Letter from America

Alistair Cooke had a flair for connecting seemingly unrelated themes and events in his BBC Letters from America. We have been here in the US  for twelve days now, mostly in the snow. We arrived at the tail end of a huge snow storm. There was a foot of snow in my sister in law’s garden. After about ten days it had just begun to disappear with the help of  a huge rain storm when the temperature suddenly dropped and dumped another 22 inches of snow on Long Island. So, most of these twelve days we have spent around the kitchen table, talking, watching the winter Olympics (you would not believe how much curling we have seen), surfing the web, eating and drinking wine. Adam’s Tweets have become a series of Tweets from the Kitchen, which would rival Alistair’s letters any day.

And I have been reading. Despite the snow we did manage to get into the city and I picked up a pop philosophy book called How Philosophy Can Change Your Life – 10 Ideas That Matter Most. I don’t really like the book, but I do like some of the things in it. For example I like the idea that “ideas are the building blocks of our lives – they help us find our way and our direction” and “it does not tell you what to do or make demands” .. it is a wake up call. This is the kind of coaching I advocate. Coaching where we do not impose our theories on others, where we do not super impose our reality over someone else’s.

People aren’t really interested in accomplishment. They are interested in what accomplishment will bring them. Security, peace of mind, a sense of well being. When we focus on goals and achievement we are focusing on the fridge when the stove is faulty.

We all know two things – one, life is really pretty simple if we can get ourselves out of the way and two, the relentless search for happiness and fulfillment through materialism is a race to nowhere.

In the end coaching is about simplicity, about independence  from endless desire for more stuff, about unshackling ourselves from the dominant stories of what people say success means and reconnecting to the things that actually make a difference – kindness, empathy, generosity and possibility.

America is many things – some great, some not so great, but for sure it is a country of possibility. That was often the theme of Alistair Cooke’s Letters from America. In his words – “People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster”.

This weekend we are in Philadelphia, visiting friends we have known for over thirty years. Philly was the first capital of the USA, home of the Liberty Bell. It has a long and proud tradition of diversity, freedom and liberty. My good friend David is a businessman, originally trained in law. He is waiting for a point in his life when he will have time to write. I said the moment he is waiting for is now. I invented a new possibility – an international writing group over the internet using Skype. Anyone else want to join?

More when we get back

Mo

musing

Musing

I mentioned in an earlier post that I belong to a master-class coaching group. The group started 100 days ago and we each set ourselves a hundred day challenge. For some this was an inner challenge, for example, be more mindful, for others it was an outer experience, like create a new business. Last night we met to complete our first hundred days and to create our next challenge.

At the end of the evening I got into a conversation with Liz. We were at Liz’s house and she had various coaching books and journals lying around, which I was browsing. The edition of the coaching journal I picked up was all about defining coaching. And all the definitions, bar none, focussed on productivity, accomplishment, achievement, goals and effectiveness.

I told Liz that this was exactly opposite to the coaching book I had just completed and that all the definitions were wrong. That they missed the point and the real possibility of coaching.

“And just what is that?” Liz asked.

“Freedom.” I replied. “And any coaching that is not that, is selling out!”

This started quite a discussion as you can imagine and I don’t think I did a very good job in explaining why I feel this way; and I’m going to have another try now.

So Liz, if you are reading this, it’s especially for you, and thanks for giving me the chance to think this one through.

We need to start with the world we live in. More and more we live in a world of moral relativism. (Let’s call that MR).

MR states that truth and reality are perceived differently from diverse points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth. There are no absolutes. Some people support Manchester United and some believe in God. Neither is truer or better than the other. Nothing is intrinsically good and nothing is intrinsically bad, there is no right and wrong, events have no meaning in and of themselves. There are no longer any universal moral standards by which to judge others. Your truth is as valid as mine.  There is no way of proving that the values of one culture are better than those of another. This means there are no facts, there is no science; there is no objectivity, no morality. Per se. It implies that we should tolerate all those who disagree with us. Indeed it negates the validity of the Declaration of Human Rights.

There’s an old joke about the moral relativist who is on a plane which is about to crash and he is handed a parachute …  you can probably figure out the rest.

So, are there any moral absolutes? If we look at definition of ‘absolute’ it is something that is true, at any time, at any place, no restrictions, and no exceptions.

Will the plane crash or not. Is it a question of relative truth?

So, now let’s come at it from the other direction. Moral absolutism says that some things are absolutely right or absolutely wrong, regardless of personal opinion or belief or social values or context. Killing is wrong, whether it happens in the perpetration of a crime, an accident, in self defence or in a war. Likewise some things are absolutely true. God exists.

Let’s come back to the plane crash. It’s actually a red herring. Possibly, just possibly, there are absolutes in the physical universe, like gravity. It’s true at any time, at any place, no restrictions, and no exceptions. Except of course, if you believe mathematics and physics, in black holes; or in the world of the Yaqui Indian sorcerers (read Carlos Castaneda if you want more details) where time and space operate according to different laws.

Some of you may know that I am currently studying for a Master’s Degree in Creative Conflict Transformation. Our core text is by an American peacemaker called John Paul Lederach. He describes an interchange from a role play process in a peace building workshop in Nicaragua:

“ … Truth stood and spoke first. “I am Truth,” she said. “I am like light cast so that all may see. At times of conflict I am concerned with bringing forward, out into the open, what really happened. Not with the watered down version. Not with a partial recounting. My handmaidens are transparency, honesty, and clarity. I am set apart from my three colleagues here,” Truth gestured toward Mercy, Justice and Peace, “because they need me first and foremost. Without me they cannot go forward. When I am found, I set people free.”

“Sister Truth,” I interjected hesitantly, not wanting to question her integrity, “You know I have been around a lot of conflict in my life and there is one thing that I am always curious about. When I talk to one side, like these people over here, they say that you are with them. When I talk to the others, like our friends over there, they claim you are on their side. Yet in the middle of all this pain, you seem to come and go. Is there only one Truth?”

“There is only one Truth, but I can be experienced in many different ways. I reside within each person yet nobody owns me.”

“If discovering you is so crucial,” I asked Sister Truth, “why are you so hard to find?”

She thought for a while, then said. “I can only appear where the search is genuine and authentic. I come forward only when each person shares with others what they know of me and each respects the others voice. Where I am strutted before others, like a hand puppet on a child’s stage, I am abused, shattered and disappear.”

When clients come for coaching they come with all kinds of versions of the truth. There’s their personal truth based on their own experience and their perception; there’s the social truth they inherited in family stories and neighbourhood narratives; there’s the universal truth that they learned at school in for example in science and maths.

And while I guess I am a relativist – I agree with Jean Paul Sartre when he said “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” – in other words I believe we give meaning to events and we can change the meaning – I must be only a relative relativist because I also believe that the preamble to the Declaration for Human Rights is accurate when it states that freedom, justice and peace are the inalienable rights of all members of the human family. These are absolutes. And they are the absolutes that real coaching is about. Anything else is selling short on what is possible.

PS After writing this piece, my son Ezra, who is a philosophy student at Sussex told me that just because people interpret events differently doesn’t mean that the event doesn’t have an intrinsic truth. Just that we do not know it. Similarly he said, just because there are many definitions of coaching and that we don’t agree about which definition is true, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a true definition. Just that we do not know it.

I therefore leave you with this thought from the poet Maria Rainer Rilke -

“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

And I’m still not sure that I have explained it very well.

Free

1 Free to be

Being is the intentional act of creating possibilities, of creating something from nothing.

Nothing is what shapes being.

Being different today than we were yesterday

Life is an endless stream of possibilities.

This is what we are given, the chance to author ourselves in one way or another

All these possibilities exist only as potential, they are latent or unexpressed.

They have not been manifested and as yet have no existence.

Until we express one of these possibilities it does not exist.

Therefore there is nothing.

From nothing we create something; what we create is possibility.

We move through the world as a space of possibility

We have the choice at every moment whether to engage with life and create new possibilities or to withdraw from life

To the extent that you are a yes to life and create possibilities that is who you are being.

2 Free to create

Free to create means coming from nothing.

Thinking like an artist, standing in front of a blank canvas,

Without inference or preconceived ideas.

Being spontaneous capturing new ideas in the moment.

Seeing artistically is a skill we can all develop.

Sometimes this ability becomes clouded by old beliefs and experiences.

it simply requires of us to look again , to listen, to be aware, to trust,

to be present and to take responsibility for our interpretations,

and for our experience,

for creating alternatives, opportunities and possibilities.

When there is no gap between art and life people are in touch with their ability to create anything.

There is poetry as soon as we realise that we possess nothing.”

3 Free to achieve

Achieving means fulfilling your potential

Potential means the capacity for coming into being

Capacity expands or deflates in line with willingness

Your past does not predict your future

Your history does not determine your potential

At every moment you can author your potential into existence

The great leader refuses to relate to others

As their story but only as their potential

4. Free to Lead

There is a distinction between transactional leadership, which is about fulfilling the task, and transformational leadership, which is about fulfilling potential.

Fulfilling a task requires a set of skills.

Fulfilling potential requires the ability to make a difference.

This is the real skill of the 21^st century leader: the ability to inspire others to realise their full potential.

The effective leader is invisible.

The effective leader derives success from repeatedly giving away power.

By power we mean the capacity to bring about change.

The leader gets to be great by bringing forth greatness in others.

This requires a generosity of spirit, a belief in the potential of others, and an authentic sense of self, such that success comes from within, and is not dependent on circumstances or the opinions of others.

5 Free to accomplish

Accomplishment is the art of generating results.

When we are willing to be responsible, to stop blaming others, or the circumstances in which we find ourselves, then we can really begin to generate results.

Accomplishment means to complete

When we are complete with ourselves

There is nothing we cannot accomplish

We don’t have to wait for others to change or for the situation to improve.

We don’t have to rely on our roles or job titles to get things done.

We don’t have to depend on what the past dictates is possible, or be tied to our habits.

We can literally begin to invent the future.

This is the essence of transformational leadership.

6 Free to choose

Choice is based on our perception of events and the meaning we give them

These are a result of our history and experience

People have a story – but they are not their story – people are multi-storied

They are not bound by their story

Not bound in the sense of predictability or probability

Not bound in the sense of direction

Not bound in the sense of destined

Not bound in the sense of limited or constrained

Not bound in the sense of doomed

Behind every story that is privileged in the foreground

There are other stories unnoticed in the background

The leader’s job is to let them appear

7 Free to play

Play is the source of innovation. It’s the spontaneous expression of life. Spontaneity is a universal expression of people’s freedom. When people feel free they speak, move, laugh or smile spontaneously. They are free to be themselves. Spontaneity is the quality of being and acting without constraint, fear, embarrassment or awkwardness.

Just for the fun of it is the intrinsic spirit of Play. It has no ulterior aim, no other goal. It is a must in life. Deprive anyone of play and you deprive them of the essential spirit of living.

A prose poem on creativity

The art of work
the art of work

inter – view

Question:

To start, could you describe your  work?

Answer:

Yes, of course. What we do is take the accidents of work and innovation and turn them into a way of seeing.

Q:

The accidents?

A:

Yes. The accidents. As in, the invisible attributes. The weave, the structures, forms, feel, rhythm,  tempo, intensity … the way things fit together.

Q:

Do you mean that you can see the invisible? How can you teach people to see the invisible?

A:

It is not necessarily something to teach. Rather to learn; learning to see. Not so much seeing, as in seeing, as in vision, but seeing as experience; seeing as a way of being; seeing as a way of interpreting the world.

Q:

So the work is experiential?

A:

Yes. And no. It isn’t the experience that makes the difference. It’s being the difference you see. In other words being the difference you experience. That’s a shift, which shifts your experience. So in that sense it is experiential.

Q:

Interpreting the world?

A:

Yes?

Q:

What does that mean?

A:

We can’t say yet, we haven’t finished the conversation.

Q:

Are you saying the world doesn’t have a meaning?

A:

Oh no, the world has many meanings. It depends who is telling the story.

Q:

Which story is that?

A:

The story that determines the meaning.

Q:

Does the meaning of the world change every time someone tells a story?

A:

Absolutely.

Q:

Then the world isn’t….

A:

Exactly

Q:

Are you saying there is no reality except story?

A:

Not exactly. There are levels of reality. Story is one. Agreement is another. Measurement another. Objectivity is another. Story binds them.

Q:

So there’s nothing but story?

A:

No. But there is nothing. In fact there is only nothing. In order for their to be something first there has to be nothing

Q:

Sounds like the emperor’s new clothes

A:

The people who saw the emperor’s new clothes, or didn’t, were under pressure to conform, or not. This isn’t about conformity it’s about freedom.

Q:

I’m lost

A:

There is only one thing to do when you are lost. Stay still and experience the silence. It’s the essence of work and innovation.

Q:

How can doing nothing possibly contribute anything to work or innovation

A:

Anything that does not stem directly from nothing is habit. Only nothing can create something. That’s freedom in-form-ation, in potential.

Q:

Why in potential?

A:

Freedom manifest is in the result.

Q:

Which result?

A:

Whichever result you manifest

Q:

What is the process from potential to manifestation?

A:

There is no process. Process implies beginning, middle and end.

Q:

Are you saying results have no beginning, no middle and no end?

A:

I’m saying that is only one way to think about it. Results may start in the middle and end in the middle without ever starting at the beginning or finishing at the end. Beginning, middle and end are only a question of syntax. They are only one way of seeing the world.

Q:

Well what about the process of change?

A:

There is no process involved in the change. Change happens. It is.

Q:

The result?

A:

The real result you are after is nothing. The result that will make a difference is freedom.

Q:

But doesn’t freedom only exist in the mind?

A: Freedom exists in the mind at the same time as not existing in the mind. Anything that exists in the mind is a trap and prevents you from being free; at the same time nothing actually exists in the mind, which is freedom; our mind just thinks that things exist in our minds. This is imprisonment.

about creativity

Here’s what I think. Creativity is not a thing or a quality, not a process or an activity. You cannot possess it or harness it. It is a flow, a fleeting moment, a gift. The closest we can say is that creativity is a celebration of what is. I wrote recently:

“There is always a tension between the creative act and its purpose. Perhaps the artist has no purpose other than to create, or to provide us with an experience of the mysterious; to question our relationship and our place in the universe.”

Creativity is about creating from zero. It is about unconcealing something that has previously been unseen and making it accessible. In this sense it is about risk, imagination and uncertainty. It is an attempt to cut through all the levels that modern human beings in our alienated western society add on to simplicity and essence. All real creative endeavor sets out to reach the most fundamental and the widest human experience without diluting anything. Creative expression at its most effective, most transformational, is maximum impact with minimum means. It leaves the most to the imagination.

John Heilpern, author of The Conference Of The Birds, The Story of Peter Brook in Africa, quotes the actress Glenda Jackson speaking about the creative act, discovering the breakthrough moment  and working with director Peter Brook in rehearsal:

“… so you begin again. And eventually he says ‘no’. And it goes on like this until you call for the oxygen tent. But perhaps you do discover something. And he says, ‘Yes, that’s a bit more like it’. You say ‘a bit more like what’. To which he smiles in his benign way and replies, ‘I don’t know, show me’…”

Then somehow the actor reaches a part of themselves, a place inside themselves, and performs something they had never thought of before. It is an act of spontaneity, totally in the present, not drawing on anything already known or done before. It comes only by grace and by imagination. You cannot force it, you cannot command it, you cannot demand it, you can only let go, surrender and trust that it will find you.

Heilpern uses this exquisite phrase:

“Envy those who can break with the past; they will be fearless.”

This is the art of the peacemaker; like the theatre director or the orchestra conductor, to be the creative space, the catalyst for others to author a new story that breaks with the past, into existence.

presence

Presence

Here’s something I wrote a while ago about one of the core coaching qualities.

Presence is a function of listening. It shows up in your responses to people’s questions. When you are present your answers will fall directly into their world and they will know you have been listening. They will feel heard. When people feel heard they feel supported. This is a platform for trust. Trust is a specific result of presence

Presence is a function of sharing. People experience you as present when you share authentically from your own experience, without withholding.

Presence is not your theories, your opinions, your concepts, models or how much you know about something. All these have their place but they are not presence.

Presence is not talking about presence.

This would be like trying to eat the menu instead of eating the meal

Presence is a function of congruence. When what you say matches what you do, and when what you say and how you say it all match, then people will experience you as very present.

Presence is a function of contact. Particularly eye contact but not only.

Presence reveals itself in vulnerability, sensitivity, tenderness, kindness and care. Ultimately this is what it takes to be a coach, leader or facilitator.

Presence is not blaming people, making them feel guilty or criticising them. It is acknowledging them for being exactly who they are and what they offer, and then offering them the possibility of moving on.

Presence is a function of awareness, awareness and attention are keys to presence.

Presence is a function of allowing what ever is present just to be present not resisting, rejecting, reacting or resenting.

Presence is not necessarily stillness. Presence for a champion tennis player, athlete or soccer player is often in intense action, focussed, committed and intentional.

Presence is often enhanced by stillness, especially as a practice to be becoming present.

Presence is the opposite of absence.

First and foremost you must show up.

Presence and acknowledgement go hand in hand. When you acknowledge somebody you declare that they are present for you, and you for them.

Presence does not rely on the past to determine who you are; who you are is given in and by this moment

Presence almost invariably implies love emerges

Ah ha



Talk from the side walk

A couple of things have happened other the past few days that have set me to thinking about inspiration and freedom and otherness …  First, we were supposed to have a master coaching group meeting in one of the villages outside Plymouth but the snow made it impossible. At least that was the dominant conversation which we all bought into! So we had a conference call instead; which was good. Very good in fact. On the call one of us, Mary, said she felt she was at her best as a manager and leader in her business when her attention was off herself and she was only thinking about others. That’s been called servant leadership by a few people including Max de Pree in his wonderful book Leadership is an Art. De Pree describes leadership as “… more a condition of the heart than a set of things to do …” My friend Sally repeated this to me when we met at a 50^th birthday party the following night and said that Mary’s words were what inspired her to come out that night in the snow, when she really would have preferred to stay at home.

And I have been wondering about this. Is it enough just to be in or of service to others? Is that it? Lilla Watson, who is an Australian Aboriginal activist and visual artist, is credited as saying “if you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Sure, helping isn’t a great metaphor, it implies someone is helpless or needs help; as a coaching or leadership mentality that is definitely a waste of time. But Watson seems, at least to me, to be saying something else in between her words. Don’t come to help me, or even to empower me. Don’t talk about supporting me because that still implies a deficiency on my side of the street. I don’t want you to offer to be alongside me, that presumptuous. Recognise that who you are is me, we are connected; know that your liberation is inextricably bound up with mine; only then you can come as a true partner. We are equals in our exploration. We are both on the journey together. I on mine, you on yours. Neither of us can travel any further without each other. Service is not about serving another, it is about serving life. It is an affirmation of living, an affirmation I can only make when I am truly in relationship with others.  Its deepest roots are the essence of our moral imagination; reminding us that our responsibility is to and for the whole, which is only expressed through action

Martin Buber called this the I-thou relationship.

The kind of liberation Watson is referring to is not about abundance, or wealth, or career, or goals – all the stuff coaching so often gets trapped into talking about; probably not even about political freedom, which God knows is important, but is about liberating spirit. That’s inspiration. Breathing together.  As leaders and coaches we must avoid the pitfall of being pulled back to the known and familiar problem-saturated story. Our job in the partnership is to hold the bigger context and to hold the hope for both of us.

Next; at the party I found myself in an intense conversation with Sally’s partner, Massimo, about the conference call and vision … Massimo has done a lot of work over the years in personal transformation and coaching. He runs a data base business specialising in providing services for small to medium size companies in the voluntary and community sector.  Part of the conversation was about the struggle to grow a business. As we talked I asked Massimo what the purpose of his data bases is. He replied that it is to make his clients’ organisations more effective.

I like to learn about leadership from everywhere and my favourite book is the Conference of the Birds – the Story of Peter Brook in Africa. It is the true account of an expedition through the Sahara Desert taken by the renowned director Peter Brook and a company of actors searching for a new form of theatre, for the universal language. Brook says the moment you arrive anywhere you limit the distance you could have travelled. I like that and since I don’t really like to settle for obvious boundaries I incorporated the idea into my coaching practice. So I asked Massimo if that was satisfying.

“No”, said Massimo

“Why not?”

“It’s not transformational”

“It’s not transformational or it’s too small scale”

“Both”

“So what does it mean if your customers are more effective; what difference does that make?

After a moment of thought he told me “basically it frees people up to do more.”

I said, “If my mum who is 84, wants to get a volunteer to take her to the hospital, does your data base make it easier for her?”

“Yes” he said.

“Do the people in your company know that?”

“Well, we get feedback from the organisations we work with and I tell the guys that, but I don’t think we know what difference we are making for mums”

“If you knew that?”

“We might find out we are transforming lives.”

“Ah ha” we both said

That’s it for now. Watch out for more talk from the side walk.

mo

Please feel free to circulate this news letter. My only request is that you credit me as the author and don’t plagiarise, filch, steal, usurp or appropriate this as your own

I can be contacted on mo@mocohen.com

Talk from the side walk is the newsletter of Mo Cohen. Mo is a writer, coach, speaker and peacebuilder.

look to the margins

talk from the side walk

Back in the 80’s I had a partnership with Roy Langmaid called The Changes Consultancy that specialised in delivering transformational training for the advertising and market research community, before transformation was mainstream.  Vision and mission were new ideas. I wrote a paragraph for a resource paper that started something like this …

“Don’t look for change in the mainstream, look to the margins. Middle-aged, white men in positions of power will always be the last to change.”

One of the issues right on the margins in the mid 1980’s was “being green.” We ran Green Lunches making the connection for advertisers between dropping litter in Charing Cross Road and the destruction of the Amazon Rain Forests. People thought we were nuts!

We also talked about the rise of what back then Roy and I termed “the spiritual sector”. We predicted that within twenty years this would be a mainstream market for books, films, healthcare products, seminars and conferences. Honestly, in 1987 no one knew or even cared what we were talking about.

Remember, this was at least 10 years before we had The Matrix or desk tops, never mind lap tops, MP3 or i-phones …

Here’s the thing, I came across these terms from the world of digital technology - disruptive innovation or disruptive technology - that have been around since about ’97; there’s a whole body of theory about these concepts, but essentially it boils down to this – an idea or an innovation comes along that improves things in an unpredictable way. Something upsets the applecart in such a way that after the apples are finally loaded back everything is much better. These ideas are often seen as threatening by the mainstream because they are in competition with the existing mindset and are coming from an entirely new direction. Intuitively people sense that this new idea could come to dominate.

Over Christmas and the New Year I found myself wondering about Disruptive Leadership and making this connection. The baby boomers are getting ready for retirement. Typically in the past a top leader in politics, business or industry was a man of fifties or sixties. Blair was in his forties so is Obama and it is still coming down. Today men and women in their twenties or thirties are forging the future … globally .. It’s easy to name  Mark Zukerberg (Facebook) 25; Shawn Fanning (Napster) 29; Larry Page and Sergei Brin (Google) both 36 but just look around the internet and you will find a host of other young global leaders out there, making a difference in education, industry, diplomacy, commerce, finance, policy, social enterprise and public service.

At the beginning of the 21^st century we didn’t have i-pods or blackberries, we didn’t down load music or film, we didn’t watch anything on u-tube, we weren’t part of any groups on facebook, nobody tweeted … and we still thought that we had control. 9/11 and the great recession turned that belief around.

Here’s my point. It’s time for disruptive leadership. The young people who are now in their early and mid- twenties coming into our organisations … whether it is the Health Service, a bank, a charity, a school … whichever … have a different set of expectations and values. They have a different mindset and world view. They move quickly, very quickly. They communicate globally, literally. They know when they are being listened to, heard and respected. They participate in global events from their bedrooms and they are concerned about the future.

So here are seven ideas to kick start a decade of disruptive leadership:

Change the game … make sure your leadership serves a higher social purpose, choose significant social ambitions and noble destinations. Poor and uninspiring leadership is a drag on performance. This is the new direction Ø Planet Ø People, Ø Possibility Ø Performance Ø Profit Ø

Shake things up … you cannot expect to roll out the same old stuff for the next ten years and imagine it will make a difference. Create a new ecology where everyone has an accountability, knows what results they are accountable for and is willing to be held to account (not blame!). Create a culture where everyone succeeds (their failure is my failure) and everyone is expanding their potential.

Create problems … don’t be afraid of chaos, conflict or confusion. These are all the most potent avenues to new solutions, new possibilities and new futures. Resistance to change is a dead end street. Empower the mavericks and the divergent thinkers. Diversity and difference are the tools for transformation.

Push for the breakdown … innovation, natural growth and breakthroughs never come from the status quo. Take on challenges you do not know how to meet. Make promises you do not know how to keep. You will either succeed or you will fail. Either way you will learn more than you ever could standing still

From pyramids to circles … Eliminate the pathologies of power. Redesign your hierarchies to create more inclusive frameworks. Redistribute power and decision making. Reward contribution not position.

Create an epidemic … design and build networks that inspire people to join in and take action. Give everyone a voice. Let the people shape the organisation and their own lives within the organisation.

Watch your mouth … there’s an old paradigm of speaking in organisations which is all about strategy, efficiency, objectives, targets, resources and competition. These are all battle based metaphors and do little or nothing to inspire and empower. This new decade must begin to engage and expand our moral imagination with ideas that touch our souls. Use the language of truth, honour, justice, forgiveness and beauty.

That’s it for the moment. Watch out for more talk from the side walk.

Happy New Year

mo

Please feel free to circulate this news letter. My only request is that you credit me as the author and don’t  plagiarise, filch, steal, usurp or appropriate this as your own

I can be contacted on mo@mocohen.com

Talk from the side walk is the newsletter of Mo Cohen. Mo is a writer, coach, speaker and peace builder.