This is a replay from the Build Your Network podcast where I was interviewed by Travis Chappell. In our conversation, I discuss the two core premises of my book, Create New Futures, the keys to building my network, what high achieving executives struggle with the most, and Travis asks me a series of rapid, random questions I had fun answering.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf33
In this episode, I talk about and explain the five dimensions of integrity in response to a question put forward by a female manager concerned about maintaining her integrity in the face of others perceptions of her leadership style.
As you will learn, there are five dimensions of integrity from which you can choose to respond in any given situation. These five dimensions represent increasingly higher levels of integrity and versatility. Understanding these five dimensions will allow you to personalize your communication and responses situationally.
Full show notes: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf32
This is a replay from Hack the Entrepreneur podcast where I was interviewed by Jon Nastor. In this conversation, Jon asks me about my clients and how I am able to attain 99% of them through referrals. I explain the three important decisions I made early on in life that led me to work and help the people I do today, saying “yes” to opportunities before having it all figured out, and I touch upon the process I went through to write my book, Create New Futures.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf31
What is the future of leadership? How must leaders embrace change? How will our leadership role models evolve or remain the same in coming decades?
As the global landscape shapeshifts, society experiences rapid changes with the confluence of technological breakthroughs, economic and cultural tremors, and tectonic geopolitical transitions. If we are to leverage the opportunities that such volatility presents, our concept of leadership and our notions of how leaders operate must be tested and updated accordingly.
In a recent Create New Futures webinar I was asked what I admire about women who are in leadership positions. In addition to sharing my response in this article, my intention is to encourage you to build your own coaching and communication versatility by using that conversation to demonstrate how I apply framing and reframing skills to provide context for my responses. This is why the article’s format is different from my usual approach. Rather than report my comprehensive reply, I offer relevant value by sharing the thought process that led me to my response.
Full show notes: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf30
Greg Shoemaker is the Global Head of Supply Chain Central and Direct Procurement Services at HP. He is responsible for $23M in annual spend. In this engaging interview, I speak with Greg about the responsibilities of his position and key lessons he has learned. We get insight into his decision making skills, and understand how he's been able to cope with crisis events.
In this conversation you will learn how Greg got his start and what he's doing to keep HP successful.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf29
How are you debriefing the last 12 months? What learning insights will you take forward to apply and build on in the new year?
Reflecting on the past twelve months, I am grateful for an extraordinarily special year filled with challenges and opportunities. This was our best and busiest year ever, with exciting work that afforded us a myriad of learning and development opportunities. Working with clients who trust and believe in me is a special privilege. I learn and grow through my interactions with them, and I cherish their successes, development and growth. Here are eight learning insights that I plan to apply throughout the coming year:
Now it's your turn. Turn the key. Champion the leverage of leaders. Produce three streams of value. Discover the third alternative. Cultivate organizational resilience. Renew your energy. Trust your intuition and be confident. Orchestrate serendipity that enables new futures to emerge now.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf28
After spending 14 years in corporate America, Geoff Bellman launched his consulting firm – 40 years ago. His consulting has focused on renewing large, mature organizations the likes of Verizon, Shell, and Boeing.
Geoff is also an author and has written such books as, The Consultant’s Calling: Bringing Who You Are to What You Do, which is how I was first introduced to him. His most recent book, Extraordinary Groups: How Extraordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results, explores teams, families, and groups that perform beyond everyone’s expectations. In this book, Geoff seeks to find out what enables such breakthrough performance to happen. Listen in to learn more about Geoff and his insightful views on this fascinating topic.
Essential learning points:
The speed at which we work today discourages reflection.
Organizationally we’ve not been in this phase for very long. It has only been a couple of decades that we’ve been working at this speed, and we truly don’t know what the hell we are doing right now. Organizations have not found ways to adapt yet.
We know how to deluge people with data but we don’t yet know how to put it together as information that’s really useful. It is a mess as it ought to be. This is a transformative time, and we don’t know what we are transforming to.
We are used to being in control. We should be seeking answers now. And I don’t think we should know what the answers are now.
“Our thesis was that if you gather people in a gymnasium and you asked them to sort out what made teams great, they would come to agreement about certain elements regardless of the skills and or the context.”
What the six needs that people have when they join a team?
There is a healthy tension between the current state and the future possibility and between the need to be accepted as you are (current) to the need to be realizing your potential (future).
People describe great team work as magic, chemistry, we love each other, but I cannot come to a new team and say “do magic, do chemistry”, so we had to get beneath the magical expression.
How do you encourage and help a team become great? What are the behaviors and ways to help a team discover a peak experience?
What are the eight indicators of extraordinary teams?
The transformation is more about seeing than about doing; more about perspective than it is about a skill. The world looks different when you have been transformed.
Pay attention to yourself and who you are becoming.
Full show notes: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf27
At this time, as you reflect on all that you’ve achieved this year and on your hopes and aspirations for the future, it feels appropriate to offer my letter to Jane, that I included in the epilogue to Create New Futures.
“I feel like an impostor,” Jane told me. She was one of the brightest young professionals I had ever encountered, much wiser than her young age might lead you to think. “Sometimes I am amazed at the responsibilities and opportunities handed to me. Inside of me is a nagging fear that I may be found out, that I cannot be that good,” she added.
The other names for the impostor anxiety are the “fear of becoming an authority” or “the fear of having power.” Many people suffer from and grapple with a form of this anxiety. I, too, have experienced my share.
I skipped the academic route, and I largely skipped the corporate road. Instead, I chose to travel a different path. In my mid-forties, my father-in-law continued to ask occasionally when I would start studying at the university. “But Moshe,” I would smile, “do you realize I already have PhDs and senior executives participating in my seminars, coming to learn from me?” Like my father, his educational opportunity was stolen during World War II, when he escaped Warsaw to join the Jewish Brigade in the Russian Army to fight in support of the Allied forces. For the rest of his life, he retained his desire and love for education.
I am lucky. Both my father and mother learned early on to trust that I was following my own inner guidance. In fairness, they each struggled with their own full plates of responsibilities, leaving me largely to my own devices and convictions. A true gift indeed.
I realized Jane was asking me to afford her the same validation I had received from my parents. “How can I provide the touch of confidence and self-belief she needs?” was the question I pondered. I sat down to write the following letter to Jane.
Dear Jane,
When it comes to overcoming fear and anxiety, consider that you already have conquered the first great fear that every human must face: that of appearing in this world. Nothing can be more overwhelming than being born into this strange world. The sheer courage to emerge from the womb into the helplessness of total dependence on the adults around you (who in some cases are ill-informed and not very helpful) is powerful beyond compare.
Some will say the reality of being born is inescapable and automatic. However, I believe it represents the greatest act of courage and faith, more significant by an order of magnitude than any other we perform thereafter. The awesome realization that a soul presence and a spirit inhabit the body early in its development to fortify the birthing act, signifies for me the great light that shines through every day of my earthly living.
When I am beset with fears, I remind myself of the courage of my birth. I then recall the incredible challenges I have overcome, and the miraculous events that followed as a result. I remember the heart specialist who never looked me in the eye when he said to my father, “Your son has a condition that needs to be monitored and he should not exert himself,” which I mistakenly interpreted as a death sentence. Talk about fear… I was left physically shaking. To banish that fear I started running in earnest, winning the Israeli long distance running championship five years later. None of my competitors knew that I was not competing with them, but fighting against my own fear.
Later, as an Air Force pilot, I nearly crashed more than once and had a few flight near-misses. Those experiences made me realize that I never am alone, never without support or guidance. Even when I fall on my face, I am not without help, except in times when I allow fear to separate me from the bounty of care and guidance that is freely offered. And even then, I still am being watched over in spite of myself. We all are. There is evidence galore that so much in this universe is willing and ready to help you, to help me, to help us all. Much is invested in our success. My improbable journey and yours bear testimony to this truth.
Living is a theater. We all are here on a journey of discovery. Pretending or faking it until it is real is one of the fastest ways to syphon learning. We all were impostors on the first day of school, the first time on the soccer field or in the choir, the first time we were caught up in the act of love, and in the first solo attempt at driving. Impostor anxiety is merely the echoing hangover of these experiences.
Therefore, central to the development journey is the updating of one’s own self-view. As we grow, we all must release the old self-views that no longer serve us well.
Living is about overcoming setbacks, disappointments and challenges. It is a journey in which you make new connections, unfolding the reason and purpose why you are here on this Earth at this time, and get closer to the supreme realization and knowing that your life matters.
The vistas of possibilities that have opened up in my life extend beyond what I had imagined. More often than not, they have been a source of great surprises. The most radical moments of breakthrough always found me when I was able to gently unburden myself of my limiting beliefs. Often these beliefs centered on a view I had held dearly and could not imagine being without. Time and again, a methodology or a way of working that had seemed essential, with no apparent way to proceed without it, would then appear to be a figment of my own imagination that had initially acted as my crutches. All I had to do was lay them down and release the mental model that had enabled them in the first place.
There is very little we achieve or do on our own. I would not be where I am today without the help of many people. I never forget this fact. There has been a chain of never-ending miracle workers: the teacher who did not give up on me when I struggled, the stranger who rescued me at a point of desperate need, the friends and communities that still provide me with fortitude, the clients who trusted me. The list goes on.
I tell you this for a fact: as you wake up every day, many people—some knowingly, but many not—are conspiring to help you take the next step to carry you forward, to help you grow and evolve beyond your wildest imagination.
Always remember, there is an army of helpers fighting for you, even when you do not see them. They need you to do your part. They need you to make an effort. They need you to make your next move in order for them to show up and help. And you, too, are part of an army of helpers for others, some of whom you know, others whom you do not.
You are here for a purpose. Remember, you have an extraordinary gift. You can learn today what you did not know yesterday. Time and again I have been in situations that felt like I was drinking from a fire hose. Without exception, the learning journey is non-linear. Learning even can bend time. When the need is urgent, certain interventions can be designed to create an immediate transfer of three months’ worth of learning in just three days, or even faster.
I know all this to be true for you, too. What I say to myself, I say to you. Here is my conviction, which I propose that you adopt as a reminder to yourself:
First, there is almost nothing I cannot learn. If my life or family depended on it, I probably could act in a movie as a convincing though imperfect stand-in for George Clooney.
Second, and even more importantly, I fear no person, alive or dead, in business, academia, politics, or any other field. I am prepared to hold a conversation with anyone —a head of state, a Nobel Prize laureate, a powerful CEO or a saint—human to human, free of fear. I know that when we sit down to talk, I will find ways to create mutual value. Just as I am capable of bringing a unique perspective that enriches us both with new understanding and insight, so are you.
The only other point to remember is that we all use the toilet (except Canadians, who use the washroom). That fact, along with the knowledge that we each are unique and carry the gift of our experiences, liberates me to recognize there is no person we should be afraid to meet, or worry that somehow, we are not up to the task. I tell you that you are more than enough, that you can and will do well in any circumstance. You must believe in yourself: so much in this Universe already does believe in you, and expects and awaits your joining in that belief. I believe in you too.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf26
Ravi Venkataraman is the founder of Alive Consulting where he mentors and consults global companies on setting up their shared services operations and on developing design thinking and leadership. For more than three decades he held global leadership roles with banking and with shared services organizations.
As the former Senior Vice President and head of Global Business Services at Hewlett Packard, he led a multifunction shared services organization of 18,000 employees located in 58 countries and was responsible for the back office operations of the entire company which handled millions of transactions everyday.
In this conversation, Ravi reflects on leadership lessons, making tough decisions, overcoming fear, and on the four spiritual principles that guide him in life and in business.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf24
A key role of leadership is helping people overcome challenges and achieve results. In this article/podcast, you will discover a new process to help you reframe conflicts. This approach will enable you to lead your teams beyond just meeting challenges resiliently. You will empower them to unleash personal and professional growth.
One morning at breakfast, Sara described a conflict between two people we love. Feeling their struggle and pain, she sought to find an insight that would help them reach an effective solution. She asked, “What do you think about this conflict? How would you approach the challenge that it represents?”
Pouring the green tea, I replied, “First we must recognize that most people have a natural tendency to apply a binary frame of mind. That is, when we see a problem, we react by attempting to solve it there and then. We tend to equate conflict with something bad that needs to be removed. This mistaken belief prevents our taking advantage of the opportunity inherent in most conflicts. The fact is conflicts can lead to breakthrough developments. Thus, my first suggestion is to avoid falling into the trap of reactive ‘solutioning’ by creating space for a different approach.”
Why is trying to pivot immediately from a problem to the solution often a suboptimal approach?
There are situations for which this simple binary equation doesn’t work because the solution cannot come from the problem itself. As Einstein taught us, we cannot solve a problem at the same level at which it was created.
A brief demonstration reveals the limitation of the “binary solutioning” approach. Position the palm of your hand close to your head, right in front of your eyes. You will find that the palm occupies almost your entire field of vision, leaving little room to see anything else. When you pull your hand away from your face, however, you can see your palm as well as the entire space around you. The same is true with a problem: you experience a new perspective when you step back to see a bigger picture.
We find solutions, therefore, by a) gaining a new and broader perspective, b) addressing the root causes, and c) introducing a new level of thinking that transforms the map of meaning that created the problem in the first place.
Here is the alternative thinking framework and process I proposed we use to lead a conversation that offers a path from conflict toward resolution. I placed three napkins on the table, naming them observe, elevate, and approach.
Step 1: Observe
After listening to Sara describe her understanding of the conflict under discussion, my observation is that there are six points of difference that comprise the bigger conflict. I attempt to unpack these differences, name them with greater specificity, and separate the amorphous feeling of conflict into a concrete set of data points. This first step allows me to bring a new level of clarity to the situation. It is easier to resolve a series of specific concerns and find exact remedies than it is to try to address a cloud of conflicts. In this, I step back to observe and gain a bigger perspective. I seek to validate the issues on the table rather than pivot immediately from problem to solution.
Step 2: Elevate
In step 2 of this discovery process, I look for an insight, an understanding, and an appreciation that elevates and enables a new point of view. Here is what I offered:
“Life is full of tensions and conflicts. Consider this fact: life is a theater in which intentions clash with reality. Tension arises when hopes and desires encounter opposing or incompatible hopes and desires. For example, the spiritual meets the physical, or the personal and the universal rub against each other and rarely agree. Such naturally arising tensions are present even before we bring value systems, beliefs, politics and economic conditions into the equation. These contradictions create fertile soil for conflict, especially when we consider that these realms are dynamic and evolving spheres that influence and interact with each other.”
By immersing myself in these observations, I am prodded to find the fulcrum where a new level of appreciation can be accessed, which I do by shifting from the “what” inquiry to the “why” inquiry. “Why” is a purpose inquiry. Instead of reacting to eliminate conflict immediately, I seek to understand its purpose. The game-changing insight comes with the realization that conflict has a purpose. I propose not only that the occurrence of conflict is purposeful, but that conflict has a dual purpose.
At the individual human level, conflict offers a growth opportunity. Through conflict we develop capabilities and capacities that we otherwise would not cultivate. Conflict is a central character in the developmental drama of everyone’s journey.
At the planetary and universal level, conflict is a technology that sparks innovation and breakthroughs in the evolutionary process by serving as a catalyst and trigger.
A common human response to conflict is to remove the problem, as that is believed to eliminate the source of pain and struggle. Once we recognize the purposeful opportunity conflict offers, we realize that a better approach is to use pain and struggle as fuel for learning, development, and growth.
These layers of understanding point to a key realization: how we handle conflict determines whether we grow and develop, or we freeze and arrest that development.
Our response to challenges and resistance determines whether we participate constructively in the evolutionary process they offer. This process of deliberation is part of my second napkin of “elevate,” which arises from the initial set of observations.
With these insights, I now am ready to propose an approach and offer process assistance.
Step 3: Approach
In this step, I suggest that there are two complementary approaches we can take with respect to conflict. The first approach is one of compassionate support: we offer encouragement, guidance, thinking frameworks and techniques without trying to take away the conflicts people encounter on their development journey.
In this approach, we advise, support, and offer the wisdom of experience. We do not, however, take from others a conflict they must face. Even if we could do that, why would we deprive them of the gift of the growth opportunity inherent in their struggle?
The second approach is one that acknowledges that progress, maturation and growth bring about change in the problems we need to handle. If this year we face the same kind of problems we struggled with last year and the year before, the implication is that we have made no developmental change and progress. Embracing new challenges, on the other hand, is a sign of progress, maturation and possibly new elevation.
How do we know that we are progressing on our journey? When we discover that this year we are dealing with a new set of challenges that open the door to new opportunities for us to embrace.
By refusing the knee jerk reaction of the binary equation from problem to solution, and by stepping back to observe, elevate, and formulate an approach, we are able to escape the Binary Solutioning and the Einstein paradox within it.
Fortified by the above insights and mindsets, Sara and I continued our conversation, reflecting on how this information might help address the situation faced by our loved ones.
We all must deal with conflict. Here is a radical thought: to be alive is to be in conflict. Reversing this construct would ask: If you are experiencing no conflict whatsoever, are you alive?
What about the conflicts you face in your life? What observations and insights can you develop? What approach will you take to reveal and engage the development purpose of the conflict? How will you use an existing challenge as an opportunity for growth?
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf24
Welcome to Create New Futures. Every episode, best-selling author and host Aviv Shahar will explore ideas and insights that can awaken and inspire you to the opportunities you have to create new futures for you, your family, your teams, and for your business. Life is too short to not be engaged in fascinating conversations that open, inspire and unleash new ways of thinking and seeing possibilities and beauty in life that work.
Through Create New Futures, Aviv will be having conversations with leaders, experts and interesting people to explore ideas and reflect on practices that you can use and apply to create and shape the future. With his guests, Aviv will put a magnifying glass on strategies and frameworks that he has applied to help senior executives and their teams achieve significant breakthroughs that lead to game changing results. Ideas, strategies, breakthroughs and practices that you can apply. Through his concept of Architecture Thinking™, Aviv walks you through what is needed to lead, change, transform an organization, redesign your life to achieve new goals, serve new needs and realize new possibilities. Leaders need to consider how to bring about and enable a compound set of outcomes by integrating multiple inputs.
Together with his guests, Aviv will explore how to develop strategy, how to lead to enable teams to unleash their brilliance and what is the inside work that leaders must engage in to develop executive presence and charisma and the capacity to see both the forest and the trees. More than ever, humanity now needs people who are open and prepared to imagine, create, and sustain new futures. This is a time of great transformative and disruptive change. It demands our best imagination, courage, and creativity. Through this podcast, Aviv will inspire you to be tomorrow's agent by creating conversations that birth new possibilities for you and for the people in your life.
Listen here: http://www.avivconsulting.com/podcast-create-new-futures/
After spending 14 years in corporate America, Geoff Bellman launched his consulting firm - 40 years ago. His consulting has focused on renewing large, mature organizations the likes of Verizon, Shell, and Boeing.
Geoff is also an author and has written such books as, The Consultant’s Calling: Bringing Who You Are to What You Do, which is how I was first introduced to him. His most recent book, Extraordinary Groups: How Extraordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results, explores teams, families, and groups that perform beyond everyone’s expectations. In this book, Geoff seeks to find out what enables such breakthrough performance to happen. Listen in to learn more about Geoff and his insightful views on this fascinating topic.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf23
Miguel Gonzalez is the Director of Global Logistics Procurement and Operations at Dupont and the future Chief Procurement Officer for one of three new companies that will be created after Dupont and Dow Chemicals finalize their merger.
He’s a global procurement and supply chain leader with broad experience and his unique skill is translating complex business needs into strategies that accelerates results in both short and long terms. Miguel has led global teams, has a good grasp of changing market conditions and vast experience when it comes to building and leading resilient and adaptive teams. I’m happy to introduce him to you and to share the experiences that led him to where he is today.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf22
Create New Futures does not adhere to a linear, chronological story. Thus, you can extract immediate value simply by turning to any page and reading for a few minutes. This approach was intentional, and I share my thinking here briefly because it reflects the evolution of my discovery journey. Old movies like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments begin a storyline, follow with an intermission, and then continue the chronology of the plot timeline. Somewhere in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, however, script writers began to employ the innovation of retracing up and down the timeline.
The evolution of this medium caught my attention because it reflects the development of the human capacity to become more universal and less locally based, less time-bound and more adaptive and timeline-flexible.
It also demonstrates audiences’ growing sophistication. The public at large seems to be amenable to abandon the Newtonian cause and effect linearity and ready to embrace a more complex network appreciation. The “Digital Natives” who were born in the post-Internet age are not bound by alphabetical order. Their brains have been wired into the Internet topography, where every word and idea has become a clickable portal that furthers the search for a deeper exploration. We all are now experiencing this discovery by getting used to reading in the middle and going with the flow of our interests. For this reason, I have built this book around portals, rather than chapters.
We no longer are bound by the linear cause and effect universe. Instead, we have the freedom to entertain mind-bending ideas. The legacy view that the past defines the future has been overlaid by a “flying upside down” view that contemplates a reverse flow in which the future reframes the past. What an exciting philosophical and spiritual concept!
In my workshops, my clients experience this new-found ability when we engage in the Sacred Stories Circle. In this process, I ask people to share formative experiences that contain teachable insights. I use them to demonstrate how we can attach new meaning and significance to an earlier experience from the vantage point of our current content and appreciation. This is a simple example of how we can enable the present and future to update our past.
The point of this example of how I help clients expand their thinking is to free you to explore this book any way you choose. Just as the moments and experiences described in this book trace back and forth in time, so, too, I invite you to let your interests guide your discovery journey.
The vignettes that follow are all part of my discovery journey instigated by the propelling inquiry of this book: what creates the future? I have integrated my personal and professional experiences to provide immediacy of access, to offer a practical translation of ideas, and to demonstrate how I have applied these techniques in my work. I hope this approach will inspire you to become more purposefully present in your life than you are now.
More than ever, humanity now needs people who are open and prepared to imagine, create and sustain new futures. This is a time of great transformative change. It demands our best imagination, courage and creativity.
My task in this book is to inspire you to be tomorrow’s agent, and to create conversations that birth a new future.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf21
Court Lorenzini, is the founder and CEO of multiple successful technology startups including DocuSign and MetaBrite. Court serves on the Boards of several early-stage companies, and is an active investor and advisor in the Seattle area.
I initially met Court on the board of Utrip, a destination discovery and planning platform startup where we both serve as advisors and board members. I have found Court to be one of the smartest people about business.
In this conversation, I explore with Court his formative experiences when at the age of 12 he participated regularly with his father in discussions with the first Band of Angels, the Silicon Valley's oldest seed funding organization. Court reflects on capturing his observations and insights in his ideas’ notebook, and on discoveries he made that shaped his journey, such as his focus on the Superpower concept, the five years cycle, his determination to build a portfolio of companies, and what he has learned from each of his startups.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf20
My guest for this conversation is Cathy Sunshine, founder and president of the Sunshine Group, a consulting and coaching firm specializing in family business, leadership transformation and organization design.
Guided by deep insight into organizational dynamics and throughput management, Cathy helps leaders, and organizations break through blockages, become agile and engaged, and produce turnaround growth. She helped hundreds of teams accelerate growth and improve performance.
In this conversation we explore why service structure works, how it guides an organization to solve complexity by producing an alignment that creates flow.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf19
Key learnings:
Full show notes: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf18
My guest, Sam Szteinbaum, has enjoyed an illustrious career. He was the Chief Learning Officer for Hewlett Packard and before that, Vice President and General Manager for America’s consumer products, the HP and Compaq desktop and Notebook PC products.
Since leaving HP, Sam has continued to develop and grow his pre-school business, The Wonder Years, in the Bay area which has four locations and a fifth site that is in the works. He is also on the Board of various technology companies, including, Asetek, where he serves as the Chairman and also Corsair.
In this conversation you will learn how Sam approaches business decisions, what options you have are after your corporate life ends, and how to design your future.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf17
Faiza Hughell is the Vice President of Sales at Ring Central. With more than 20 years of inside sales experience her passion and talent lies in building, training, scaling, and motivating successful sales teams. Faiza started in the software as a service world from a very young age and has sold SAS solutions ever since that time. Faiza was part of the WebEx winning team and at Ring Central leads the small to medium business program globally. In this conversation I ask Faiza about the traits of successful sales people, women in leadership roles in Silicon Valley, and much, much more.
Full Show Notes: http://avivconsulting.com/cnf16
Let’s talk about the first responsibility of a leader. This is Aviv with a new episode of Create New Futures. And today I am focusing on the fallacy of the Google age, and why as leaders, mentors, and parents we all must reflect on the Google fallacy and the conundrum it creates critically.
As a leader, your first responsibility is to lead yourself. You begin with how you develop your thought process, and continue with how you map your learning and your actions. You cannot afford to outsource your self-leadership or to abandon your intuition, judgment, and you cannot afford to contract out the diligent work of your own reflective inquiry and development.
My call to action here today is inviting you to practice mindfulness as a leader and as a parent, to recognize the fallacy of the Google age and to reflect on the learning and knowledge that you will encourage and promote.
Here is a question for you. How many Google searches do you perform on a regular day? Well, during one recent work day, I decided to answer my own question, so I kept count. At the end of the day, I discovered that I had conducted 24 Google searches. I love Google. How can you not love what Google enables us to do? Here is the point though I need to make. Every good development invariably creates unintended consequences. The fallacy of the Google age is one of these consequences. Before we put the laser on this challenge, let me make the broader statement.
Every age brings its technological innovation and progress. Every wave of innovation creates new possibilities and capabilities, which in turn give rise to mistaken beliefs.
For instance, the innovation of antibiotics initially catalyzed the belief that we were about to eradicate all diseases. The fantastic discovery of DNA promoted a deterministic DNA-centric mental model that postulated that people are defined by their DNA. This belief still is prevalent, even though epigeneticists subsequently showed that what gets expressed from our DNA potential is determined by the collective impact of the environment, formative experiences, and behavioral and life style choices.
Furthermore, the deterministic DNA-centric belief fails to recognize the broader significance of the psychological and spiritual dimensions of life such as their power and impact on our health, well-being and on our capacity to respond to opportunities.
When we retrace and reflect on human progress as a species, sometimes we appear to be following the allegorical story of the man next to a street light, searching for the keys he had lost. When asked if he felt he dropped the keys right there next to the street light, he replied, “I’m not sure when or where I lost my keys. Perhaps it was down the street or even on a different street. But it is easier and more convenient to search the area illuminated by the street light.”
As a species, we are a bit like that man. We develop antibiotics and think they will solve all our health issues. We discover DNA, and rush to believe we’ve unlocked the complete secret to life and all its mysteries. Clearly both discoveries represent important developments, and yet neither one of them can answer all the questions and unresolved mysteries or address all of humanity’s health problems.
These examples provide a great segue to reflecting on the Google fallacy, which I should perhaps better name the fallacy of the Google age.
To better appreciate this particular misunderstanding, let’s look at Google’s mission. Google was born back in the late 1990s, when many people believed that all of the world’s knowledge was going to be available on the web. Its founders recognized the opportunity to organize that knowledge and make it widely accessible. Google’s mission statement was and still is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This mission statement was coupled with the company’s vision statement: “to provide access to the world’s information in one click.” These are excellent mission and vision statements because of their clarity. Indeed this mission and vision guided Google’s business effectively to focus on its search engine service because they are concrete and clear.
More broadly, Google’s mission has been viewed and widely represented in the idea of organizing all the world’s knowledge, diluting a little the distinction we must make between information and knowledge.
This meme of organizing all the world’s knowledge was initially developed in the early 20th century by Paul Marie Otlet, a Belgian entrepreneur, considered one the fathers of information science. Otlet wrote numerous essays and two books about how to collect and organize the world's knowledge. Google was in the right place at the right time to bring this idea to life.
Today we all are the beneficiaries of Google’s service. Indeed most of the world’s information and knowledge is a click away. Where is the problem? What, then, is the Google fallacy?
The fallacy of the Google age is the belief that people are able to access every level of knowledge on any topic or question immediately.
Why is this a fallacy? What’s left out of the equation? What forms of knowledge not captured by the search engine’s algorithms are endangered by mindset propagated by Google’s search prowess?
My premise is that the mental model enabled by Google –which is that everything you want to know is just a click away - is costing people some of the defining markers of our humanness.
It allows us to get by superficially, it makes us lazy, and it facilitates the loss of reflection and concentration power. We are at risk of abandoning the joys of inner discovery, of striving to resolve unresolved mysteries. And, we are at risk of making mediocrity the new norm. When we relinquish the power of the depth of development knowledge acquired by persistent struggle and personal application, we lose some of our humanity.
Are we raising new generations of digital natives who discover Wikipedia and Google long before they experience the wonder of the outdoors, or learn to climb a tree, swim or ride a bike?
Here are five dimensions and buckets of knowledge that cannot be re-created or explained fully by Google or Wikipedia or any app. Each of these buckets must be accessed by other means and from other sources.
Bucket 1: Experiential knowledge: Can you remember your first outdoor adventure? Running in the open fields, climbing trees, hiking up a mountain to reach an alpine lake; scuba diving to discover the beauty of coral reefs. Can you recall these experiences, and the unbridled joy of engaging the elements? In this case the knowledge source is letting nature teach your body what you can and cannot do.
There is much more in the experiential knowledge category, such as discovering the versatile capabilities of your hands to dismantle and reassemble almost anything, to draw, to knit, to cook, and to fix what’s broken. Could it be that this fallacy we are bringing into focus is putting the adventurous discovery inherent in these activities at risk of disappearing or dramatically weakening? These are questions to reflect on as leaders and as parents.
Consider this: what are the chances of young people today to explore romantic love before they have been cheated out of its natural discovery by the misleading images propagated through all forms of media that are more likely than not to leave most people feeling inadequate? The contents of the experiential knowledge bucket are clearly being threatened by the intensity of this immersive exposure. I am obviously not blaming Google or the media with all the ailments of society and how superficial we have become, I am simply observing what the case is so we can choose as leaders and parents to be alert.
Bucket 2: Character learning and knowledge: My most formative character learning and knowledge at the age of 11 was acquired during the three years I got up every morning at 5 AM for my long distance running practice before school started. This regular and consistent practice taught me about determination, commitment, focus, overcoming pain, and the rewards of hard work. It enabled me to win the Israeli long distance cross country running championship at age 14.
This kind of knowledge cannot be imparted through Wikipedia or Google because it is an interior character knowledge. You have to discover and fashion this formation on the inside, and find out what commitment and determination feel like, to let the struggle steel your mind and instruct your soul.
Bucket 3: Concentrated focus and contemplative discovery: Important breakthroughs in science and in the arts were made possible by people who isolated themselves with a question and were able to mount tremendous focus and concentration on finding its answer. Are we losing this focused concentration with the never-ending noise of devices and digital alerts designed to trigger, to hack and to hook our brains with dopamine reactions?
Discovery through contemplative inquiry always has been central to the human experience. Take it away and you remove more than half of our arts. These natural capacities and processes are at risk too. Why concentrate and contemplate if you can Google search and get an answer in seconds?
Whatever happened to the defiant search for originality? The search engine premise is that all you can ever experience is a derivative and what someone else already felt, experienced and thought. Sure it’s obviously the case in 99% of the human experience, and yet we are interested in the one percent originality and genius that you can bring forward, that one percent that is not searchable on the web.
Bucket 4: Intuitive knowledge: Intuition is central to our humanness, and to our inventive and innovative breakthroughs. The sixth sense, the sense of being guided, the capacity to listen to our inner voice is at risk too. In fact it is at risk twice.
Here is why. First, when you know you can find answers to your questions readily through Google, there is a temptation to cease listening to our intuition, to abandon the courage to seek the instinctive and intuitive guidance inside.
Second, our creative innovation is diminished by extraordinarily persuasive external pressures to fit into existing categories and behavioral and thinking templates.
Socialization is a process that acts a bit like a dog in training. Though some might disagree with this analogy, if you look and compare the two situations, you will find that the protocols of dog training and the rewards for social success follow a similar principle. That realization leaves us wondering, if we are the dogs, then who is the master? The price we pay for taking these risks is the loss of creative intuition.
Bucket 5: Development knowledge: This category represents knowledge acquired and fashioned by self-application and by the development it fosters through the refinement of achieving mastery in a given area.
Think about the knowledge acquired by Missy Franklin and by Katie Ladeky in the swimming pool. Think about the knowledge found by Itzhak Perlman through the violin, by Yo-Yo Ma with his cello and by Renée Fleming with her voice.
In the process of achieving mastery in one’s craft, there are million insights into self-awareness, self-management, psychology, preparation, peak performance attunement, overcoming adversity and challenge, resilience and persistence, discordance and inner harmony. These experiences represent what we can call vertical knowledge because it lives and is accessed at different depths. I am talking about knowledge that cannot be acquired by just clicking on a mouse. It is only achieved with 10,000 hours of practice or perhaps 50,000 hours of practice.
I once attended a concert by Mstislav Rostropovich toward the end of his life. As he played the Antonín Dvořák cello concerto, I sensed a distinct feeling in the concert hall that his bow was moving effortlessly by itself. It was as though someone or something had taken over the playing, and Rostropovich was the vessel. This is not “clickable” knowledge. Such a rare form of knowledge and mastery - a pure musical communion manifesting through the cello - can be observed in pioneers and thought leaders in almost every field.
For example, there is development knowledge acquired by a passionate teacher who shows up to class every day with the thought, “Today I might inspire the student who will solve the climate or energy conundrums, or cure cancer or any other major problem, their love and dedication lead them to new and creative ways of teaching. Or consider the entrepreneur who starts a company and leads it from its inception to a thriving enterprise, needing to overcome million obstacles and to reinvent himself and herself along the way. I bet you have rare development knowledge that you fashioned in your professional journey. It extends beyond the information you carry in your head.
What then is the other facet of the Google fallacy?
The thought and the mental model that believe all forms of knowledge can be accessed instantly. We would be wise to realize that certain forms of knowledge require preparation to fashion the “vessel” to be ready to receive and contain the knowledge.
Here is a scenario for your reflection: when you go for a swim in the ocean you put on your swimming gear. When you go snowboarding or when you climb Mount Rainer, you are not likely to show up with the swimming gear. Instead, you will use a snowboard for snowboarding and you will dress well and have the technical equipment you need to summit Mount Rainer.
The same logic applies in the workplace when you inquire into the various fields of knowledge, especially non-academic fields such as leadership, sales, innovation, as well as inquiries related to parenting and relationships. Each of these conversations requires and would be tremendously enhanced by an appropriate set of tools, mental models and frameworks. Of course you can try to summit Mount Rainer with your swimming gear, but it is not certain you will come back alive.
We call ourselves the sapient species. The question is: are we indeed becoming wiser or are we dumbing-down ourselves and losing some of our humanness?
As leaders, mentors and parents, we must explore daily the question of how we can enable experiential knowledge. How do we facilitate character learning and knowledge? How do we inspire knowledge acquired through focused discovery? How do we encourage intuition and development knowledge?
That’s the work of leadership in the effort of fostering and promoting a new more enlightened and capable generations in the future.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf15
In this conversation I have the pleasure of speaking with Ted Clark. Ted has 35 years of leadership experience across all aspects of mobile computing. He was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of HP’s Notebook PC division from 2004 to 2012. In this capacity, he was able to deliver 165 million Notebook PC’s and 125 billion dollars in revenue.
Ted has a deep understanding of what it takes to build empowered and flexible teams and win in the hyper-growth technology space. He currently consults companies focused on building a winning market position by helping leadership teams drive execution that delivers results. In this episode, Ted reflects on his leadership learning and what enabled him to achieve with his organization the remarkable success milestones they experienced.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf14
Daniel Epstein is a marketing and innovation consultant from Toronto, Canada. He worked for Procter & Gamble for 21 years where he was awarded the Harley Procter Marketers designation in 2007; the highest designation for marketing excellence. He led P&G’s future of marketing and brand building and was responsible for the commercial leadership of some of the most iconic brands at P&G.
As he traveled the world for P&G, he developed a project named, Portraits in Faith, where he interviewed and photographed 450 people of faith in 27 different countries. In this conversation, I explore with Daniel how brain science is shaping the future of marketing, his insights about his time at P&G, and the journey he believes we are all on.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf13
In this episode we focus on what great learners and leaders do, and on how high performers create breakthroughs. Of all the practices I have been teaching to high performing leaders, the 72-Hour rule is one of the game-changer that enabled more people to accelerate results and create breakthroughs. Here are some of the key points I discuss during this 9-minute podcast:
The 72-hour rule states that if you do not take the first step toward applying a new learning and idea within the first 72 hours, the likelihood that you will implement it quickly approaches zero.
How will you activate the 72-Hour rule today? Who will you teach and share these ideas with to build the momentous and virtuous cycle of learning breakthroughs?
We are here to enable new growth, and to help create new futures.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf12
My guest for this conversation is Rohit Tandon. Rohit is the Senior Vice President and Business Leader of GENPACT Analytics and Research Business where he drives change and influences results by helping clients harness the value of big data and analytical insights. With over 25 years of leadership experience in companies like GE, IBM, and Hewlett Packard, Rohit is able to help companies build clarity of purpose and structure in order to deliver the performance and financial results they seek.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf11
My guest for this conversation is Dan Leahy. Dan is an educator with over 30 years of teaching and consulting experience with a special focus on the emergent capacities of complex adaptive systems.
Dan was the president of LEOS (Leadership Institute Of Seattle) for more than a decade and he is currently the Director of the Seattle campus of Saybrook University where he provides strategic and operational leadership for the campus.
In this conversation with Dan, we explore his calling and his journey with LEOS, why in order to change the world you must begin by changing the conversation, and that moment when a student’s eyes light up with a clarity about his or her sense of purpose.
FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.avivconsulting.com/cnf10