A few weeks ago, in a particularly victim-y moment, I lamented to myself – “Why do I always feel like I’m in the middle!?” This was in response to a rapid-fire blaming session between two people I like, know and respect individually. But, when I put them together, the unfortunate pairing creates an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
So much blame and fear were fired in two directions, that it was no doubt generally toxic to the environment. And then there’s me – breathing in the toxicity, understanding both sides, reaching out to find commonality, and seeking to take action that involves forward motion.
In short, hanging out in a place that understands two extreme views, yet does not represent one at the exclusion of the other, and can actually incorporate learning from both.
I call this place the Conscious 3rd.
Feeling in the middle has shown up in other areas too.
Take politics, for example.
Yes, I’m going there but perhaps not in the way you think.
In recent elections, Trump was supported by 47% of the electorate, and Biden 51%. Biden has been declared the “winner” by major news organizations and Trump the “loser.” Some Republicans and Trump himself maintain that he won.
A message of “everything is immediately going to change because we have our winner” is being communicated from the right and the left.
I find myself in the middle (again).
Let me break it down for you.
Everything is not going to change based on a winner and loser.
In a system that is relatively balanced in a 51%-47% sort of way, losers can retain quite a lot of influence and winners can find themselves thwarted in their quest for meaningful change.
It’s only when our understanding spans both the 51% AND the 47% that we truly find meaningful solutions.
So what are we to do?
Step into the Conscious 3rd.
First, seek to understand – haven’t seen much of this in the current election cycle. Really get deep about why the divergent sides feel the way they do.
What are their belief systems and how does that inform them about what is right or wrong? (again dichotomy here).
Still not understanding why “that side” feels “that way”? Go deeper still.
Their responses will support you to understand their diametrically opposed viewpoints. Integrating these views with what you already understand by being in the middle supports you to gain a complete, panoramic, “bird’s eye” view of the situation.
Second, find the fear in an effort to deepen understanding.
You might have already found it in step one, but if you haven’t it’s time to look now.
As human beings, we are fear-making machines. Our fears lead to stories, and opinions; and those opinions become ingrained with repetition.
Have you found the fear in the opposing viewpoints?
Now what’s your fear? You have it too, even though you’re in the middle. Time to bring these fears into the open. The fear is present, and it will likely continue to be around in some level of intensity for the rest of our lives.
Ok, now have you found the fear? Good.
Third, seek to alleviate the fear.
This is where the fun begins as a leader. Because when I find out what I can do, or who I can be to alleviate the fear I’ve just built a bridge from this belief rooted in duality to the integrated, Conscious 3rd. I’m in the middle with an encompassing approach right where I want to be.
Please note that sometimes, the answer to what would alleviate the fear is “nothing”. That unbending fear lives in our reptilian brain selves and cannot be influenced by a well-intentioned leader. When this occurs for me, I know that I’ve done everything I can as a human to meet, support and alleviate this fear. If nothing will alleviate the fear, as a leader, I get to move ahead anyway. And move ahead we will, usually over the objections of the irrational fear that remains.
To recap: First, seek to understand. Second, find the fear and deepen your understanding of this fear. Third, seek to alleviate the fear.
I get it this sounds improbable – alleviating fear. Amazingly, this is possible about 80% of the time when we listen, dig deep enough and create well-reasoned solutions. The other 20% of the time we move ahead anyway.
And, the next time you’re feeling in the middle, please congratulate yourself!
Just being aware you are there means that you’re noticing the duality, the opposite sides of the issue and you’re living consciously in between.
Perhaps that Conscious 3rd approach could support us on Jan 20th. It might show up then.
It’s guaranteed to show up when you use it as part of your conscious leadership.
Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Interesting.
“The price of gold has just reached an all-time high.”
That’s a fact that just happened today.
Has the worldwide demand for gold products increased dramatically, impacting the price?
No.
Our feelings about gold as an investment have changed, and we are acting on those feelings.
“The price of gold has just reached an all-time high.”
It’s a signal to us and an interesting statement. It means two things:
The intrinsic value of gold, how we feel about it, is rising.
Our belief in the value of the dollar in relation to gold is falling.
Trillions of dollars of new debt over a few-week period has created fear about the strength of our currency. We are also perhaps feeling a lack of confidence in our current financial and governmental systems.
The search for value is accelerating.
Most of us are doing something to adjust and compensate for Covid-19.
Wear a mask.
Stock up on toilet paper.
Check in on our neighbors, but don’t get too close.
Bring our children home.
Safeguard our workplace.
Some of our actions come from survival and scarcity, others from value.
An article about survival and scarcity would be painful, more painful than the start of this one. So, for the rest of our time together today, we will focus on value.
I’m often asked, “What has Covid-19 taught us?”
The answer emerging right now is “Our value is being tested, and an amazing opportunity to shape our legacy has emerged.”
We get to create our legacy right now. “Get to” is an active, responsible choice versus the “have to” that I say when I’m not being responsible for my impact.
In my conversations with clients, friends, family and colleagues, what we value is being discussed on an hourly basis. And knowing that, what do we get to create? None other than our legacy.
I don’t know about you, but I pictured creating my legacy on some reflective retreat alongside a placid mountain lake instead of while masked and homebound.
Yet here we are, the stress of this moment helping accelerate the reflection.
How Aligned Are You? Intimately know your Vision and Values, those within your company and in the marketplace.
Who is on Your Crew? Know your Leadership Superpowers and who you need on your crew to create the rest.
What is Your Transformation Strategy?
Establish a non-negotiable time for Transformation by investing in coaching, training, consulting or masterminds to improve your performance.
What is Your Transition Plan?
Create a solid plan to lead effectively during this crisis.
This article is contributing to my legacy that:
“You know you can make a positive impact far beyond what is reasonably possible, and you see a path to act on it.”
Remember, “The price of gold has reached an all-time high.”
Those of us who see the opportunity to create our legacy are busy right now. Please share the legacy that you’re creating!
My life and business are full of experts. That’s good thing. Experts know things that I will not ever learn myself, nor have any interest in learning.
Please note that experts are much different than “those with opinions”, I see many more opinions expressed in the course of the day than expertly vetted information. In almost all cases, the old adage about opinions is true for these too – even if they’re free, they’re still not worth it.
Yesterday, my wife and I met with our friend and expert financial advisor – Bob Rubin. Bob manages the majority of our investable assets. He’s super knowledgeable, an experienced student of market fundamentals and quick to make recommendations backed with facts.
Our question was, “What do you think is driving the stock market?” Bob’s response, “other than irrational exuberance, I’m not sure”.
He admitted that it bothered him to say it.
Bob realizes we put our trust in his ability to read the market. He went on to add “the market isn’t behaving normally based on any traditional model.”
Conclusion? “I don’t know.”
My judgement of the market before our meeting was “I don’t know” also. However, my response tells me much less since my “I don’t know” is partially born of ignorance as I’m not a market expert.
Bob’s “I don’t know” was credible.
An interesting thing about “I don’t know” is that it indicates the need for more action rather than inaction. “I don’t know” does not mean “do nothing.”
How do we make a decision in an “I don’t know” situation? In this case, we looked at the possible outcomes, and possible actions based on these outcomes.
Outcome #1 – The Best-Case Scenario. The market will continue to rebound. Action: Buy stocks.
Outcome #2 – The Middle Road. The market will decline because investors will realize their irrational exuberance. Action: Sell stocks.
Outcome #3 – The Worst-Case Scenario. The market will decline because there is a loss of confidence in the dollar. Action: Sell stocks and other assets, buy gold and bitcoin and build our survivalist retreat on high ground in central Florida.
Debating these options, we selected the most “likely”, with the guidance of our expert Bob. While considering, we took into account our current circumstances, biases and checked our gut reactions.
A major factor supporting Outcome #1 was – “where else are people going to put their money?” In the end we just couldn’t consider that an investment strategy.
Outcome #3 seemed too extreme in the moment, we’ll know over the next few months if we made the right choice there.
So, Outcome #2 it is! Bob moved to take more of our assets out of the market.
Have you been hearing “I don’t know” from experts who have known the answer to your past questions?
How does all this apply to your business?
“When will the Covid pandemic be over?”
The expert consensus is “I don’t know.” That’s likely the most responsible answer we could hear, or give. In fact, my BS detector alarms when anyone has a certain answer to this question.
How does this inform you about your plan for your business?
What’s your worst-case scenario? Best? Middle road? The middle road sounds reasonable, but is it most likely? What are the business circumstances, personal biases (ego anyone?) or gut reactions you and your team have?
Our best answer, gleaned from experts and news sources, to “When will the Covid pandemic be over?” is “Sometime in 2021” – pretty darn close to “I don’t know.”
As a result, we’re planning to operate virtually for the next year, and have begun to set expectations with clients that reflect that. That’s not a terrible response for a company like mine that is organized virtually anyway. I realize it is not a possibility for many company owners though.
For most, the current choices range from undesirable to terrible. Though the choices are bad, please don’t let that deter you from selecting one. At a time when “I don’t know” is actually the responsible answer, we make the best choice we can and move ahead.
If you need the support of a business expert to select the best choice, you can find me here >> http://billionizeme.com
My Mom recently sold her half of a duplex in Jupiter, Florida. Cleaning out the two-bedroom house, originally owned by my grandparents then passed to my parents, was a trip down memory lane. I kept a few things that were sentimental, and also a few that I thought were valuable.
While poking through the kitchen cabinets, I noticed white Corningware casserole dishes with the blue flower patterns circa 1965, neatly stacked with their clear lids nearby. These were familiar. Any frozen vegetable served to me between the ages of five and fifteen arrived at the dining table in one of these Corningware dishes. They possessed some sentimental value perhaps, but who could possibly want these old, outdated dishes? “Donate” was the determination, and I might have used the word “junk” as I hauled them out to our SUV.
Fast forward to the next weekend, and the first twist. My twenty-two year old daughter, home visiting from Orlando is talking about a dish she will be listing on eBay. Her question: “Dad, do you know why these are so valuable?”
She reaches for her phone to show me a listing, a seller willing to part with a valuable casserole dish, without the lid, for $2,000. I was curious, what was this exotic casserole that commanded such an impressive price. Was it a hand-decorated Russian Faberge? The image came up, and my jaw dropped. Yes, you guessed it. This valuable, exotic dish is the vintage Corningware casserole with the blue flower pattern.
Quickly, I did the math. Three casseroles with lids, four small dishes and one coffee pot, all in the blue flower pattern – that’s over $10,000 worth of Corningware “income” lost. And I was sure the stuff was junk!
Still queasy about that missed opportunity, I rapidly shifted to a radical thought. “If I’m living in a world where Corningware is worth thousands, what else am I missing that’s right in front of me?”
It wasn’t like I was torn between donating and keeping these – an epic struggle that resulted in a “donate” verdict. It much more closely resembled a quick wave of the hand and a quiet compliant that I needed to move them the twenty feet to our car. I was 100% sure these were of zero value, and I was 100% wrong.
Which raises these questions:
“What assumptions am I making, assumptions where I am absolutely positively sure that something is true, that are in reality completely false?”
“Do I undervalue things that are familiar to me?”
“Do I do this with people too, taking for granted their amazing gifts and talents because I see them every day?”
As a human being, it’s to my benefit to be open to what’s going on around me. All too often, I’ve assessed and profiled people, using my logical brain to sort them neatly by perceived strengths and weaknesses. Once determined, this assessment seldom changes.
The problem with this is that people do sometimes change.
A $10 casserole in 1965 could be a $2,000 one in 2020. You and I have people in our lives, you know the ones, who we judged as $10 casseroles in our youth and still consider them as $10 casseroles today. Is that a beneficial approach?
Ok, now for another twist, found after further research this morning. There seems to be disagreement online about how valuable vintage Corningware really is. Casseroles appear to have sold for thousands on eBay, yet antiques experts quoted in other articles say the pieces are only worth a few hundred or much less. Further research is required to make a final determination.
As a leader, it is valuable for me to remember that I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I don’t even possess a fraction of them. Research IS required. What was originally a $10 casserole, now worth $2,000 might still be worthless to me because I don’t recognize the value.
Being present, recognizing and challenging assumptions, getting a 2nd opinion even when I’m sure I’m right. These are skills worth practicing.
Several times a month, I find myself in an in-depth conversation about company culture.
There are compelling reasons why a company’s culture must be healthy. In fact, it’s hard to argue the counter point when talking about long term value of a company.
The most interesting part of the culture discussion is not whether you need a healthy one, it’s when do you work on improving it? When is that right moment to create a healthy culture? I will answer these questions soon.
First, when do most companies attempt to evolve to the right culture? Based on my observations, the most popular time seems to be during a merger or major acquisition. In this case, most popular aligns with worst time to change.
To illustrate my point, let’s talk about a major acquisition first.
For clarity, we’ll call the company being acquired as the “selling company” and the company doing the acquisition as the “buying company”.
In a successful major acquisition, the buying company will have the culture that remains for the combined company. Please note that I am only talking about successful acquisitions.
There are examples of failed acquisitions where the culture was expected to change for everyone. The important word here is “failed”. Think AOL and Time Warner, where AOL was expected to culturally reinvigorate the stodgy media giant, and Time Warner was expected to provide AOL with some maturity. It was described as “transformative”, which means “we’re messing with the culture at both companies.” Post-acquisition, the total value of AOL stock declined from $226 billion to about $20 billion.
In fact, a leading indicator of a successful, major acquisition is that the buying company culture is supported to win, quickly. This doesn’t mean that the buying company always has a better culture, it is simply the one that is chosen.
Why does this make sense?Because major acquisitions are about great change on a compressed schedule. It’s expected that the selling company will have significant adjustments to make.
If cultural changes are also made at the buying company, then the combined entity will see significant upheaval – and that’s not the point of an acquisition.
An acquisition is about creating competitive advantage in the market through the addition or strengthening of a team, product or service. Integration synergies are needed quickly so that the buying company maintains its growth momentum.
Now what about a merger? Isn’t that about two equal companies coming together?
Yes, and no.
Yes, there are two companies coming together. No, it is NOT equal, even if announced as such.
Winners and losers exist in mergers too, in fact they’re not much different than an acquisition.
The only difference I’ve seen between a merger and an acquisition is that the employees of one of the merged companies think they have as much leverage as the other, and it takes them longer to figure out that they don’t.
In late 2013, the largest optical distributor in the US merged with the 2nd largest. It was billed as a merger of equals, taking the “best-of” both companies to create a stronger whole. Sounds like a nice story, huh?
The team started with the intention of creating “best-of” processes, documenting them with detailed spreadsheets and flowcharts. Then, as a systemic and practical integration plan developed, most of the detailed changes were value engineered out of the process. Exactness was correctly replaced by expediency.
By the end of 2014, the culture, IT systems and management team of the largest optical distributor were in place for the combined company, displacing all of what the 2nd largest brought to the party.
Ok, I promised I’d get back to the right time for culture change. Ready for it? If you’re a company not in the midst of a major merger or acquisition, the time is now.
Now? You might respond:
“But we’re all working virtually, what about COVID-19?”
“Sounds good, we will start when things calm down.”
“Our culture is just fine, in fact it’s been fine for many years.”
My typical answer to this is “What market conditions do you need to see for you to start culture change?”
You’ll give me a list of requirements.
My next question, “When in the last twenty years have you seen these requirements occur?”
After a pause, a one-word response, “Never”.
Get started now evolving your culture. Be the healthy company that acquires sick competitors, knowing that your culture is the right one to support scaling to the next level of growth.
Please let me know how you’re doing evolving your culture.
As a leader it’s my job to shine a light on what’s going on around me, interpret it and influence others in a positive direction.
Using my sight, I notice what’s important to benefit my team, my organization and our world.
Sometimes, just like when a light image is projected on my retina, I’m upside-down in my view. Other times, I’m blind in one particular spot like where the optical nerve connects to the retina. (What can I say, I’ve spent a lot of time with Optometrists).
It’s only through noticing my upside-downness or blindness that I can process it through my nervous and emotional system to connect with the full picture.
Throughout my career, I’ve recruited and coached diverse business teams of talented individuals. Diversity of skill, viewpoint and relationship is critical as we create services for the complex needs of human beings. I could tell you that I started building diverse teams because it offered a way for everyone’s voice to be heard, and to connect to the humanity in each person, but that wouldn’t be true.
The truth for me lacked emotional and idealistic content. I believe in diverse teams because they outperform homogeneous groups. A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top 25% for management ethnic and racial diversity were 35% more likely to have financial returns beyond the mean for their industry.
I led these diverse teams with “can-do” attitude and optimism. And with this optimism, I strode into action. I was ready to do something about a challenge, but not really connecting to the problem.
The problem was racism, yet I didn’t see it even when I was so close.
I shrugged my shoulders, remained positive and continued to move ahead. When I noticed racism, it was mostly in video news clips including reprehensible words of those looking to incite fear.
But racism was around me, and I was shamefully ignoring it.
A friend helped me realize just how blind I had been, like the spot on my retina.
“Imagine if you were kidnapped,” she said, “brought to another country, raped, beaten and owned as property. And if that wasn’t enough, your collective history was erased and replaced by white European culture, the culture of your oppressors.”
“Essentially, my identity was suppressed by the people who were supposed to be my neighbors, and I struggled in this life to find it.” She added.
Racism is real and alive every day in this country. For many, authority figures such as business leaders and police are oppressors instead of protectors.
These are not just beliefs. There are many verifiable facts about this. Facts that, up until recently, I have filtered out in my naïve, optimistic, and disconnected efforts to build diverse teams.
Let’s bring a real reason for diverse teams into the light – because racism exists and must be overcome at every level. I get to (not have to) see my team through empathy. And I get to put that into action. I get to feel the pain and responsibility too.
There is no room to hide the bigotry I have ignored, those who only want to work with “their kind”. I am ready to have that conversation more directly now.
As leaders, it is our responsibility to see and eradicate racism and bigotry. First by education, and if that doesn’t work, we cut it out like the cancer it is. The majority I am in has a moral obligation to serve and protect the minority.
A few articles ago, I challenged leaders to exercise ownership thinking – asking “What could go wrong?” I invite you now to look through your own unconscious bias and answer these questions:
What is upside down or in my blind spot?
What has gone wrong for so long that I might not even notice most days?
What can I do right now, tomorrow and for our future?
As leaders, it’s up to us. #BlackLivesMatter
How are you shining a light on racism, shameful acts and deeply disturbing elements of our society?
This website or its third party tools use cookies, that are required to provide functionality and to achieve the purposes stated in our privacy policy. By clicking close or continuing to browse, you agree to the use of cookies.
