"We only have this moment"

I recieved this email from Roger Fransecky of the Apogee Group today. He has some good thoughts on the current economy and how to think about it.

February, 2009:

Coming of Age in the New Economy: Lessons for Leaders and the rest of us
For the past twenty-five plus years I have worked with some of America's most gifted leaders, and a generation or two of CEO's "in training" to help them frame and realize the promises they made to the Street and themselves. I believe too many leaders postpone themselves, avoid the tough decisions, miss the black smoke, and surrender to terminal pleasantness. The essential tension between aligning purpose, process and people and achieving remarkable business results in warp speed does some of them in. We'd better understand why they keep missing the destination, for it's likely to get worse. There's deeper potholes ahead.


All of us are being tested as never before. Now, as we confront the toughest economy in a generation we are all being called upon to accept more uncertainty and, its' unwelcome fellow traveler, fear. We are often so distracted that we lack the attention for anything more than a five-part miniseries, and now, in our collective affluenza, anger and uncertainty, we feel suddenly vulnerable. And we hate the feeling. It makes it hard to live and lead.


In the months ahead it will be too easy to slip back to the solace of what appears to be order, certainty, planned days and nights. Instead, leaders must confront one of their toughest tests of character and courage. Can they saddle up and ride the Four Horseman of the Reconstructed Economy: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity? Do we face a Darwinian winter of more downturns and closings? The news makes us want to hunker down and hide. As Keats wrote, "there is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music."

To wit:

The only two Dow stocks to rise in 2008 were Wal-Mart Stores, with a 18% gain, and McDonald's, up nearly 6%. Retail is imploding elsewhere.

General Motors fell 60 cents, or 16%, to $3.20 and finished the year down 87%, the biggest decliner on the Dow. The auto maker needed an emergency loan from the government just to make it to 2009. And it's not clear they will.

The Bank of England cut its' key rate to 2.5%, the lowest level in the bank's 315 year history, all part of Britain's effort to adjust monetary policy as interest rates in the UK and the US approach zero. Dismal economic data is forcing the European central bank to speed up their own rate cuts. And jobless data for Europe is expected to increase to 7.8 %, matching our own dismal job loss figures which are the worst since 1945.

Citigroup, the massive financial supermarket, takes the first step toward breakup with the sudden resignation of Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and corporate guru.

CEO Ramalinga Raju of India's massive outsourcing company, Satyam, confessed to "fudging the books" and creating a fictitious cash balance of more than $1 billion. He said, "it was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten."
In kinder days, pre-Madoff and sell-off, our clients focused on building market sensitive competencies and competitive advantage, believing, not without example, that delivering sustainable performance results demanded laser-like focus and a collective attention to the delicate balance between people, process and purpose. We prodded our best and brightest into a war dance of mergers, buy-outs, bubbles that burst, and spin. It seems so long ago.


I just completed a week of conversations with leaders in London and Amsterdam, and they, like our US clients, all asked," how do we get back" to the essential business of leading?


I believe it starts with accepting and understanding the potent energy that moves the tectonic plates under a "New" reality of business and life: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. And how we must "surf" the shifts for ourselves. It starts with a shift in what we believed about leadership. And we've got some encouraging examples to help us get started.


In a encouraging chorus of support, Americans are embracing our newly energized President Obama. He's poked away the flab of our daydreaming and challenged us to enter a "new war," to reinvest in a new economy, new skills, new choices. And we are ready to be led. Even if it will produce a staggering check to be paid by our grandchildren.


Obama's leadership style holds part of the answer of how to move ahead, for he has embraced and confirmed the four parallel forces. We will live with volatility in our markets, uncertainty in our daily plans, complexity in our relationships and work and ambiguity in our victories. But, we face a significant learning curve to cope in these "new" times. Change has its' own animating energy which frustrates and confuses us all.


As leaders, we were taught to project and promise certainty: a strong leader must know the future, share a compelling vision, and be trusted to deliver results. Sadly, that social contract has ruptured. Millions of Americans have been laid off or bought out, and, this month alone, more workers lost their jobs. Even more have watched their 401k's diminish or disappear, while their retirement benefits have been scaled back.


In this new climate of uncertainty, leaders must begin to embrace a new, dissembling paradox: the more we are certain of the details, the more likely we are wrong. In this New World of Now, we must understand anew the new upper class who still lead many of our giant enterprises, whom critic David Brooks calls "bourgeois bohemians" or Bobos whose education, gusto, belief in the New Thing, blew up the bubble of the New Economy. Awash as we are in change, it may be difficult to empathize with the espresso-sipping, web-surfing, Gap-clad educated class who "struggled" with the anxiety of abundance.


The narcissistic boomers' sense of themselves has been replaced by a profound, dissembling uncertainty, and its' shadow Self, Fear. We've moved from "today is ours, how will we live it," to "today looms before me. How can I survive it? What will it do to me? What weakness will this expose? What will I lose?" And we second guess ourselves.


One CEO client told me this week that he couldn't decide to finally fire one of his four direct reports, despite an uneven performance history and an erosion of credibility in the organization. "He's worked so hard," he said, and "he's been so loyal." He "knows" what he must do, but in postponing it, the organization suffers and his decision to deal with an old problem projects a dangerous, rudderless reality. Decide. Manage your attention.


Today, leaders (and followers) of all generations must surrender to a climate of uncertainty. Life has always been a moment-by-moment adventure, but we denied that tough truth with our collections, our consumption, or our self-absorption. Now we can only marvel at how much energy it took, and how much collective conspiracy of a consumer culture it required, to forget that we only have this moment.


After working with some of the large professional service firms that sold full-strength, multi-platform technology solutions to manage and track an organization's attention, I think we often failed to accept a leader's ADD. One CEO I know schedules twelve-hour days, from pre-dawn runs along the East River, to late dinners, believing that filling hours equals attention. In his physically numbing schedule of staff and board meetings, conference calls, analyst presentations and travel, he confessed that he'd lost his confidence in his own message. He didn't trust that he, or his audiences, could manage more than one simple theme a quarter, and over time, he lost interest in the managing the essential complexity of his organization. "I can't trust myself. There's too much to say and to remember." Maybe we need a new currency to track our attention rate.


Leaders can't anymore trust that showing, telling, reporting, publishing intent and expectation will be enough. Charts, slogans, rallies, glossy reports, won't do. People who lead, and not simply manage, must re-focus their own attention. Instead of clear maps, people need to read their own compass. That requires slowing down to gain acceleration.


If we are to engage and enroll our colleagues in any newly reconceived venture, we should challenge each person to consider anew the consequences for themselves. Without that, what passes for permission or commitment, is simply uneven compliance. And it's unsustainable. It's a complex dance of expectation, re-enrollment and participation, but one we must practice. It takes more time, but there's no real choice.


This new Complexity is, well, complex. We've seen a remarkable business develop in publishing "Dummies" titles for everything from Facebook to aging. In an age of paralyzing complexity, we want it dumbed down, a Cliff Notes for our careers, relationships, hobbies, travel, and leisure. Maybe the road to hell is paved in hasty intentions, five-point action lists, goal charts, and PDA's chock-a-block with activities. We may have become victims, in the words of Microsoft researcher Linda Stone, of "continuous partial attention."


Awash in our numbing lists, have we lost time alone? Time to think? A curiosity about what's around the corner, or the serious mischief of a new encounter, idea, instinct? Have we listened to our dreams, or probed our nightmares? Perhaps its' time to tackle the lessons of the natural laws of the universe for an answer. And essential context.

Complexity is a fact, and leading organizations, managing their and our attention, and pacing work while the very ground is shifting below us, requires the artfulness of a surfer, who rides the crests and isn't swamped in the undertow. For those of us who are stubborn and hardheaded, nimbleness doesn't come easy. I found taking dance lessons pushed me to work both sides of my brain (and feet). When I finally moved with something approaching confidence I was exhilarated. And exhausted. But dance we must.
Accept the complexity. It has a pure, unambiguous energy that can work for you.


Aware of the perils of ambiguity, legendary CEO's like GE's Jack Welch demanded laser-like focus as a critical element of high performance. For years, champion coaches have trained their most successful athletes to focus passionately on the goal, and goal-centered achievement has become the centering mantra for "success systems" from Napoleon Hill to Tony Robbins. We meditated, stretched, climbed, embraced, soaked, surrendered and bonded in seminars, classes, retreats, and the high-wire acts of corporate "experiences," to develop a shared focus, and passionate commitment to achieve business (and personal) breakthroughs. Heightened focus often equaled realizing our goal.


We've created a multi-billion dollar industry in iPhone-driven to-do lists, linked to our values, goals and horizons, all synchronized daily to our computer management systems, so we can prod ourselves to yet another level of technologically tracked moments. Between PDA's, pagers, Blackberrys, cell phones, overly ripe planners and always-in-revision to-do lists, we've lived with a paralyzing sense of the present.


We strive for certainty, order, completion, and closure, to avoid the terrifying reality that we only have this moment. This is it, until, as a gift of the universe, we are allowed another.


Accepting the reality of complexity and uncertainty, of the randomness of a generous, but unpredictable universe, will require us all to live deeply in the moments they are given, so we can link them with intention and purpose, and communicate clearly the tough and tender reality of our precious connection to those who must follow. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that as human beings "we are starved for horizons." Uncertainty breeds a hunger for vistas we can share, visions with meaning, performance linked to purpose, and leaders we can trust to travel safely with us.


Coming of age in this New America means that we choose, daily, and in every moment, to change. Each of us must now consider the personal consequences of any change to sign up for what's ahead. Will we again be publicly compliant, a slow death for innovation and lasting change, or truly committed, often by accepting our own personal accountability for the results we choose to achieve? It's the power of choice. But we have to check some old baggage by the curb before we begin.


To discover the strength to begin your search for a new personal center, I suggest leaders, and the rest of us, would be well served to:


Find time in your "new" schedule to renew contact with someone you miss or value: Call, write, send an email, a new book, a flower. Reach out and touch the electric filament of connection. You will be energized and renewed by it.


Test a new daily ritual: a morning walk, a new place for coffee, a yoga stretch, an hour with your kids at breakfast, time to read. Give yourself permission to try it, and, one hopes, begin to celebrate it as a reminder of the blessing of each new moment.


Tell the truth to yourself about how you feel. When you are confused, talk to your loved ones, your closest friends, or a priest or professional. Don't suppress the sudden sense of uncertainty you may feel at times. Or the irrational moments when you want to get off the train in a new place and begin again.


This new essential grown-up compact with ourselves will be tested in these times of uncertainty. But choosing to learn, to grow, love, be vulnerable, laugh and surrender to the deliciousness of the moments we link together, is the beginning of coping and healing. Of trusting that we can grow and perform again.

I think these are some good things to consider. This brings to mind:

Matt 6:25-34

25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
(from New International Version)