Stories aren’t just for kids, or storytime at daycare.
I love a good story. In fact we all do. Stories are the means that we entertain, learn, teach, explore and play out the adventures of our lives.
In business we have the stories we tell ourselves in our heads, stories we tell investors, customers, employees and co-workers.
A great story can change the world, or the way you percieve it.
Stories are about change and the best ones affect the audience of the story, and create some meaningful impression.
A leaders job is to create stories that are worth believing in. A vision, a series of small successes that give confidence and a story that carries passion and is worth figthing for. Passion is something you can’t pay for, it has to be something that is shared - and stories are the ways we have shared our passions since we grunted our way out of our painted caves.
What are the words of your organizations story?
Do the words you use include fullfilling your brand promise to reward employees and shareholders. Please, kill me quickly before your story bores me. I’m tired of boring stories. I’ve heard entrepreneurs pitching me who can’t tell their stories, candidates applying for jobs who can’t tell their story and surprisingly many CEO’s I know can’t tell their story.
Stories need adventure, good guys and bad guys, drama and danger. Most of all they need hereos, they need some epic injustice being addressed or help being offered to the needy.
You have as much luck finding passion in many companies as you would find a hollywood blockbuster based on the story of a CEO who increased shareholder value by implementing six sigma management techniques lowering operating costs while increasing market share by double digits over a five year period. If that’s your organizations story then you need a new storyteller.
As an entrepreneur if your story is about how you can use mashups and the wisdom of crowds with a new AJAX api for a relationship management tool that used web 2.0 techniques and user generated ……….. sorry - the story was borying me too. You can guess the result this story gets with investors, media or even employees.
Most organizations have great stories, but lousy storytellers. Every struggle, sacrifice, win with customers or change in direction is rife with drama and opportunities to create stories and legends that shape culture and build your organization.
Every story in business needs to follow the hearts, minds, wallet rule. (My version is win the heart, challenge the mind, and the wallet will figure itself out easily).
Here is a great story from Kodak that made me laugh. It’s great marketing and has people sharing Kodak’s story.
The power of blogs and social media is being able to tell your story with employees, partners, customers, competitors and the whole world. In fact the more people you share your story with and the better you tell your story, the more you succeed.
With the dropping cost personal publishing I’m continually surprised had how few companies, employers or leaders take the time to tell stories to their market.
Ask youserlf, is your organizations website still a corporate brochure or a tool for telling your companies story? How often do you update it? Who writes the content? What story does it tell week by week, month by month.
Here are two of my favorite articles that I found on Google on the role of storytelling in leadership.
The number one job of any leader is talent development. Recruiting, retaining, equipping and developing the talent in your team is the not only the most critical part of creating a successful company it is also the hardest.
Raising financing takes time. Dealing with customers, partners and earning revenue takes time. Working on product and getting any of the millions of tasks done that need to be accomplished to be able to afford to employ anyone takes time. Once an organization has accomplished all these tasks and has enough money, or business to justify hiring it is often hard to switch gears on your plans and go slow enough to allow you the time to do hiring well.
Hiring is the item that most companies don’t plan for or make enough time for. It takes a lot of time to do well, and there are always areas to make changes or new talent that needs to be developed to fit the businesses changing needs. Scouting, developing and nurturing top talent is something that is a full time job of the the entire senior management team.
Just like sports coaches are constantly working on finding the right mix for a winning team, there are constant tweaks and changes that need to occur and a huge payoff for finding the fit that allows a great winning team to begin to form.
Despite the payoff it is surprising that many times hiring gets pushed back as a priority, often being delegated completely to 3rd parties or outsourced entirely by using offshore contractors to build core intellectual property.
Management personally spending time in recruiting top talent is the best investment any leader can make. Hiring top players, who have the intelligence, passion and are a cultural team fit in the right positions is the single biggest leverage a management team has in building a successful company.
In addition to taking the time to record a video for one of our job postings (others are coming soon) I’m spending a lot of time personally scouring the worlds campuses, local technology firms and the Internet for top talent. A huge percentage of Zero-Knowledge’s staff moved to Montreal to work with us because we recruited across Canada, globally from Silicon Valley to Europe and throughout the world. When looking for talent, I spend a huge amount of time searching for top people regardless of where I have to look to find them.
Top talent loves to work with other top talent. For Internet web software companies in Montreal there is an incredible number of great people working in the video game & graphics industry, creative agencies, corporate marketing departments and throughout the world on University campuses that are interested in great Montreal opportunities if you reach out to them.
Often time great people are being unrecognized in their current jobs, or have a life long passion for working for a small startup company, or on a product that can make the world a better place. The only way to find this out is to meet a huge number of people and see if your dreams match with theirs. Top talent is never looking for jobs. Jobs need to hunt out top talent. That takes time, and requires every tool in the shed.
Internet video is a tool that offers great promise to help in recruiting online. It allows for the hiring team, and company to put their message out there and start a conversation with candidates. It is just another tool though. The companies top leadership needs to love recruiting the best people and be willing to invest the time to reach out in every way possible to meet potential candidates.
The company needs to make recruiting top talent a top priority. It takes putting some of your companies best sales people out there spreading the word about why your company is the place for top talent to come work. It takes hiring with your heart on your sleeve with passion.
Here is a little video I shot recently while driving to UC Berkeley on a recruiting trip. Just some random thoughts on recruiting while I was driving.
If you are a Web Developer/Integrator (Javascript/HTML/XML) , Flash developer, Graphic Artist, Illustrator/Comic book artist, Python Developer or Web Application Architect available for consulting or full time positions then please introduce yourself.
An interest in or experience with Internet startups, online multi-player games, game development, online web communities, social media or so called ‘Web 2.0′ tools and technologies is a great plus. Akoha is recruiting for a few positions right now, but we are hiring throughout the summer and into the fall in these areas and are interested in meeting talented people.
When a team starts to fall into it’s swing every interaction seems to be surging the company forward in almost an effortless and fun way.
In his book Mind Over Water, rower Craig Lambert describes swing in this way,
Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing…Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are not so much swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do not strive, they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival.
No two teams can have the same swing.
You can be in the same market, with the same product and your team swing will the primary factor in deciding who wins.
So your team could swing like this,
Or the same team could swing like this,
Either way - you want to staff your startup with people who can swing like you do.
(Note to self: Get copies of Jean-Luc Goddard films. This is brilliant footage.)
The time of year has come when everyone makes resolutions, ponders lessons learned and slip into Nostradamus mode making bold or obvious predictions for the coming year. (Unfortunately no longer in the form of quatrains. I strongly believe all predictions should be made in the form of quatrains for the amusement of those who have to listen to them.)
I apologize but after taking some time off the blog, this is going to be a long post since it is my major goal for the entire year - and I feel it’s cathartic to post this in detail.
I took some great downtime over the holidays to think about some of what I accomplished in 2006 and my plans and projects for 2007.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to like living with a very full plate. I am active in many business & personal projects, volunteer organizations, advisory relationships and still try to have tons of fun while doing it all. I’m also spending more time in various Internet communities building experience and relationships that all take time, adding more items to my inboxes.
I also have a hyperactive mind (those who know me can attest to this) that is always in overdrive with ideas, projects, conversations, things to research and skills to develop. I have lot’s of hobbies and unlimited interests, and try to lead a rich life by exploring it’s diversity.
My past business & personal success can be attributed to many things ranging from luck, some personal quirks & skills and mostly to the teams of people I’ve been around. If I had to point to a single quality that has served me best in life, it has been my passion & energy (I’m also a fairly quick learner). I just don’t know how to do things without going at them full blast like a kid racing after an ice cream truck, no matter what I tackle.
That being said, I know that my success is in no way related to my organization skills. I have never been that type of person. So when it comes to my inboxes I know the problem is me. I’ve tried various tools and systems before, but I’ve always petered out in applying them after a couple of weeks of not being able to dig myself out the existing hole I was in. I also don’t believe I have ever found a suitable mix of tools and methods to support the habits I need to develop. I know the problems is not the tools, it comes down to me not being a tool.
So instead of listing the hundreds of goals or resolutions I have, I’ve decided to scrap them all and make just one goal this year and that is to fundamentally renegotiate my relationship with my inboxes.
I get about 200-300 emails a day, regularly live with 5000+ items (around 1200 unread at anytime) in my email inbox, maintain busy task lists in various places, manage project plans, make around 15-20 phone calls a day, maintain a busy calendar, read 400+ news feeds somewhat regularly, read 5-10 books a week, am listening to 20 odd podcasts almost weekly, and read about 30 magazines a month.
My office desk, my home desk, my mail, books & magazine piles, computer desktops are all generally messy and chaotic. Add voice mail, Skype calls, IM, notices from an increasing number of online community services, my personal and home responsibilities (bills, errands & life stuff), the number of companies I’m involved in, my exercise & health regimens, friendships, my dog and my relationship with my girlfriend and my life tends to always be active.
I’ve had an executive assistant and team of financial and bookkeeping staff taking care of organizing my life since I was 21 years old. They were instrumental in keeping me organized and productive. Despite this I never felt particularly in control of the many things I juggle on a daily basis. For the first time in almost fifteen years I am flying solo, with no executive assistant. This is a major change for me, that I’m dedicated to maintaining until I get organized myself. If and when I need some help after getting organized, I want my next executive assistant to help me amplify the volume of productivity I can accomplish by executing tasks on my behalf, not spend all their time chasing after me to organize my messy life.
I spend my days fighting my inboxes like a fire fighter addicted to the thrill of battling fires. Tackling the issues of the day, with constantly changing projects, tasks and priorities I’ve always felt that I was able to deal with it through a high tolerance for chaos. I think I’m a great multitasker but it requires a lot of effort and lot’s of good help to keep those tasks even partially managed. I’m getting to phase in my life where I’m trying to simplify those things that are burdens, and spend more time doing things that are fun and meaningful. My inbox is a burden.
I feel I’m always barely keeping on top of the most important items that I can handle at that time. Many items that aren’t critical sit around for long period of times gathering dust. Too many require some simple actions that take me too long to get around too and lead to stress, that just isn’t helpful or productive even though I’ve become quite accustomed to dealing with it.
This video reflects how I have come to view my current relationship with my inboxes.
Lately I’ve been investing my time and energy in those things that will give the best results for all areas of my life. I mention the idea of leverage points in my previous post. For the last two years my major goals were related to my physical & mental health and my choice of career path. This is the best I’ve ever felt in my life with how those things are progressing.
So my goal for this year is simply to get control of my inboxes, becoming naturally organized so that it’s effortless and second nature to organize my inboxes, tasks and commitments.
This includes the following specific goals;
An empty inbox by late-January.
I started 2007 with almost 8000 items in my inbox with 1000 unread items. I’m down to about 3000 items left (about 300 unread), having deferred, assigned, deleted, filed or created tasks for each item that I removed.
Empty my inboxes completely at least once a week.
By emptying I mean deleting, filing, assigning, scheduling or creating tracked tasks for each item that crosses my various inboxes. I may not respond to each item in that week, but it will be scheduled and tracked. At least once a week I will have no items in my inboxes.
Completely clearing my desk of any paperwork or post it notes. This is a big one for me, since my desk has always been as busy as I am.
Empty my voice mail every day, and update my incoming message at least once a week with my upcoming geographic location and availability.
Add all my various ideas, notes, tasks and calendar items to the same tracking system and review the lists once a week.
I’ve recently begun to schedule exercise time, time with friends, reading time, blogging time and I want all my commitments that have times associated with it to be added to this calendar or time based task list.
I normally maintain task lists or reminders in various places from post it notes on my fridge @ home, to slips of papers, my moleskin notebooks, my PDA, my Google Desktop Tasks Widget & Outlook Tasks w/ OneNote integration (all of which suck at task management), project tracking tickets, Voicemail, Delicious Bookmark tags, draft blog posts, idea scratch pads, and journal entries. I am going to empty all my notebooks and journals of any outstanding items or ideas and put them into a single system each week.
Completely relax by using a rigid tracking system of organizing my inboxes to allow myself complete freedom to negotiate my commitments.
I want the freedom to be able to renegotiate my commitments based on what I think is most productive at that moment, or needed including my personal time.
I don’t want to be rigid in my schedule, but rather rigid in my scheduling allowing me mental freedom to know that all my items are scheduled, deferred, or some action is on a single task or calendar list. If I want or need to change the schedule to adjust to new priorities or just because I need some down time, it should be easy to do.
I want to be able to be more comfortable saying no, or not right now to many things with the confidence that I can tackle them at future dates that are easily scheduled and tracked.
Do the minimal amount of planning needed to accomplish the most amount of doing.
In today’s rapidly changing and fast paced world doing too much planning becomes daunting because of the layers of assumptions, interdependencies and rapidly changing learning. I believe that most heavy planning quickly suffers from the law of diminishing returns.
Although it’s new for me, I’m am now using more execution biased light weight iterative planning tools. We are using a mix of development methodologies, good sense and financial planning models in all my projects that adopt monthly iterative light weight planning that heavily favor execution, flexible plans, small teams and tracking of the changes in plans to improve the culture of light weight planning and execution.
Although I’m still learning these behaviors with a small team again and many of the tools we are using are new to me, I’m happy with how the project and financial/operational management functions at my various company projects are developing. I don’t feel my own personal planning is up to snuff though. This is what I’m going to change this year, by adopting a personal system (including financial, project, tasks and commitments) that mimics the systems we use in my company projects.
I’ve researched various systems before, and now that we have adopted two important principles at my corporate projects including lot’s of alone time and a toxic aversion to meetings I feel I finally can tackle a critical part of my own ability to get more done with less effort. I think this will be the single most important thing I can do to better serve the people who I make commitments and am responsible too, while having the most fun doing what I enjoy.
I have been researching the tools and techniques of David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach. I read his stuff a couple of years ago, but could never ‘clear the decks’ and didn’t really feel like I was capable of being the type of organized person I read about. I reread his two books (Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything) and really feel I am at a point in my life when I can fundamentally tackle becoming an organized person.
I have researched various tools, am subscribed to his podcasts and have generally adopted his basic workflow for handling all my inboxes. (I’ve modified it slightly based on some research I’ve done and my own needs)
I am experimenting with a bunch of the tools, but am mostly using the Outlook plug-in that aside from a few annoying bugs has finally given me confidence in using Outlook to manage tasks and projects, alongside the messages, contacts and calendar that are so integral to working on the tasks. My productivity in just a few short days of using this tool has really improved. Outlook is no longer a place I dread, but is becoming a place where I get tons of work done.
I’ve got a bunch of other mail filtering, organization, research, contact management, personal productivity plug-ins and other personal dashboards that I’ve assembled but tasks was the one area that eluded me until now. In processing my inboxes I’ve quickly created about 400 tasks, 60 project files, 100 sub-projects and added @context and time scheduled reminders or series of actions that are planned in my calendar and organized properly. Working in my inbox is beginning to feel fun, because I’m able to easily get so much done simply by pushing items through the system and onto my new task list.
I’ve been slow to blog and get some other things done lately because I am really hard at work on finishing clearing all my open items and getting them into this system.
I am going to be adapting the system using some utilities and social media tools that I think can be combined with the basic GTD approach to cover more than just inbox items. I’ve already begun developing a macro that takes an URL from my browser or feedreader and creates an automatic task that I can assign to a project, my @context (@blog content ideas, @email for email tasks etc.), or just to my personal learning or @Someday categories. Adapting this to also incorporate De.licio.us, Sphere, Technorati and Wikipedia links for automatic link insertion associated with tasks around ideas, urls and copied text from webpages as part of the same macro is something I want to experiment with once I get the basics of the system down. I feel this will be a more effective way to manage my bookmarks and tags where I am now often tagging items as reminders or for later action items (such as reference material for a future blog post) and my Delicious bookmarks are becoming another place that’s as messy as my other inboxes.
I don’t think I’ll become a Steve Pavlina or LifeHacker type blogger, but I do plan to blog once in awhile on how I’m doing on this one goal.
I’m really happy with how it’s going so far, but need to get a couple months of habitual practice before I start dispensing any verdicts about it’s effectiveness. I’ve burned myself before going gun-ho on a new way to organize and tackle personal planning and have seen those efforts fall by the wayside as mounting priorities become excuses to revert to bad habits.
I invite my friends, team mates, partners and anyone who reads this that I happen to run into this year to ask me about how this is going. My inbox count and the date that it was last empty is available upon inquiry
I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.
I also have a tendency to get myself into this problem. I try to be very generous with my time by spreading it among the many passions I have in my life. I try to maintain balance by looking for leverage in most of my activities. I’m trying to do things that compliment each other so that my peanut buttter is focused, and remains thick and crunchy (I actually like peanut butter). Once again from the memo,
My belief is that the smoothly spread peanut butter needs to turn into a deliberately sculpted strategy — that is narrowly focused.
Of course, this idea doesn’t just apply to companies. Everyone makes decisions on how to spend their time that involves choosing what is important and what is not. Every time I say yes to something, I am in fact also saying no to something else that may be more important. As such, I find having priorities or goals that I can build a strategy for how to focus my time is important.
I’m trying to allocate my time in the following manner. This isn’t scientific and doesn’t include hours spent with my family & friends outside of what I consider my professional work (which depending on how hard I’m working the amount of hours varies, but I try hard not to neglect it) . This is a fair approximation of how I’m scheduling my time.
Project Ojibwe is my main focus. Working at a startup requires a lot of effort and I am working a lot of hours on this project. With an angel financing closing this week, working with the team on the product development, hiring and getting the launch prepared - this is more than a full time job. I love it though and wouldn’t have it any other way. I actually have problems shutting down my brain or winding down, so I find working on other projects helps me balance.
Community & Volunteer Projects - Recently I’ve made it a concious effort to get more involved by volunteering on community projects. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had the experiences and succes I’ve had. I think it’s important to give back.
This includes my involvements in Barcamps and StartupCamp (participating in fostering the technology & entrepreneur community in Canada). Often times this is just showing up, other times it involves helping organize or arrange fundraising. If I can stay in the background as much as possible, simply helping others do great work here that is my preference.
My friend Hugh McGuire asked me to join a great team on the advisory board for a project at the Atwater Digital Libary Center helping at risk teens learn critical technology skills (More on that project to come)
I’m on the advisory board for my friend Ron Dembo’s company Zero Footprint (as one of Canada’s technology success stories, Ron has focused on saving the environment with his new project - he is a great example of a social entrepreneur).
I’m also on the advisory board of Coburn Ventures and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. I haven’t been doing much for EPIC in the past couple of years - but I still support their mission and will be looking for some leverage points to help them in the future.
Personal Development - This is a broad category that includes personal goals related to my health and personal skill development. For instance, lately I’ve been filling my video iPod with samples of great public speakers (JFK, Ghandi, Steve Jobs, Clinton) to study and practice great presentation & public speaking techniques. Doing this while I work out is a great way to leverage the time for two goals (Health & Personal Development) Other times this includes learning a new tool (such as Illustrator which provided me with the fancy pie chart of my time above). This is the first time I’ve actively scheduled my personal development time into my professional calendar. I find it much easier to give myself this time when I have specific goals & skills that I’ve scheduled myself to learn.
Mentoring & Advising Startups - I enjoy working with startups. I learn a lot from mentoring and helping out teams occasionally getting involved where I feel that my contribution is unique and significant enough to make it worth both my time and the startups. This is the hardest one for me, as I have to say no to pretty much all startup offers that come my way since I have a limited number of slots available to work with teams. I always try to find the time to meet with a team at least once, to hear what they are about and how I can help them. Most often, I give them my advice on the challenges they face, some feedback on how to present the idea to investors, and if I feel it’s worthwhile I refer them to VCs or angel investors who would be a good fit for them. There are three companies that I’m more formally involved with, either sitting on a board (just one) or actively helping the management team in strategy or fundraising (the other two). One of these companies is a new startup that I’m helping get organized, that grew out of Barcamp Montreal and we’ll be launching in 2007. I’m not day to day on this, but am one of the co-founders providing some resources. The idea and my co-founders were unique enough that I decided it was worth including in my schedule.
So for 2007 my dance card is looking pretty full.
With such a busy schedule, I look for leverage in most of my activities. My blogging, my impending podcast are both activities that I can leverage for all my goals since they apply equally to all my various projects.
Blogging is an activity that helps me to achieve all of my main goals. I have personal development goals related to blogging (writing quality, skills, goals for my Technorati rating etc.). I also use my blog to help engage in conversations with Canadian entrepreneurs. The topics I am writing about in my blog are related to some of the work we will be doing with Project Ojibwe. I also am using my blog to support volunteer activities that I’m involved with.
So blogging is a leverage activity. Consider it the crunchy peanut in my peanut butter
The central strategy behind all my time investments is building community through serving others. This is the central strategy in how I spent all my professional time. Part of this service includes me saying no more often then yes. I would be performing a disservice to get involved with every startup who approached me since my peanut butter would be bland and weak.
BTW - Jim Estill is another Canadian CEO who is writing about time management. His blog is worth a look if this topic interests you.
As more companies look to harness the power of communities, I think the role of corporate and community leadership will begin to merge. This is goodness as I believe they are one and the same thing.
My friends and I email each other quotes and passages from great things we are reading.
This was a recent exchange with two friends exchanging quotes on leadership.
“What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you, then, so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And whenceforth was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as the southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were brave to overcome. For this was it glorious, for this was it an honorable undertaking. You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species, your names to be adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honor and the benefit of mankind. And now, you behold with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away and are content to be handed down as men who had not the strength to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm fireplace. Why, that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far and dragged your captain to the shame of defeat merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purpose and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heros who have fought and conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.”
This is a great quote and reminds me of the role I’ve aspired to play as a corporate leader.
To which my friend (and Project Ojibwe’s Chief Architect) Oliver added,
As an aside, here’s my absolutely favorite quote on leadership. It’s from Tao, the central philosophy of ancient china. While, like many ancient thought systems, it’s hard to date, the text is roughly 3000 years old and central to the origins of eastern philosophical, and political thought. (Sadly it’s now banned under pain of torture in the Republic of China, of course) .
Note that today Tao is sometimes called a religion because in modernity the philosophy intermingled with “new” religious cults like buddhism, zen-buddhism, etc. Religious Taoism is actually quite a recent creation on these time-scales.
In any event, I think there are tonnes of connections between these ideas, and guiding an online community, growing a company, etc. Tao notions like moving people towards goals indirectly seem quite relevant …….
A few tricky terms in the text:
“Tao” means “Way”: the pattern of nature that is pervasive in all of reality.
“Master” is not quite an accurate translation, and has a lot of dominant connotations that aren’t really right. Another common translation is “Sage”: someone who is fit to govern people because they have acquired enough wisdom to be able to act selflessly. The purpose of the text is to teach the reader the wisdom of Sages (or Masters, in this translation).
57
If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become honest.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.
58
If a country is governed with tolerance,
the people are comfortable and honest.
If a country is governed with repression,
the people are depressed and crafty.
When the will to power is in charge,
the higher the ideals, the lower the results.
Try to make people happy,
and you lay the groundwork for misery.
Try to make people moral,
and you lay the groundwork for vice.
Thus the Master is content
to serve as an example
and not to impose her will.
She is pointed, but doesn’t pierce.
Straightforward, but supple.
Radiant, but easy on the eyes.
59
For governing a country well
there is nothing better than moderation.
The mark of a moderate man
is freedom from his own ideas.
Tolerant like the sky,
all-pervading like sunlight,
firm like a mountain,
supple like a tree in the wind,
he has no destination in view
and makes use of anything
life happens to bring his way.
Nothing is impossible for him.
Because he has let go,
he can care for the people’s welfare
as a mother cares for her child.
60
Governing a large country
is like frying a small fish.
You spoil it with too much poking.
Center your country in the Tao
and evil will have no power.
Not that it isn’t there,
but you’ll be able to step out of its way.
Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself.
61
When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.
A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.
If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn’t meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world.
I don’t view these quotes as competing ideas - but the Tao quotes on leadership is what I aspire to be as a community leader.
This reminds me of my favorite session of Web 2.0 which was World Domination via Collaboration. Lisa Stone, Caterina Fake,Jory Des Jardins and Jessica Hardwick led an incredible discussion on how to lead and nurture communities.
The entire session spoke of leadership, principles, community values and co-operative learning along with the community. The whole principle of letting go of many aspects of your business is going to be a central theme this year as the memes of harnessing collective intelligence, wikinomics, crowdsourcing and community production begin to spread. I think there are going to be new aspects of leadership that will be required for those companies wishing to compete in this era.
I’ve worked for assholes, worked with assholes, employed assholes (often too long), fired assholes (never fast enough) and I’ve been an asshole myself at times (in fact more times then I’m proud of).
The first $64,000 question is, “How does one avoid being an asshole?” No big surprise, but I’ve compiled a top-ten list to summarize what Sutton says:
Face your past. The past is a very good predictor of future behavior. For example, were you a bully in school? If your parents and siblings were assholes, you may have caught the disease. Knowing that you’re an asshole is first step towards change.
Do not make people feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled. If you find yourself having these effects, it’s time to change your behavior no matter what you think of yourself.
Do not mistreat people who are less powerful than you. One of the sure signs of an asshole is treating people like clerks, flight attendants, and waiters in a degrading manner.
Resist assholeholics from the start. The easiest time to avoid becoming an asshole is at the very beginning. Don’t think that you can do “what you have to” to fit in and can change later. It won’t happen.
Walk away and stay away. Don’t be afraid to leave a bad situation. It’s unlikely you’ll change the assholes into good people; it’s much more likely that you’ll descend to their level.
View acting like an asshole as a communicable disease. If you have any sense of decency, when you’re sick, you avoid contact to prevent spreading the disease. So if you act like an asshole, you’re not just impacting yourself; you’re also teaching other people that it’s okay to be an asshole.
Focus on win-win. Children (young and old) think that the world is a zero-sum game. If another kid is playing with the fire truck, you can’t. As people get older they should realize that life doesn’t have to be a win-lose proposition–unless, that is, you’re an asshole.
Focus on ways you are no better or even worse than others. Thinking that you’re smarter, faster, better looking, funnier, whatever than others turns people into assholes. Thinking that you’re no better or even worse keeps you humble.
Focus on ways you are similar to people, not different. If you concentrate on how you and others have similar goals, desires, and passions, you’re bound to be less of an asshole. How can you treat people that are similar to you with disdain?
Tell yourself, “I have enough stuff (money, toys, friends, cars, whatever).” Discontentment and envy is a major factor in becoming an asshole. If you’re happy, there’s no reason to stomp on others.
The best book on leadership I’ve read recently is Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstorm. They describe the power of decentralized leadership. They have some great examples of leaders who are not managers, but have followers.
I can’t think of a time in business when assholes are needed less. As the cost and technical ease of creating your own business or becoming self employed drops - creative people have incredible choices about where they choose to spend their days.
I work continually to develop as a leader since my success has always been due to the teams that have followed me. For those who’ve supported me when I was an asshole - thanks. You’ll be happy to know I think I’m acting like less of an asshole recently
I love a good story. In fact we all do. Stories are the means that we entertain, learn, teach, explore and play out the adventures of our lives. 
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