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I was 16. I’d just got my motorcycle licence. I was giddy.

Giddy in that sweet, breathless, heart-bounding way. Color is saturated. Everything grand.

Out on my own bike, own path; I could go wherever I chose. I went straight to the Army Surplus store – needed a few things for the bike.

Still awkward, I lugged around the bulgy helmet, too obsessed to leave it with the bike.

But, holding the helmet meant having no basket. No basket meant the helmet carried the goods.

Still excited. Still giddy. I didn’t know I was being watched.

Got to the counter: old black military boots, boot polish, nifty swiss-army-like knife. Bought them all. But the bike straps … they were black, like the helmet. They lay hidden, forgotten in the make-shift basket

I was outside, on my way to the bike, when I heard her voice. A super-sized service assistant stood beside her. She’d been watching.

Up in her office she told me she’d already called the police. I was charged with shop-lifting. She asked why I didn’t look worried.

That’s easy. I don’t shop-lift.

My parents had told me integrity mattered. Being able to smile at that leathery security lady taught me why.

20 years ago I learned that lesson. In the last five years I’ve come to be grateful. My business exists on integrity.

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“If you have integrity, nothing else matters.  If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.” ~ Alan Simpson

My father-in-law asked if I ever get nervous advising billion-dollar companies or guiding multi-million-dollar government investments. He asked if I ever worry about being wrong. Do you, he wondered, ever have soft-spots to hide?

That’s easy. I don’t leave soft-spots.

I don’t lie. I don’t cheat. I don’t take work I can’t do.

Don’t include pieces that shouldn’t be there. Don’t leave out pieces that should be in.

If I owe, I pay. If I say I’ll do it, it is done. If I say I won’t, I never do.

I can smile at any leathery anybody. That’s easy.

We get hired to create clarity. That’s usually a fairly sensitive thing to need. Most are reluctant to ask.

Not one client would come if there was even a suggestion that our integrity was jeopardized. You don’t bring your most difficult problems to people you can’t trust.

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“Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.” ~ Mark Twain

But I’ll say this: Integrity is expensive. I keep track and sometimes total-up the business I’ve declined to protect integrity. In the last three years, that number is just about $750,000. And inside those three years are patches where saying no to a contract meant there was absolutely nothing in the pipe.

“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.” ~ William Faulkner

There are days when I wonder about this conviction.

What of this drive to peerless?

Is it just arrogance? Maybe I’m naive?

Probably.

I’ll probably look back at these years and smile. Shake my head at that young man – so earnest, so strident.

But, right now, it feels right. That’s about all I have to go with.

I know that if I’m to do all the things I dream of doing – I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to be higher. I have to be huge.

I have to stand in front of the world’s most influential decision-makers and grin: That’s easy.

>>>

“The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.” ~ Japanese Proverb

“I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.” ~ Oscar Wilde

What a niggly little thing integrity is. So fragile. So critical.

Comprised of a billion small acts. Obliterated by just one.

It’s no panacea either. It doesn’t absolve responsibility. It isn’t an excuse. I can’t say, wrapped in a shawl of integrity, that I’ve no need of experience, persistence or grace.

Integrity finds its best use in the hands of the active. In the hands of those ready to invest, learn, climb, gather, and accomplish. It’s in the act that integrity is rare.

For the stagnant, low, and unaccomplished, integrity is part of most options. Of a hundred alternative paths, probably half would hold true to integrity. It’s among the high, few, world-class actions that integrity is so hard to find. Among a handful of alternatives, integrity might be part of just one or, more often, none at all.

>>>

My problem today is that integrity matters too much. It’s still a conscious and often aggressive choice. I’d rather it was inert – like crystal.

Will it grow to be translucent? Will it become a hardened vessel, ready to carry all the liquid parts of a richly lived life? Will it always be this organic, pulsing, winding tendril?

In the curious eyes of a child …

Only children get to stare. I’ll look into the eyes of a child for hours. I can hardly stand to look into an adult’s for six seconds.

Children make miracles of hands, new snow and mud puddles. I spent a week at NASA and still managed to get bored.

There is something compelling and endearing in curiosity. A beginner’s mind is a marvel. Why are we so ready to abandon that advantage? Why do we strive to be experts? Why do we fight to have all the answers?

Knowing: enemy of curiosity

Sophistication gets in the way of simple worth. Polish pushes past practicality.

I was delighted when we finished our Jurisdictional Advantage assessment tool. I thought I’d finally created the tool to tempt new clients. It is rigorous, analytical, relevant and enormously powerful.

But as I invested more time in discussing it’s merits and even when I revealed its value in response to new, related opportunities — it pushed instead of pulled. The rigour and depth made some worry about overblown budgets. The sophistication suggested simplicity might get ignored. The practical-minded saw threats lurking in its long-range capacity.

More than that, I became (have become) closed to newness. Instead of greeting each new colour with the wonder of a child, I find some way to find its pre-fab place inside the tool.

The words used to describe the tool were, at first, simple. But in supporting its pre-fabricated relevance, things get ever-more complex. Language starts to hide meaning instead of reveal it.

There is a real tension here. On one hand, people want to see some evidence of capacity. What better way than to flash a well-used, refined set of tools and portfolio of happy clients? But, on the other hand, everyone wants to be unique. They want bespoke.

It’s a tenuous balance. Proof of universal satisfaction and evidence of exclusive service. Show that everyone is happy and ensure that no one has anything similar.

It’s made me wonder about the path to haute couture: the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing — made to order for a specific customer, made from high-quality, expensive fabric, sewn with extreme attention to detail and finish, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques.

Of all that haute couture involves, what is universal? What principles live at its heart? What is unchanged, in spite of creativity? And how is this harnessed?

There’s a story of a Maine fisherman who, while unloading a catch of lobster, got a visit from a curious neighbour. There were two boxes of lobster on the dock: one with a lid and another without. The visitor wanted to know: why only one with a lid?

The old fisherman grinned up at his neighbour. The one with the lid held Maine lobster — the box bumped and jostled with lobster clamouring to get out. The other held Canadian lobster.

Canadian lobster were happy in their box. They needed no lid. The rest would pull back in any one lobster that tried to get out.

“Let’s be happy here” is one of Canada’s best national sentiments. But it’s got an insidious shadow in “let’s spread success around”.

Here’s the thing: don’t share success. Don’t spread brilliance until it’s average. Invest deeply, deliberately, and precisely in ways that create pinnacles — not plains.

Don’t borrow my brilliance, hitch-hike on my reputation, or copy my path — bring your own. I’ve just barely reached the middle. Bring your brilliance. Maybe together we can reach the top.

Success gleams; a moment from now. We caress it, briefly, and pass it on–to our children, to the future. The product of years of striving, mountains of promises, and great swaths of black, unseen time.

It will be a gift. A sacrifice. Our atonement.

We are desperate, and vain, to create next. We give everything to it. All we are is poured, deliberately and completely, into some time ahead of us. What of now?

What if I stop? What if I trade the future for now? Instead of letting “next” be my banker; why not this moment (with no middleman)?

What would change if my children never knew of the future I’d influence, impact and change? What if all they ever knew was a love of moments, the pursuit of presence, and a steward of now?

How different would their lives be? How differently would they see the world? What would they learn to influence, impact and change? Even more, what would they learn to cherish, consider and celebrate?

Remember your first Halloween? The moment you discovered a mountain of candy behind every door? That one night, in a year of dark nights, to dress up, trot through town, stay up late, plus get candy!

Remember your first Halloween? The moment you discovered a mountain of candy, wantonly devoured, in the space of seconds, is bitterly bad.

Wicked good flipped. It became wicked bad.

How many wicked problems were once wicked goods?

Are poverty and pollution the product of something good? Is global warming and economic cooling a consequence of good that became bad? Did epidemics, exhausted resources, extinct species, and environmental degradation have their start in greatness?

- Poverty is principally caused by disproportionate good. Some get the most good. Some get none.

- Pollution is caused by too much good of one kind. It’s the concentration that makes it bad.

- Epidemics are enabled when good has gone on too long. We weren’t tested. We’re weak.

- Exhausted resources, especially naturally renewable resources, are chiefly caused by taking too much good too fast.

For a while, good was great. Then, one day, good became bad

Where is that moment when wicked good flips. Why does it flip? How long was it good before it became bad?

Why wait while working with good? Why wait for good to become bad? Why not think now about sticking with good and skipping the bad?

What wicked good have you found? What do you do to keep it from becoming wicked bad?

These are questions in the vein of “how do you do that which only you can do?” Some of the lovely, nettlesome, nymph-like questions that glitter in, especially on sunny days and sometimes rainy ones.

In asking these questions, I assume you agree: you are built for greatness. And that you realize: greatness is tailor-made.

The working thesis goes like this:
a) Your best is your cannon.
b) This cannon is tailor-made for sinking just a few, specific things – those few things are your battleships.
c) Life is rotund with things that distract us from our best. These things are easy to chase around without ever realizing we’re wasting time. These are seagulls.
It’s rare to figure out “your” cannon. It’s more rare to discover your battleships. And it’s rarer still to have deliberately built the capacity to fire that gun at those ships more often, with more precision, and greater purpose.

Just look at the bell curve. Running from left to right:
- There’s a massively negative few, way out on the left. Maniacs.
- Trending toward middle is the majority of humanity. The average.
- Trailing off, on the right-side of middle are the increasingly exceptional. Stand-outs.
- And on the polar right, the few that consistently create change. Saints.

Saints hit hard, often, with precision. They are the peerless few that invest in systems and networks that feed them battleships – a conveyor belt of targets tailored to the narrow expression of their best.

Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Da Vinci. Their work wasn’t willy-nilly. It was focused.

In what ways will you do which things that change what course to what end?
1) In what ways?
2) Will you do which things?
3) That change what course?
4) To what end?

Be brilliant.

Investment is a choice. Precision is the vehicle. Impact is an outcome.

Investment is a choice. An informed choice to deliver a range of returns.

Choice requires precision. Precision in timing, pricing, people, and reason. It’s about getting in at the right time, for the right price, with the right people. It’s about getting out in the right way at the right moment.

Impact is a version of interest. It’s another line of return. It’s among a set of investment intentions.

Impact is simple. Precision is complicated.

You want impact? Find a huge rock. Throw it in a small pond.

Precision? It’s not always intuitive. Take a look at what’s in the pond. Take a look at what’s around the pond. Figure out what feeds it. Find out who needs it.

Drop the rock, forget the splash, solve the problem: save a wetland.

Impact requires more than metrics and evaluation.

Metrics tell us what we’ve done. They measure the past. Evaluation tells us what might be and measures a static future.

Metrics lead to more rocks. Evaluation leads to bigger rocks. We need smarter rocks.

Metrics and evaluation hide the uncertainty of choice. They are accountability tools – not decision tools. They create platforms and benchmarks – slingshots and catapults. We also need targeting systems that deal with evolution and dynamics.

Beyond metrics to sensing and foresight

Our success will be defined by an ability to 1) sense the evolution of now, and 2) anticipate where dynamics will lead us.

Sensing “now” demands a new set of filters and criteria. Today, in a world deluged by data (which change every day), relevancy matters more than volume, frequency and timeliness. Curation counts.

Foresight clarifies “next”. It acknowledges that the future is unknown but leverages fit, character, and ability to absorb new opportunities. It seeks to understand a kind of gravity. These elements attract opportunity. Knowing their gravity and reconciling with emerging demand enables analytical understanding of what might come next.

We live in a fulcrum

Social issues are surging, in the face of a flagging economy. We are global. Our systems have failed. We haven’t yet chosen new ones. A window is open. The world is begging.

Grasping the potential of this moment depends on four key actions:

Deliver returns:

Let’s get clear. This is and must be about money. Without financial return, this won’t fly. The trick is making social values as definitive as cash. And then delivering them too.

Be precise:

To “define”, “benchmark”, and “evaluate” let’s add “sense”, “map”, and “feed”. Precision enables performance and drives impact.

Embrace complexity:

Social issues are complex. They are multi-faceted. Change anything, the rest moves too. There’s no single stream of return – it’s systemic.

Create clarity:

Honor complexity; pillage complication. Let things be inter-connected but do not twist. Money works because its simple. Invest simply, with reason, enabled by precision.

Create a path – recapture the present – sustain the future

We must learn to leverage social value to fortify financial value. It’s critical for mitigating risk. It creates fit. It ensures sustenance. It ensures consistency between systems, activities within systems, and new investments.

—

Henry David Thoreau, Journal (November 1, 1851)

“It is a rare qualification to be able to state a fact simply and adequately.
To digest some experience cleanly.
To say yes and no with authority – to make a square edge.
To conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact…”

I have three kids. The oldest is four, the middle 1.5 and the youngest is just three months old. Life is busy.

It’s a non-stop collage of messy bums, running noses, skinned knees and bumped heads. Sad, happy, angry, bored, sick – all at once, in the space of moments, everybody, all the time.

There’s no time for the lawn, paint-chipped deck, creaking closet door, or dripping tub facet. Just keeping the floor clean, kids fed, and fridge stocked is too much. It’s a crazy, beautiful, hectic time.

I can’t count the days when I’ve said, out-loud, “Why doesn’t someone take one of these kids?!?” I don’t mean take, like steal. I mean take, like a Grandpa. Take for ice-cream. Take to the zoo. Take from me, into time, and return later happier and, preferably, ready for bed.

And, of all the things I do need, like a bigger house, new car, more money, new socks, and cleaner office – one of the things I don’t need is: more advice.

Sure, I value the advice I get. But I don’t need it like I need more time. Better advice is a third-level need. First, I need more time. Then, new socks. And, after that, maybe some advice.

2.

I bet your job sometimes looks like my house. I bet you sometimes, probably mosttimes, wish you could hire out some of that weight.

Here’s another bet: Those few times you’ve tried to hire out that weight, it didn’t create the value you hoped. Whatever was done just didn’t implement well.

You wanted time. Thought at least you’d get socks. And, instead, got advice.

I’ve been wondering why that is? Thinking about what needs to change up front to change the result at the back. What do you think?

1. “The tunnel itself, dripping-damp and duckboard floored, stretched forward into the lightened gloom ahead, the great, gaping mouth of the cave … crouched massively above, like some nightmare monsters from an ancient and other world, the evil, the sinister silhouettes of the two great guns of Navarone.

Torch and revolver dangling loosely in his hands, Mallory walked slowly forward. I’m here at last, Mallory said to himself over and over again, I’m here at last, I’ve made it, and these are the guns of Navarone: these are the guns I came to destroy, the guns of Navarone, and I have come at last …

… Mallory approached the gun on the left. He was staggered by the sheer size of it, the tremendous girth and reach of the barrel that stretched far out into the night. The experts thought it was only a nine-inch crunch gun, that the crowding confines of the cave were bound to exaggerate its size. He told himself these things, discounted them: twelve-inch bore if an inch, that gun was the biggest thing he had ever seen. Big? Heavens above, it was gigantic! The fools, the blind, crazy fools…”

2. “… I always feel like this way of being was meant for bigger things. More complex. More sophisticated. More potentially catastrophic.

Imagine taking one of those bigs guns of Navarone – those huge cannons used to sink battleships – and loading it to target seagulls floating about in the bay. A thousandth of the gun powder, a marble for the cannon ball, a tiny weak pop for a cannon blast.

It is still a cannon, it is still firing, it is still fulfilling a “kind” of its purpose … but that is not what it was made to do.

I feel like I am made to sink battleships, but I’ve only learned how (or given my self permission) to shoot at seagulls. More than that, I know hordes of people who haven’t even got a feel for what they’re for … and that’s what this post is about …”

3. The first quote above is from Alistair MacLean’s book, The Guns of Navarone. The second is from comments to an old post on doing that which only you can do.

It’s been a strange few weeks. Six, separate conversations centered on that old post. I never brought it up once. Every time, it was the other side who made the mention.

Strange because I need to be reminded. It’s easy to lose confidence in this intention.

4. There is nothing in the world that hands you your best. At its worst, life beats best out of you. At its best – you’re only given the chance for some diluted version of your brilliance.

Diluted best is: being loaded for seagull, but built for battleships.

Seagulls flap around in front of you – low-level versions of greatness. Between the noise they make, the flocks they come in, and the work of doing more – most who seek their brilliance (battleships) end up hunting seagulls. It takes discipline (and conviction) to get past seagulls and hunt battleships.

Battleships evince greatness. They are metaphors for your best, best used. Gunning for battleships is a life-long intention.

The challenge of hunting battleships starts with two fundamental decisions

- Which battleships to hunt?
- What to hunt battleships with?

These two, parallel, mutually dependent choices are, I believe, in the top five questions anyone passionate about greatness must ask and answer.

Rowboats, kin of battleships

What gets you juiced? Don’t bother rationalizing it – just let it roll out. What have you done, no matter how small or unseen, that makes you bounce? These are rowboats.

What do you get invited to do? What are those peculiar parts of life – touched by color and music – that seem odd amongst the rest? These are seagulls.

Few know their rowboats and seagulls. And, of those, most never get beyond the distraction of paddling in circles and waving at the noisy birds. The trick is looking inside those examples for the root of greater things – the hulls of battleships.

Having found your rowboat, what is the character of the joy? Does it have to be recognized, does it need to endure, does it need to be critical, is chaos an ingredient? What makes it up?

Take a look at your seagulls. What comprises their voice? Are they asking for wisdom, do they seek asylum, do they want direction? What do you give?

Finding the cannon

Of all you do, how much is that which only you can do? In what are you sine qua non?

Sine qua non is an indispensable, essential action. It’s a condition or ingredient that without which: there is nothing. In what are you the essential ingredient?

Again, don’t get hung up on smallness. And, don’t get distracted by uniqueness. The world is huge – being sine qua non here doesn’t mean someone else isn’t doing the same elsewhere.

Having found that essential ingredient, what is it’s best use? Start at the top. Reach to the highest levels of the things you’re familiar with. Where, way up there, is your best play? Don’t worry about being able to do it – just imagine the alternatives.

So, now with this dream opportunity in mind – maybe you run some amazing design group, save all the wetlands in the nation, or advise the President – whatever it is, if you were going there, which direction would you turn from where you’re at? This isn’t complicated. It’s like getting to the convenience store near your home – walk out in front of your building, stand in the driveway – which way do you turn?

Now, turn toward your opportunity.

Take a step.

Steps are miles

After that first step, it won’t matter if you get there. Asking these questions and going is all that counts.

I’ve written before about Alan Watt’s comparison of journeys versus dances. Below is a cartoon of the same talk. He talks about the consequence of living life (and career) as a journey.

In journeys we constantly seek a destination. One hour more today is an hour less to spend tomorrow. One last step now is a step I’ll never have to take again. But in a dance we don’t seeking the end.

We don’t dance to get anywhere; we don’t sing to finish songs. We seek the moment.

Purpose as mystery

Battleships, brilliance, purpose – these are not destinations. They are mysteries. Rowboats and seagulls are clues.

J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost) speaks elegantly about mystery. In he video below (at about minute 5) he wonders if, maybe, there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge.

Of course, there are times where mystery is more important. And, as must be clear by now, I think choosing and hunting battleships is one of those grace-filled/crashing parts of life.

The gift and joy of life

Within us is brilliance. We’ve been given all we need to change the world. It is our life’s work to find and reveal that brilliance and its best use. Having done that work, we turn toward the things we found and step out – into a dance with mystery.

What is within us is certain. All that is outside us will never be. And together, these two characteristics of life define our dance – brilliance within and mystery without.

This is the gift and joy of living.

Choosing greatness

Does this seem too simple? Are there other layers you would add?
Is this a path for few or many? If few, what else is needed to make it broad?

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below or feel free to email.

This conversation started two weeks ago – we post an early draft for email subscribers. If you want in, subscribe to email notification from the blog.

Keywords: Brilliance, Presence, Purpose, Intention, Character
Tags: Brilliance, Awe, Presence

One day this friend and I were working on some renovations at his place. We worked, she bossed. When she finally got tired of prattling, she took off to get her favorite food, her favorite coffee, and her favorite desert. We were doing the work but it still had to be about her.

My friend seemed as frustrated as me (not that it justified my pettiness). After she left he shook his head, obviously angry.

I fretted for several minutes before blurting, “Are you glad you married her?” I was being a complete jerk, knew it, and couldn’t stop myself. It was none of my business.

He was painting but didn’t skip a stroke. Without looking up he said, “Absolutely”.

I was incredulous. She’d been a bear all day. An absolute nuisance. And she was always like this.

“Why?” I complained, a bitter whine in my voice.

He laughed, got up easily and with a quiet smile said, “She’s everything I need.”

He put his brush down and went on. “When we fell in love, I saw everything bright in her. But, after we got married I realized how frustrating she can be. It took a long time to realize that for her to be so strong in some things, there has to be shadows somewhere else. For every brilliance, there is also darkness.”

—

I like strong egos (inconsistent with the story above, I know). I like the blunt, antagonistic, and aggressive leaders we work with.

I’m no fan of thugs, pimps, or anyone cruel. But I enjoy stubborn and idiosyncratic leaders that fight viciously for their own way. Even though pimps and stubborn leaders often share the same label – only pimps are truly bullies.

I worked for one true bully in my career. A passive-aggressive, conniving, spineless man. A man too weak to defend his own position, but powerful enough to hide it well.

We won’t take this kind of person as a client. But we do like leaders utterly convinced of their opinion, unwavering in their conviction, and unfettered in pursuit of their decisions. These leaders are often called bullies, but they’re nothing like the snake described above.

A high-ego, convinced, and moving leader is both boon and bane. A boon to those ready for change. A bane to anyone with threatened interests to preserve.

A driving leader takes something. They take a market, take a decision, take a position. For every thing taken there is, of course, some one else that is losing. Maybe power is lost. Future plans are shaken. Footholds of strength are eroded. Whatever the lose, the loser is usually unequivocal – they’ve been had by a bully.

I like this kind of ‘bully’.

—

Last week I wrote that corporate boards need coaches. They need help coaching CEOs. The biggest challenge for the boards of brilliant CEOs is that these people have the deepest shadows. And, even more difficult, the best CEOs completely ignore those shadows and plunge ahead regardless.

To be brilliant, ignore your shadows. I am absolutely convinced of this. But, it’s in direct opposition to how we are taught to live with others and with what others plead with us to be.

Everything in our education, in our careers, and in the social environment is geared to highlight gaps. We are graded on what we miss. Our performance is scored on what we failed to achieve. Friends pick at every outlier.

My success in business is a direct consequence of being curious, well-spoken, analytical and able to translate information to its use. Yet, not one person ever told tell me to focus on these things. Instead, teachers criticized me for missing details (fortunately, our clients want the big picture). Managers demanded more tact (clients like it blunt). Loads of “friends” called me quirky, suggesting it might be bad, but every client says they value an unconventional perspective.

If I focused on the many things there are to dislike about me, I’d never be good at the few things I do well. In the same way, any bright CEO must learn to ignore pesky “issues” that detract from important outcomes.

A good board recognizes this tension. They are big enough to stand behind their CEO. They defend the brilliance, rather than attack the weakness.

It’s easy to find and focus on gaps. Most boards get caught up in shadows. A good board finds the mountain.

It’s a strange and specialized job. Encumbered by heavy pads, a monstrous stick, and awkward skates – they stand, often alone, guarding their nets. In an ideal game they don’t participate at all. In the worst of games they have a central and pivotal role.

It’s odd isn’t it? The weakest player has the most singularly pivotal role. Yet, no matter how great, no goalie plays alone. They’re central to the win but utterly useless on their own.

To be brilliant requires peers.

—

Quirky, eccentric, and unshakable people are tremendously weak people. To be utterly brilliant in a few places is to be undeniably weak in others.

It’s a paradox that to be peerless in the best of ways requires the best of peers.

To tap their greatest potential, leaders need peers who are brilliant in the leader’s areas of greatest weakness.

—

In recent years there’s been a slow drift to sanity among NHL goaltenders. There are several reasons for this: better coaching, more integration with the team, and a stronger field of athletes interested in the role. The most important is coaching.

Goalie coaches are standard today. They weren’t before the 1980s. Until then, goalies were deeply isolated and left to themselves. Today goalies are heavily reinforced with entourages that even include mental skills coaches.

—

Coaching CEOs is the traditional role of corporate boards. Led by grizzled business-people, boards are populated by the most successful individuals a company is able to attract. But, are these people coaches?

Most boards are comprised of first or few-timers. While these people usually have lots of business experience, they often have zero board experience.

Few life experiences teach a new board member how to work with a strong CEO. Who ever gets taught how to guide the Prime Minister? Where in our lives are lessons for challenging a President?

—

It’s mysterious to me that so little is available to guide boards. One of the most popular posts on this blog is entitled, Imagine your board of directors. It’s the title the rings in the readers. People are desperate to understand this riddle.

I know of so many bad boards and so few good ones. But more than that – beyond the rarely good and mostly bad boards that do exist – what of the boards that should exist?

What of the boards so vital to guiding the innovative, medium-sized companies that are so rare? What of the coaches and peers for Gazelles or other, similar economic rockets?

We talk of innovation as though the table were set. We act like everything is waiting for the right CEO. But this isn’t true. So much more is missing.

I love watching the boys play. There is something so tangible in their games. It feels like we’re always on the verge of some monumental discovery.

When we only had Keaton, and Keaton was Kesler’s age, I often felt challenged by his little version of “presence”. He always seemed inside his moments when I was outside mine. He didn’t struggle with the future as I tend to do.

But lately, when I watch the boys play, I see the future intruding on Keaton’s joy. When he knows Grandpa and Grandma are coming – he is conscious that they’re not here yet. If he knows that he and I might go get a movie later – he feels impatience if he has to wait. We might play outside, but after lunch, and that frustrates him.

He might be playing with his favorite rocket and then something yanks him into the future. His moment gets shared with something that ‘will be’. And, to me, something is lost.

I probably wouldn’t notice if Kesler wasn’t here too. But there he is, busily playing away – pudgy hands search for blocks, crooked fingers point at birds, a little lisp extols the virtues of Cheerios taken neat.

Kesler is utterly in his moment; Keaton is mostly in his.

—

In 1985, D.H. Ingvar wrote an article for Human Neurobiology called “‘Memory of the future’: an essay on the temporal organization of conscious awareness.” In the paper he explores the concept of time (past/present/future).

Ingvar discusses how our minds handle the three categories of time. The past is related to our memories (obviously). The experience of a present or ‘now-situation’ is mediated by sensory input. And the same part of the brain used to direct behaviour and the mental process of knowing (awareness, perception, reason, and judgement) is used to house action programs for the future.

Action programs for the future can be retained and recalled. Ingvar calls these “‘memories of the future’”. “They form the basis for anticipation and expectation as well as for the short and long-term planning of a goal-directed behavioural and cognitive repertoire. This repertoire for future use is based upon experiences of past events and the awareness of a Now-situation, and it is continuously rehearsed and optimized.”*

Our ‘inner future’ is made of our past and perception of meaning in the “massive sensory barrage” to which we are constantly exposed in the present.

—

So back to my boys.

It’s cute when Keaton hears that Grandpa and Grandma are coming and resolves to park himself at the window. He refuses to move despite vigorous threats and cajoling. He’s convinced they will arrive any moment – though they live hours away and won’t leave until after Supper.

But look at this from his side. His future is built of maybe two similar experiences. The last of his two experiences involved Grandpa and Grandma suddenly arriving. One moment there was LEGO and the next, Grandpa and Grandma.

He’s got that and whatever he has in his new Now. Today he just ate (Breakfast). Eating is eating – Breakfast, Lunch, Supper – these are the same. That he ate means Grandpa and Grandma are imminent.

All this being true: Might as well wait it out. Keaton’s “memory of the future” hasn’t got much to play with but, given what he’s got, his behaviour is rational.

—

Have you ever seen an economic recession before? Have you ever watched your profits race to zero? Have you ever seen China sponge up all your production? Has the price of oil and a turn in environmental sentiment ever obliterated your business plan in a matter of weeks?

Once? Maybe twice?

And, as you sit by the window, waiting for things to turn around – what does your ‘now-situation’ look like?

It was easy to smile at Keaton. Are you so different?

____________________________________
*Ingvar, D.H. (1985) ‘Memory of the future’: an essay on the temporal organization of conscious awareness, Human Neurobiology, vol.4, pp. 127-136.

Marc grew up on a farm, had several big brothers, and was a scrappy kid. My dad was the local pastor, I was the oldest kid in my family, and Marc was the only one I’d ever fought.

—

The year I turned ten I enjoyed a sudden and largely unnoticed growth spurt. I moved quickly from pudgy and short to trim and tall. As most things go at age ten, I didn’t catch onto the change.

—

The year I turned ten I discovered a lesson.

Marc Decker had me in a head-lock, was raining down his little right fist on my back, and shouting “Bible-thumper!!!” mericlessly in my ear. I was on my face, in the dirt.

There in the dirt, ear drums ringing, I finally noticed a change I’d ignored until that moment. It was one of those dream-like moments. I could almost see myself, as though a third person, standing beside Marc, getting ready for that inevitable fight. The boy I saw – the boy I was – was taller, heavier and stronger.

I stood up.

There was no clarion call. I didn’t launch into some blinding combo of punches and kicks. I just got to my feet and stood there with my arch nemisis hanging with his arms around my neck.

Marc grunted, hung there a few moments, kicked his legs several times and then let go. He stepped back and bellowed up at me that I was some ten-year old version of a coward, spun around, and stomped back to his friends.

Marc and I never fought again.

—

In business it’s easy to get caught on my knees. Easy to let weakness define decisions. Easy to stay deeply tuned to the boundaries trumpeted by propects smelling a good deal.

This is especially the case after being employed (vs self-employed) and being subjected to reviews that, when an employee, deserved full attention. All those gaps, ladders, and deficiencies that were so long the focus of every evaluation somehow carry over to this new thing. Like those dreams of missing some university exam, or showing up naked to a presentation – it’s a haunting sort of feeling.

I walk around feeling short, pudgy, and weak.

—

There was an almost indescribable joy in that moment I stood up with Marc struggling around my neck. When he marched off, his little head bobbing with the vigor of his shouting, I felt like a mountain. That moment awakened in me a quiet voice that’s continued to flicker from then until now.

That voice is so quiet and the world of other voices is so loud, it is almost impossible to hear it sometimes. It’s easily forgotten.

—

I drove home yesterday with a $2,500 check on the seat beside me. That, a retainer, and several more days of signed work mean my next three months of living are already in hand.

Now I know, three month’s mortgage is no grand goal but it means I am out of the dirt. I am taller and stronger than I felt I was.

I can stand up. I can choose what I do next. I can say no. I can say, “Yes, but only to this, and for at least this much.” I can say those things with a confidence and passion someone might hear in the voices of ten-year old boys.

The joy, peace and confidence this brings is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

“Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.”

What is your revolution? When will you give it to the one who is going to change the world? What do you need before you can give it away?

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“Find out as soon as possible what are the best things in your composition and then shape the rest to fit them. The former will be the midrib and veins of the leaf.

There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds – the memorable thoughts, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours. The thought came to us because we were in a fit mood. Also, we were unconscious and did not know that we had said or done a good thing.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success. What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice and at length it falls from us without our notice as a leaf from a tree.”

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