Reason number one why the UNESCO considers a construction to be part of the world heritage is that it represents a masterpiece of human creative genius. Why are they just built in the past and not today? Why is disengagement rampant today? Why do we have a financial crisis? Because we don't pay attention! We act without any intention. We go to the office to warm the sit and countdown the minutes to Friday. We sit in boring meetings and we make them even more meaningless by discussing means without any clarity or agreement on the ends. Why do we have that meeting? Why do we have that project? Why do we need that business trip? Even that customer? Is that a proof of human creative genius?
During the middle ages in Europe, people spent their entire lives devoted to build cathedrals. It was a communitarian endeavor with the full commitment of each one of the participants. At that time the concept of the "disengaged employee" was unexistent. They did not carry stones or painted glass or shaped wood. They were building a Cathedral! There is an immense difference between isolated activities without purpose and concentrated purposeful action. The big difference is the combination of attention and intention.
Nowadays we miss them both: attention and intention. Many times we "think" that being free of attention and intention means relaxing. We sit in front of the TV set and zap channels for hours. What are we doing? Relaxing? Wasting our human creative genius potential! That is what we are doing!
When we pay attention with an intention, wonders happen with the added bonus of tremendous joy. When "simple" tasks are given meaning and purpose, they are transformed. When you clean the kitchen with the intention of building a good family life, a memorable childhood for your children, you are no longer cleaning the kitchen. You are carrying culture forward, you are building a family: you are changing the world. When you challenge one of your subordinates to perform closer to his capability, you are not being unkind or bossy. You are stimulating human growth: you are changing the world.
Attention without intention doesn't work. Intention without attention doesn't work. They need each other. Without a vision your efforts would be fruitless. You need an intention! On the other hand, remember that hell is paved with good intentions. Having good ideas is not enough. You need to take action, even more perfect action: action with attention and intention. That way you will liberate your inner human creative genius and get the great bonus of joy and satisfaction.
When we connect action to our reason of existence, when we connect action with our childhood dream, when we take action looking for something greater than ourselves; we no longer simply do, we create. Creating is a divine act. No matter what your believe system is, creation is something that connects us with something more powerful than ourselves, that connect us with each other, that connect us with who we really are.
Liberate your human creative genius!
Monday, 13 July 2009
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Women are the solution to the recession
The global financial crisis was generated grid and fear. Women can heal the corporation and the whole financial system with honesty and courage.
Our fear is based on the perception of being independent, having the need to have more and being afraid of the enemy. We are afraid of the boss, of the neighbors, of our partner and most importantly, of ourselves. We are prisoners of this nightmare fear cloud. Fear does not allow us to cooperate, as in fear it is not possible to trust the other. In fact, fear also drives us to dishonesty and fraud. Have you noticed how people lie to meet the target? And how this is an “undiscussable”? In this fear framework, all outcomes tend to end in lose-lose outcomes. Does Enron ring a bell? Lehman Brothers maybe?
In the current context our identity is defined by what we have and what we do. We are our cars, houses, titles, professions, spouses…. No wonder why we buy, buy, buy… No wonder why we work, work, work… No matter why we marry, divorce, marry, divorce, marry, divorce…. We derive our worth as individuals from what we have and what we do. In this context, it is not enough just to be. Grid is the name of the game. In this context, being is not satisfactory. No wonder the high number of suicides around the financial crisis: people who lost their job, their title, their (company) car, feel that they have lost themselves. They lost the reason to live. They lost themselves.
Fortune 500 companies
with 3 or more women on the Board
gain a significant performance
advantage over those with the fewest
+ 73% return on sales
+ 83% return on equity
+ 112% return on invested capital
Catalyst
The leadership challenges of this historical moment are paramount and can be better met by women. The best leaders to guide us out of this crisis are women. The age of disregarding female perspectives and feminine success attributes needs to be over. The age of promoting/hiring women because it is politically correct needs to be over. The age of promoting/hiring women through quotas needs to be over.
We need to understand that there is a strong business case behind it. It is a win-win-win deal! The woman benefits, the company benefits, the community benefits, the staff benefits, the customers benefit and yes indeed men benefit as well. Study after study, it has been demonstrated the clear correlation between women in the corporate world and corporate performance: financial performance, corporate governance, staff retention etc. What is the cause of this overwhelming reality? The leadership challenges of this historical moment can be better met by women.
Women’s aspirations are one of the core answers why they are the solution to the crisis and the best leaders of this age. According to the Women on the Verge of the 21st Century, white paper from Grey Advertising, the women aspirations that received an importance higher the 80% are
• Make the world a better place
• See kids become really successful
• Having enough time to do what I want
Women’s aspirations are reflected in their behavior. This way it is very easy to understand their business choices, particularly when they contradict the old power based paradigms. This way it is very easy to understand why a woman would more easily turn down an unethical contract, even if it generates short term profit. Interestingly enough, there are more and more men who are also choosing for these “feminine” aspirations.
The behavior and views of women defer from those of men. Understanding the main differences can help us to appreciate how women do business, how women lead. Table 1. Gender preferences, reminds us that empathy, creativity, intuition, connectedness, meaning and play are very strong in women. It reminds us that women are best suited to deal with living systems. A corporation is a living system. Our financial system is a living system.
Women can become powerful in business (and everywhere actually!) when they learn to appreciate and embrace these innate characteristics that for a long time have not been regarded as world changing. Women need to wake up to the fact that these characteristics are necessary for humanity at this point in history. Building community, carrying culture, healing relationships are by no means unimportant. They are crucial and indeed what we need now the most.
It is easy to blame men for many things: from not helping with the children to the financial collapse. Blaming is not going to take us anywhere. Now women have to take on the challenge and step in the leadership shoes.
Leave your comfort zone to become a “She-Leader”!
The global financial crisis was generated grid and fear. Women can heal the corporation and the whole financial system with honesty and courage.
Our fear is based on the perception of being independent, having the need to have more and being afraid of the enemy. We are afraid of the boss, of the neighbors, of our partner and most importantly, of ourselves. We are prisoners of this nightmare fear cloud. Fear does not allow us to cooperate, as in fear it is not possible to trust the other. In fact, fear also drives us to dishonesty and fraud. Have you noticed how people lie to meet the target? And how this is an “undiscussable”? In this fear framework, all outcomes tend to end in lose-lose outcomes. Does Enron ring a bell? Lehman Brothers maybe?
In the current context our identity is defined by what we have and what we do. We are our cars, houses, titles, professions, spouses…. No wonder why we buy, buy, buy… No wonder why we work, work, work… No matter why we marry, divorce, marry, divorce, marry, divorce…. We derive our worth as individuals from what we have and what we do. In this context, it is not enough just to be. Grid is the name of the game. In this context, being is not satisfactory. No wonder the high number of suicides around the financial crisis: people who lost their job, their title, their (company) car, feel that they have lost themselves. They lost the reason to live. They lost themselves.
Fortune 500 companies
with 3 or more women on the Board
gain a significant performance
advantage over those with the fewest
+ 73% return on sales
+ 83% return on equity
+ 112% return on invested capital
Catalyst
The leadership challenges of this historical moment are paramount and can be better met by women. The best leaders to guide us out of this crisis are women. The age of disregarding female perspectives and feminine success attributes needs to be over. The age of promoting/hiring women because it is politically correct needs to be over. The age of promoting/hiring women through quotas needs to be over.
We need to understand that there is a strong business case behind it. It is a win-win-win deal! The woman benefits, the company benefits, the community benefits, the staff benefits, the customers benefit and yes indeed men benefit as well. Study after study, it has been demonstrated the clear correlation between women in the corporate world and corporate performance: financial performance, corporate governance, staff retention etc. What is the cause of this overwhelming reality? The leadership challenges of this historical moment can be better met by women.
Women’s aspirations are one of the core answers why they are the solution to the crisis and the best leaders of this age. According to the Women on the Verge of the 21st Century, white paper from Grey Advertising, the women aspirations that received an importance higher the 80% are
• Make the world a better place
• See kids become really successful
• Having enough time to do what I want
Women’s aspirations are reflected in their behavior. This way it is very easy to understand their business choices, particularly when they contradict the old power based paradigms. This way it is very easy to understand why a woman would more easily turn down an unethical contract, even if it generates short term profit. Interestingly enough, there are more and more men who are also choosing for these “feminine” aspirations.
The behavior and views of women defer from those of men. Understanding the main differences can help us to appreciate how women do business, how women lead. Table 1. Gender preferences, reminds us that empathy, creativity, intuition, connectedness, meaning and play are very strong in women. It reminds us that women are best suited to deal with living systems. A corporation is a living system. Our financial system is a living system.
Table 1. Gender preferences[1]
| He | She |
| People +things + theorems | People first, last and always |
| Soloist | Ensemble player |
| The top: May the best win | The collective: The more the merrier |
| Pyramid | Peer group |
| On-off | Details, details, details |
| First workable answer | The perfect answer |
| Key points | Full context |
| Establish status | Build connections |
| Connect through competition - Rank | Connect through affinity –Link |
| Facts and features | Stories and personal details |
| Linear thinking | Network thinking |
| One thing at a time | Multitasking |
| Facts and features | Appreciate and use intuition |
| Orientation to power | Orientation to empowerment |
Women can become powerful in business (and everywhere actually!) when they learn to appreciate and embrace these innate characteristics that for a long time have not been regarded as world changing. Women need to wake up to the fact that these characteristics are necessary for humanity at this point in history. Building community, carrying culture, healing relationships are by no means unimportant. They are crucial and indeed what we need now the most.
It is easy to blame men for many things: from not helping with the children to the financial collapse. Blaming is not going to take us anywhere. Now women have to take on the challenge and step in the leadership shoes.
Leave your comfort zone to become a “She-Leader”!
Friday, 13 March 2009
| Beyond the Financial Crisis Wake up your inner hero |
| September 2008, Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt. That headline called my attention. The Financial crisis really kicked in. Many headlines have been accumulating since then. Governments have fallen, resigned, tremendous financial loses, suicides, It's a tremendous event. Maybe the financial crisis has also arrived to your life. Maybe the rumors of layoff have started to circulate in the he halls ways of your office. Maybe the rumors have become reality and you have suddenly become unemployed. Many people coincide that this financial crisis is unprecedented. For moments like this we need heroes. Heroes just exactly like you imagine. Those ones in the fairy tales, or maybe those ones in the comics. Yes, heroes, heroes that give us hope. There is a hero sleeping inside each one of us and crises just like this one are built for that, for waking them up. This global financial crisis has the added benefit to wake up all our heroes. Many of us when we think of this tremendously big event financial crises feel helpless. We feel that nothing we do, nothing we could say could change anything. This is a great delusion. The believe that our actions, our words, our dreams don't have power to change the universe is a great delusion. The true reality is that we, each one of us, are the actor of history. Right now! As you dream, as you think, as you ask, as you do, you are waking up your hero, you are waking up our heroes, you are making the impossible, possible. Imagine that each one of us will actually deeply connect with his or her inner power. This global financial crisis demands from us to act in a different way, demands from us to think in a different way, demands from us to ask different questions demands from us to wake up to new possibilities. This is the way I see our heroic nature: to have the courage to ask questions that were unspeakable; to come up with proposals that were unbelievable and finally to act in ways that would transform the world. |
Friday, 6 March 2009
Build the life you want to live
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately
at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. Abraham Maslow
Every day we write the story we want to be the main character in. Every day we do something that builds, invents, and confirms our identity. Everyday we have the opportunity to start fresh and every second we have a brand new chance to create who we are. That is certainly not very clear to us all the time. We hurry from one meeting to the other, we check our blackberries, we answer phone calls, take the children to school, organise our homes. We rush, rush and rush! Without a chance to make sense of what is happening. One fine morning we wake up and ask ourselves: “Who is this person looking at me in that mirror?”
Let’s make today a special day! Let’s make today a brand new beginning! Let’s start fresh today! Why wait? Let’s start today!
1. WRITE YOUR OWN EULOGY
Eulogies are speeches of praise of a person. However we don’t need to wait for any special occasion. We don’t need to wait for someone else to write it for us after we pass away. We can write a letter of appreciation to ourselves: list our blessings, our talents, our strengths, our love for people…. Seeing life through these lense will allow you to be more appreciative of what you have at this moment and what you want more off. This will allow you perspective to take decisions with the end in mind: my perfect life! Then you will not be overwhelmed by the day to day hurry. Take your time and appreciate what is NOW, right NOW!
Our identity is show by our choices: by the books we don’t read, by the things we don’t do,
by the people we are no longer with. Blanca Vergara
2. WRITE YOUR “NOT-TO-DO LIST”
If you are starting a new self, you better travel light. Make a spring cleaning of your life. Take a white piece of paper and list the “things” you no longer want in your life: the people you don’t want to be with, the projects you do not want to finish, the customers that are more annoying than productive, the clothes you don’t want to wear anymore, the food you don’t want to eat anymore… Once you list them, you will start acting accordingly, they will vanish and you will see how life opens for new people, new projects, new clothes, new dreams…
3. DO SOMETHING NEW
Do something that you've never done before. Go see a play, or a hockey game, or walk through your local museum. Draw the trees of your local park, walk around a neighbourhood you’ve never been or cook/bake something you never thought you'd be able to. If it's fresh and new to you... give it a go!
4. DO SOMETHING THAT SCARES YOU
If every day, during the coming year, you confront one of your fears: cycling in Amsterdam; public speaking; cutting your hair; writing; painting; quitting that unfulfilling job / relationship; then you will become a stronger person capable of anything - capable of becoming who you are.
5. BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF
Did you make a mistake? Forgive yourself and have a laugh! Biting yourself down for an error will not solve it and will not allow you to see further. Making mistakes is the best way of discovering how something does not work. It is a process of learning and growing. Long live mistakes! Bounce back and try again!
6. MAKE A PLAN
Nothing is quite as comforting as having a plan for the coming season. It is like having a map of the future, of your own future. It is like inventing the future. It gives you something to shoot for and gives you direction. Spend some time thinking about what you'd like to accomplish in the next 3 months, and then develop an outline of how you'll make that plan a reality. Be bold!
7. DO A "TO DO"
Small steps bring you to where you want to go. Take ONE small step towards your goals, towards your future. Take a look at your current "to do" list and pick one project (just ONE) and GET IT DONE! Big or small, it doesn't matter! I promise you when you’ll be in bed tonight, you’ll have a very good feeling about yourself. You will be proud of that ONE accomplishment.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately
at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. Abraham Maslow
Every day we write the story we want to be the main character in. Every day we do something that builds, invents, and confirms our identity. Everyday we have the opportunity to start fresh and every second we have a brand new chance to create who we are. That is certainly not very clear to us all the time. We hurry from one meeting to the other, we check our blackberries, we answer phone calls, take the children to school, organise our homes. We rush, rush and rush! Without a chance to make sense of what is happening. One fine morning we wake up and ask ourselves: “Who is this person looking at me in that mirror?”
Let’s make today a special day! Let’s make today a brand new beginning! Let’s start fresh today! Why wait? Let’s start today!
1. WRITE YOUR OWN EULOGY
Eulogies are speeches of praise of a person. However we don’t need to wait for any special occasion. We don’t need to wait for someone else to write it for us after we pass away. We can write a letter of appreciation to ourselves: list our blessings, our talents, our strengths, our love for people…. Seeing life through these lense will allow you to be more appreciative of what you have at this moment and what you want more off. This will allow you perspective to take decisions with the end in mind: my perfect life! Then you will not be overwhelmed by the day to day hurry. Take your time and appreciate what is NOW, right NOW!
Our identity is show by our choices: by the books we don’t read, by the things we don’t do,
by the people we are no longer with. Blanca Vergara
2. WRITE YOUR “NOT-TO-DO LIST”
If you are starting a new self, you better travel light. Make a spring cleaning of your life. Take a white piece of paper and list the “things” you no longer want in your life: the people you don’t want to be with, the projects you do not want to finish, the customers that are more annoying than productive, the clothes you don’t want to wear anymore, the food you don’t want to eat anymore… Once you list them, you will start acting accordingly, they will vanish and you will see how life opens for new people, new projects, new clothes, new dreams…
3. DO SOMETHING NEW
Do something that you've never done before. Go see a play, or a hockey game, or walk through your local museum. Draw the trees of your local park, walk around a neighbourhood you’ve never been or cook/bake something you never thought you'd be able to. If it's fresh and new to you... give it a go!
4. DO SOMETHING THAT SCARES YOU
If every day, during the coming year, you confront one of your fears: cycling in Amsterdam; public speaking; cutting your hair; writing; painting; quitting that unfulfilling job / relationship; then you will become a stronger person capable of anything - capable of becoming who you are.
5. BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF
Did you make a mistake? Forgive yourself and have a laugh! Biting yourself down for an error will not solve it and will not allow you to see further. Making mistakes is the best way of discovering how something does not work. It is a process of learning and growing. Long live mistakes! Bounce back and try again!
6. MAKE A PLAN
Nothing is quite as comforting as having a plan for the coming season. It is like having a map of the future, of your own future. It is like inventing the future. It gives you something to shoot for and gives you direction. Spend some time thinking about what you'd like to accomplish in the next 3 months, and then develop an outline of how you'll make that plan a reality. Be bold!
7. DO A "TO DO"
Small steps bring you to where you want to go. Take ONE small step towards your goals, towards your future. Take a look at your current "to do" list and pick one project (just ONE) and GET IT DONE! Big or small, it doesn't matter! I promise you when you’ll be in bed tonight, you’ll have a very good feeling about yourself. You will be proud of that ONE accomplishment.
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