trying to grow this business; can you tell me some examples of where growth has worked? How do we replicate those examples?”

You can picture the difference in my posture as I ask those two questions. You can almost sense the difference in the room during these two very different conversations. This mode of questioning repeated time and again at all levels throughout the organization can have a profound impact on the attitude, energy, initiative and success within a company. In fact, David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney assert in some of their writing on Appreciative Inquiry, “The single most prolific thing a group can do if its aims are to liberate the human spirit and consciously construct a better future is to make positive change the common and explicit property of all.”

In the beginning…ask questions. But check your posture. Beyond your questioning techniques, what is the core of what you are trying to find out? Are you trying to discover all that is broken or examples of where success is occurring?

Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” We have to ‘ask questions’ in such a manner that we give our folks the chance to see the opportunity in the difficulty.