Work and Change the World

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This blog is temporarily suspended. Between assignments for two large clients and work on a book, I've had to let this platform stand empty. I'll be back soon.

Join the Discussion at the Social Edge!

The discourse deepens, as John hosts a worldwide discussion on the future of leadership, entitled Changing the World is Not Enough.  Right now, at the Skoll Foundation's Social Edge website, ideas and opinions volley between social entrepreneurs and concerned individuals around the globe.

Don't miss the chance to contribute to this important dialogue!

Time is of the Essence

“We are made to be destroyed. We are kindling for the fire and our lives will stand as naught against the onrush of time… Refusal to fear these general terms of existence is an honorable act of defiance.” These are the words of Bear, the Cherokee sage in Charles Frazier’s beautiful novel, Thirteen Moons.

Bear’s sentiments frame the urgent demand for leadership around the world. Time is the one force of nature against which humankind has no means of protection. We can extinguish fire. We can shelter ourselves against weather. We can make our homes in places safe from earthquakes. We cannot escape the wrath of time. It marches on relentlessly, heartlessly devouring every one of us. We all know our time is limited. As we live our lives and our time grows shorter, there’s nothing we can do to materially extend it. We can only refuse to fear it, in “an honorable act of defiance.”

On the line of time, covering at least hundreds of millions of years as our species has defined it, a human generation is a microscopic speck. Yet over the short span of less than a century, we have created a world where the worthy evolution of human existence could be set back thousands of years.

We now live in a world teetering between splendor and cataclysm. For most of us in America ours is a charmed culture, taking for granted food, shelter, freedom, order, healthcare, public safety, a free market economy, life, love and the pursuit of happiness. Though we share our planet with populations far less privileged, fellow human beings for millions of whom the fundamental privileges many of us were born to are as out of reach and surreal as the hardships such people endure are to us.

There's more love and happiness in the world than ever before. There's more disparity, suspicion and anger in the world than ever before. These forces run deep, collide and manifest themselves in mayhem much worse than most of us care to acknowledge. The worst could be yet to come. The unrealized potential for hatreds and annihilation of human life could render our planet a graveyard. This is an unspoken, unconscious eventuality sharpening, in the meantime, the bleeding edge between harmony and horror.

Our best hope for a better world is a higher standard of leadership. To avoid the unthinkable, leaders at every level in every society need to recognize that they serve the greater good of our global existence. Making money for shareholders, keeping a hospital in the black, eradicating another disease, holding down the price of gasoline, building a new school, finding peace to the Middle East and ending genocide in Africa, each in their own ways, are all well and good. But they are not ends in themselves. They are the steps that move us closer to a vision for a better world. The ability to see that global vision and share it is what makes up the higher standard of leadership.

Life is short. Time is of the essence. Leadership’s most “honorable act of defiance” today is to think globally. The new responsibility of leadership is to look out in time past the next election or the next board meeting or your own funeral and to plan for the world our grandchildren’s children will occupy. Solutions for the challenges along the way will be simpler if we can all see and work to create a world where the children born after we are gone can live in peace and prosperity.

Do you have the Power of Say and Do?

As leaders of all stripes and colors enter the wilderness that is our future (see previous post, Crossing the Wilderness), a mastery of their “fundamentals” will be required. In American football the fundamentals usually boil down to blocking and tackling. In medicine the fundamentals are expressed as “do no harm.”  For actors the guiding fundamental is that acting is doing.

Social entrepreneurship, in its evolved form, let’s call it pioneer leadership, will only succeed if it personifies its own “fundamentals.” These pioneer leadership fundamentals are found in the leader’s manner of working…the leader’s work ethic. Every one of us has a work ethic, regardless of the kind of work we perform, regardless of whether or not we’re paid to perform it. A leader’s work ethic, however, sets the tone for the work performed by the people who work for and with the leader.

My point is best illustrated by the work ethic fundamental I call the power of say and do. This guiding principle is so simple it seems trivial in a discussion about the kind of leadership that will save the world. Yet very few people I’ve worked with or leaders I’ve observed practice this basic blocking and tackling-type regimen.

Here’s how the power of say and do works: When you say you are going to do something, do it. If you’re not sure you can do it or know you can’t, don’t say you will. Never make promises you can’t keep. Never under-deliver on your promises.

Don’t say, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and then not call. Don’t promise the troops will be home for Christmas when you don’t know how to make that happen. Don’t say, “Read my lips. No new taxes,” and then raise taxes. Don’t tell your board you’ll report to them at their next meeting with a balanced budget when you’re not sure that gives your team enough time to finish the budgeting process.

Great leaders know it is better to under-promise and over-deliver than to over-promise and under-deliver. When as a leader you can’t consistently say what you are going to do and then do it, you damage your integrity as a leader. When you consistently fail to deliver on the things you say you will do, from returning phone calls to balancing budgets to ending wars, you will lose the respect of your followers and supporters. You will cease to be a leader. Effective leaders must be accountable. That’s all there is to it.

Yet this basic work ethic practice seems to erode as the responsibility and authority of most leaders grow. Too often I see leaders in healthcare, government, the arts, education, philanthropy and industry who seem willing to promise almost anything to curry favor, and then go on about their business as if their promises were never made.

The leaders who only say they will do what they know they can do, and then do it, are the leaders we trust. They also are the leaders we are willing to support when they tell us they will try to achieve a desired outcome, but they can’t be sure they will succeed. As well, we tend to support such leaders when they explain to us that they can’t do what we want them to do. We support them because we respect their honesty and accountability.

I could explain further. But the day is running short and I need to call the lobbyist who promised to call me yesterday to report on recent meetings at the Capitol. Then I need to email the former client who last week said she would send me an overnight delivery containing backup material for a foundation grant. Oh, I also need to call the accountant at another client’s office who told me a week ago, “…the check’s in the mail.”

Crossing The Wilderness

Today our human race finds itself at the edge of a frontier unlike any it has ever crossed. Fifty years from now, by most forecasts, the population of the world will have grown by two-thirds, bringing the total humans on the planet to ten billion; four billion more people than share the planet today will need a place to live. They will need jobs. And they will need to coexist peacefully in a crowded world.

Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists will grow in numbers by the hundreds of millions. Ages-old religions with relatively small followings will require their equal rights. New faiths will emerge. Religious freedom and tolerance will be essential to the survival of civilization.

People of different skin colors and ethnicities will share societies around the globe. Their lives will blend from generation to generation as they go to school together, work together and marry.

The next fifty years will see advances in technology continue to exceed their reach, giving most of the world’s population instant access to communication, news, entertainment and virtually every bit of information known to mankind.

The world’s supply of oil will steadily decline. Most mechanized production currently powered by oil byproducts will undergo conversion to new sources of energy.

Scientific and ethical challenges will sprint through the coming decades side by side, each competing to beat the other in a race that has no finish line. Breakthroughs in healthcare will treat, cure and prevent more diseases. The ten billion people in the world of fifty years hence will want those advances made available to all those who need them. The systems for the delivery of these health-related services will be expected to meet the demand, cover costs, make profits and maintain moral and ethical rectitude.

This new frontier has unprecedented territorial, racial, religious, political, scientific, medical, technological and ecological implications. Yet this is an unexplored wilderness that cannot be crossed merely by addressing its many challenges one by one, relying on the principles and practices that carried us across the twentieth century. This frontier requires that the human race rekindle its pioneer spirit and recognize a style of pioneer leadership called for by a strange frontier more complicated and hazardous than any before it.

We face a new world. The prospects for longer, healthier lives are good. People whose purposes in life are destructive, however, also will share this new world. Their opportunities to terrorize and kill innocent people will grow in proportion with the new world’s potential for greater goodness. What we as a civilization make of this frontier will be determined by what is in our hearts and how we act on it.

Leadership on the New Frontier

Our civilization has always depended on systems of leaders and supporters. Over the decades ahead, more than ever before, our leaders will need to embody and inspire the most noble hopes and dreams of their followers. The leaders who navigate the new frontier will need to be ambitious, inventive, competitive, strong like bulls and as pure as the driven snow. Whether they lead a superpower government, an international consumer products conglomerate, a hospital, a corner convenience store or a nursery school in a tiny third world country, how they lead and how they are expected to lead must be driven by the greater good of the society in which they live. As with pioneers over the course of history, they will need to understand where their journey across the frontier began, where they are on their journey, and where they are trying to end up.

This civilization of frontier folks will be the largest in history. They will be the most diverse, most knowledgeable, best equipped, healthiest pioneer culture we have ever seen. If they make it across the frontier and tame the wilderness as they go, they will discover a world beyond imagination. If they don’t make it…that’s beyond our imagination too.

The difference in success and failure will be leadership.

Does Social Entrepreneurship Matter?

It happened in a hotel room in downtown Detroit. She came to me (the muse, that is, lest Adrienne read this and wonder) sometime in the wee hours of the morning… unexpected and welcome, as always.

This time when the light came on (in my mind, not in the room) I could see with new clarity that social entrepreneurship is missing from the landscape of professional disciplines.

We have doctors, artists, lawyers, dentists and so on. Architects. Accountants. Airline pilots. Engineers. Teachers. Each of these professions requires a specific discipline, which, theoretically, prepares the individual for efficiency and guides the individual through the pursuit of excellence in the respective kinds of work. A person whose muse inspires them to be an attorney and practice the law, goes to law school and acquires the professional discipline to do so to the best of their abilities. A person whose muse drives them to paint, studies and practices drawing, coloration, styles of painting, paint media; in the end, with luck, they have the craft and artistry to produce works that live on and off the wall.

So I wonder, in my muse-induced enlightenment, what would happen if I jumped from one fun kind of work to the next, willy-nilly, without the knowledge and experience to know what I was doing?

I’d start with brain surgery…I’d remove a tumor from an old man’s frontal lobe. The next day I would write a symphony for the Berlin Philharmonic. Then I would prosecute a real juicy murder case—one where the mistress is accused of shooting a southern governor. Let’s see: Then I would dance the role of Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake with the New York City Ballet. No, I take that back; I’d rather sing with the Paris Opera. Oh, also, one of these days I also would design a series of cantilevered spans on and off the islands along the South Carolina coast. I would take a day off to catch up on my reading, run a marathon and see a couple movies. Then I would spend a day as a social entrepreneur, changing the world into a better place for all of us who call it home.

Facetious. I know.

I realize, however, as I let my mind riff, ludicrous as it is to wake up one morning not knowing a ballet barre from Joe’s on the corner and dance Swan Lake that evening with the City Ballet, doing so is like waking up one morning and deciding to spend the day changing the world as a social entrepreneur. Both activities demand study, practice, precision, total commitment, inspiration and great good fortune. The processes for acquiring and practicing the professional disciplines of a ballet dancer, lawyer, doctor, composer and most other professions essential to our civilization can be mapped out and followed. The journey that leads to the profession of social entrepreneur is not as easily mapped in the same ways.

The maps set down by some who are changing the world can be found by those of us who know where to look. But most of those examples relate the remarkable journeys of people who have tipped change across entire societies: Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka; Muhammad Yunus, Nobel winner for his microcredit strategy; Greg Dees, “the father of social entrepreneurship,” and others triggering global change. Their stories are monumental and inspiring. But what does the map look like for the millions of others around the world who toil to make a difference in smaller steps? What is their prescriptive, actionable professional discipline?

What is most exciting is that I’m not the only one waking up in the middle of the night with these ideas. Others around the globe surely know the same muse. For there are more programs rising up around the world, focused on the understanding and practice of social entrepreneurism, than could be named here. Leading universities, foundations, research institutes and even venture capital funds are recognizing the worldwide demand for a method to this noble sanity.  They are recognizing that not only does social entrepreneurship matter, it’s what the world needs now, perhaps more than ever.

It’s time we codify the social entrepreneur’s innate abilities, knowledge, experience, work ethic and moral character that change the world into a better place—for the greater good of all the people and all the places that need changing.

The Discussion Continues!

       My October 12, 2006 post, Paul Light's Definition Goes Too Far, which was a response to Paul Light's article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), has been reprinted in the current issue of SSIR.  Others also felt inclined to comment on Light's original article, as letters from Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka, and Howard Husock, Director of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, are included in the publication too.

Paul Light  provided a thoughtful response to all the letters as well. He writes, "Encouraging and participating in the discussion of social entrepreneurship is an important step in spreading the discipline of this burgeoning field to as many change-makers and world-shakers as possible!"

Is The Wall Street Journal Dazed and Confused?

The Wall Street Journal doesn’t get it. They’re an ambitious and astute bunch of writers. But on November 17 one of them dipped his toe in healing waters and pronounced them dangerous.

The WSJ’s Eric Gibson wrote about the Pension Protection Act of August 17 in his November 17, 2006 article, Fractional Gifts, Having Your Art and Selling it Too. Until this act was passed, Gibson writes, “A collector could give his Rembrandt a little at a time, say 20% each year, then take a tax deduction based on that percentage of its value every year for five years. The museum could show the painting for 73 days -- 20% of 365. If the value of the artwork went up from one year to the next, so would the deduction.”

The Pension Protection Act prevents wealthy donors from abusing this method of giving. It prohibits them from taking large tax deductions for artwork that continues to hang in their homes.

Gibson goes on to cast aspersions at the vigor with which museums are lobbying Congress to protect the advantages wealthy donors can realize by supporting museums as the museums expand their collections.

This is all well and good. Gibson’s entitled to his opinion. In the grand scheme of things, up to this point in his story, this is a relatively innocuous topic.

But then he crosses a line, making sweeping statements, offhandedly, that trivialize the survival challenges nonprofits are facing across America. He reasons that because museums can also sell pieces of art in their collections, to generate revenues for the new acquisitions, “…museums are trying to have it both ways: benefiting from tax subventions because they supposedly can't survive in the marketplace yet stepping into the marketplace when it suits them.” Gibson seems to think nonprofits are nonprofits because they “…supposedly can’t survive in the marketplace.”

Then with a hint of disdain he says, “They (museums) have restaurants and shops, and rent their spaces for gala events. Some are actually renting out parts of their collections… What's so disturbing about collection rentals and sales is that they violate the reason that museums are treated differently from businesses.” They do? I thought museums were treated differently from other businesses because they exist to serve a social need and return social value to the culture. Businesses exist to make money. Museums, and most other nonprofits, exist to make social value.

Gibson goes on to write sarcastically, “So here is a suggestion: When Congress reconvenes in January, it should agree to revisit the fractional gift provision of the Pension Protection Act as the museum directors are asking -- but only as part of a full review of all museum business practices. The point would be to determine once and for all which method of sustaining these institutions is most in the public interest -- one tied to philanthropy (and the tax code) or one tied to the marketplace.

“Let's put an end to the current practice of mixing non-profit and for-profit. Since the museums won't police themselves, perhaps a little congressional oversight will get their attention.”

Mr. Gibson might have deep knowledge of art. But he is obviously not paying attention to the nonprofit marketplace and how museums operate, survive and sustain themselves in it. Can he really believe that “philanthropy (and the tax code)” are enough for a museum to maintain relevance in a popular culture that reinvents itself almost everyday? Could the arts editor at the WSJ really be unaware of the concept of social enterprise? Is he clueless to the need for nonprofits, especially arts organizations, to tap their respective resources and expertise to generate earned income…to survive? The nonprofits relying solely on “philanthropy and the tax code” are either out of business already or at death’s door.

Gibson needs to run a Google search on the exact phrase social enterprise, and spend a little time browsing the million-plus pages where the term is used. He also should subscribe online to the Social Enterprise Alliance and start reading their daily forum. He should check in with Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, NYU and the University of Chicago, to name a scant few in the U.S. alone, where the principles and practices of social leadership are studied and taught.

Leaders of nonprofits around the world, thanks to the Internet, are networking everyday, addressing the challenge of how to generate the revenues needed to realize their socially responsible missions. The points of view are widely varied and the dialogue is very healthy. The one point on which the world of nonprofits agrees regards the need for innovative strategies for the creation of incremental revenues.

Financial resources are a matter of life and death to mission-driven social ventures. This is as true for museums as it is for starvation relief in Ethiopia. With the philanthropic marketplace becoming more outcomes-driven, the popular culture becoming more dominant in the way people live their lives, nonprofits must adapt to and capitalize on the changes affecting them if they are to survive.

Mr. Gibson should make it his job to know these things. That he would suggest that Congress provide a little oversight to get museums’ attention is laughable. That he makes the suggestion in a publication reaching millions of thoughtful readers is shameful.

How Scandals Tipped the Scales in Congress, For Goodness Sake

Five days before the 2006 mid-term elections The Washington Post estimated that, “Indictments, investigations and allegations of wrongdoing have helped put at least 15 Republican House seats in jeopardy.” Senator John McCain commented the day after Democrats across the country thumped their Republican opponents and took control of the House that at least 19 races were decided by scandal. In campaigns reaching into every region of the country, the dirty laundry bore such stains as wife beating, a rare coin scam, secret homosexuality, a lobbying contract steered to a congressman’s daughter, charges brought by a congressman’s mistress that he choked her, and illegal fundraising practices, to name just a few.

What does this say about people at the pinnacle of social sector leadership in America? What does it say about the discipline of social sector leadership itself? What does it say about goodness as a leadership qualification?

All Individuals Eager Can Gain Ground

A devilish mind and thirty years in a variety of interesting workplaces have brought me to a set of conclusions regarding leadership and success as a professional. I’ve developed a program and written a book (as yet unpublished) on what today is emerging around the world as an innovative skill set for transformational social sector leadership: social entrepreneurship. My views break down social entrepreneurship into three subsets: 1) innate abilities, 2) work ethic, and 3) Sisu…what the Finns call inner strength.

Goodness is addressed in the first subset. As regards innate abilities, I’ve observed in my common commonsense that all leaders function with varying degrees of ambition, invention, ego, competition, good health and goodness. I help myself remember these six natural-born capacities, which we humans all possess in some degree, with the phrase: All Individuals Eager Can Gain Ground… Ambition. Invention. Ego. Competition. Good health. Goodness. (If you can think of a catchier motto using the same initials, I’m all ears.)

Here’s an abbreviated look at how our innate leadership abilities work.

Ambition. This is the innate ability that sparks us to envision our own success. It’s the desire to have something we don’t have and to take action to get it. 

Invention. This is the natural force that sparks us to craft a plan of action, which we believe will achieve the desire born of our ambition.

Ego. I see ego as the visceral measure of our confidence. Ego assures us, or triggers the doubts, that we have what it takes to succeed. Volumes have been written on ego. I’ll risk being ridiculed by those of you tuned to nuanced definitions by suggesting for my purposes that ego is simply how we individually view ourselves. Ego can paralyze or propel a leader.

Competition. This is the feeling of enjoyment many of us get when we work and overcome obstacles and succeed. Competition is not just about winning. It’s the good feeling we get from simply trying to win. The more challenging the competition is, the better the feeling we get when we’re up to the challenge.

Good Health. Leadership demands endurance. Good health provides the endurance we require to, as a wise writer once said, keep turning the flywheel everyday, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, until our success is accomplished.

Goodness. Finally, we come back to the innate ability conspicuously absent from so many candidates for high elected office. Leaders need innate goodness to play in the right games and win without breaking the rules. Leaders regularly face choices between right and wrong. Sometimes the choices are black and white and plain as day. Often the choices come in new shades of gray whose proximity to right or wrong are indiscernible to all but the most astute observers. The best leaders can always tell where these shades fall on the right/wrong spectrum.

Effective leadership is only possible when these six innate abilities work in balance. There can be no better example of how the absence of goodness can undermine leadership than last week’s political thrashing. Effective social entrepreneurship must be inspirational. Few people can be inspired by leaders lacking in rectitude. Ambition, invention, ego, competition and good health are not enough to make up for greed, lying, cheating and perversion, which all, apparently, have come to roost in the United States Congress.

Disproportion in any of the other innate abilities also will bring a leader’s downfall.

What happens when a leader lacks ambition? Have you ever known a lazy leader? What’s the effect on the collective ambition of the leaders team?

Perhaps you know a leader who is deficient in the area of invention. Have you ever seen an organization whose leadership repeats the same ideas and strategies over and over, seeking a better outcome? You’ve probably heard this described as the definition of insanity…or absurdity…

Is your leader an “ego case?” How so? What’s the influence of the leader’s ego on the team?

Does your leader love competition?

Is your leader sick?

These are loaded questions. They take us to the core of leadership…all individuals eager can gain ground.

Vote for a visionary. If you can find one.

Mid-term elections now loom but a breath away. Tuesday we hit the polls. We judge the our candidates’ leadership, or lack thereof, and cast our votes for those we choose to support. With so much at stake, I worry about how we seem to make our selections.

The factors we judge when we cast a vote are numerous: party affiliations; stands on issues important to us; experience; the endorsements of leaders we respect…what we hear from our significant others, our friends, newspapers, celebrities and political action groups.

We also base our selections on non-substantive barometers: gender, age, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, telegenic qualities.

Oh, and I take it we make our decisions through a process of elimination too. Why, otherwise, would dollars be spent by the hundreds of millions on advertising that slings every conceivable variety of character assassination back and forth between opposing candidates, with reckless disregard for truth and honor?

Where is vision in our politics? We’ve fallen into a crisis management system of governing, enabled by a crisis management style of leadership. Make our borders safe and secure, and solve the immigration crisis. Win the whack-a-mole debacle in Iraq, and keep the war on terrorism off our shores. Keep interest rates down, so we can hoist ourselves out the financial hole. Create new jobs, to rescue the millions of Americans suffering the crisis of unemployment. Close the nuclear club to new members, and avert the lurking nuclear crisis. Cut taxes. Stop gays from getting married. Take power, hold power and build power by putting out the day’s fires. Compete and win politically at any cost…

This is the flutter I feel when I look across America’s political leadership. Where are the visionaries in this scramble and what are their visions?

To me governments in our country, at every level, are social sector organizations. They succeed and fail—survive, sustain themselves, prosper or crumble trying—in accordance with the same principles and leadership disciplines as virtually every other organization that exists to produce social value for its constituents.

Governments are social sector organizations and elected government officials are social sector leaders. And what is the universal cornerstone of effective social sector leadership? Vision. Vision. As they say in politics, it’s about vision, stupid!

Vision is knowing what success looks like, not just tomorrow or a year from now. It’s knowing what success looks like five, ten and twenty years from now. Visionary leadership is seeing near- and long-term success in fine detail. Visionary leadership is dreaming about and refining that vision to suit the organization’s stakeholders. It’s communicating that vision throughout the organization, vividly, inspirationally…and making it unmistakably clear to all constituencies that the realization of the vision is only possible through a collective effort in which every constituency plays a role for the good of the cause. Effective social sector leadership both communicates the vision and mobilizes the vision shareholders to implement the strategies that move the organization toward its successful, social value output.

Our political leaders seem ignorant of these fundamental principles.

Where are the leaders whose visions extend beyond the six- to twelve-month horizon? Where are the leaders asking (and answering): What do we want our community, our state, our country and the rest of the world to look like ten years from now? Twenty years from now? These questions are not in this midterm election’s discourse. Yet the answers to these questions are the framework that guides us in the direction of a better community, state, country and world.

As voters we should know each candidate’s vision, so we can support the candidate whose vision inspires us. And if our candidate is elected, then we should support our candidate’s programs to realize the vision. In my simple mind, this is how a mission-guided, visionary, socially responsible democracy can be most effective evaluating, choosing and supporting its leaders. This process doesn’t work, however, in a political environment where our candidates for leadership work to win votes by discrediting their opponents and dumbing their own qualifications down to the lowest common denominators.

Political candidates must figure out that today’s leadership responsibilities include far more than crisis management and the retention of power. Elected office seekers must develop the integrity to pull their vote-getting tactics out of the gutter. Politicians should shape what they stand for, offer their constituents, and work to accomplish around a vision of what their country, state, county or municipality can become. They must return nobility to government by rising to their essential responsibility as visionary leaders.

On Tuesday, I hope you’ll vote for the visionary of your choice. If you can find one.