I got from Middle School through a doctoral program without having to read "Don Quixote," a centuries old Spanish hero's journey novel about a guy who was somehow guilty of windmill fighting.

So I don't know what it's "supposed" to mean but for me the meaning of fighting windmills is constantly evolving. I wonder about how much time we spend engaged with an issue because it's waving its arms in front of us? In my own and my   executive coaching clients' lives, seems like a lot.

Moving arms are important to address. But the paths around them, and the promised land beyond them, sometimes mean that the arms spinning in front of us are addressed best by not creating an epic drama out of them. That requires being both present to waving arms by hearing what they are and are not saying, and also by being present to the evolutionary impulse that says there's freedom to explore the whole world by taking just a few steps to the left or the right of what stops us.

Leaders negotiate windmills best when they understand that

Thriving and keeping the concept of growth as our primary economic goal are mutually exclusive because nothing ever, anywhere only grew bigger. (Except the universe itself, which has been expanding since the Big Bang but that's a topic for another post.)

The nature of nature is back and forth, movement and rest, heights and depths. To continue subscribing to the myth that economics is the only human invention that is not subject to the ebb and flow of natural law is not only ignorant, it's deadly.

In his article, Silicon Valley Says Step Away From the Device, Matt Richtel says

"The concern, voiced in conferences and in recent interviews with many top executives of technology companies, is that the lure of constant stimulation — the pervasive demand of pings, rings and updates — is creating a profound physical craving that can hurt productivity and personal interactions..."

Richtel goes on about the responsibility of leadership when their medium of exchange is so extraordinarily powerful:

"At the Wisdom 2.0 conference in February, founders from Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Zynga and PayPal, and executives and managers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco and others listened to or participated in conversations with experts in yoga and mindfulness. In at least one session, they debated whether technology firms had a responsibility to consider their collective power to lure consumers to games or activities that waste time or distract them."

Makes me wonder - what are my responsibilities - as a business coach, as a speaker, as a mother and a member of civil society - for making sure that a powerful reource like computing doesn't compromise anyone's quality of life?

I was invited to participate in a Round Table on innovation and transformation within the United Nations. It was part of the Social Innovation Summit, a joint venture between JP Morgan and the United Nations and sponsored by ING, Microsoft, Xerox, Cisco, Intel, Merck, American Express and others. Have also begun working on a UN General Assembly unanimous vote to create a New Economic Paradigm.

1 Lesson Learned: For a long time it's seemed like getting by meant making uncomfortable compromises. For most people in the world, it still does but there is now a critical mass who value values; and whole nations, powerful institutions and brilliant individuals are working on economic models based on wellbeing.

It's more critical than ever to consider greatest good in your strategizing and decision-making. It's a powerful time to amplify your values. Media has more impact on our culture than anything else. At this moment in history, it's especially critical that we insist that media tell stories of the best expression of our values. It's more important than ever to develop and trust our inner wisdom.

Because of the magnitude of economic transitions happening worldwide, perspectives in the media matter more than ever. Since the airwaves are highly dominated by old paradigm conglomerates who have set new benchmarks on the scale of failure, our national storytellers haven't caught up with what's emerging.

We need new stories - stories that help us face the "urgency of now" by demonstrating courage, vision and co-creativity at this historic frontier of an Earth networked for consciously evolving.

Paul Spiegelman wrote a great article for Inc. Magazine called "10 Elements of a Great Company Culture." He starts out saying he used to be cynical about core values and about the need to pay attention to culture. But he realized 10 years ago that values and the culture they create are fundamental to the success of his company, Beryl. The 10 elements he thinks are essential he calls the "10 Cs of Culture."

Core Values, Camaraderie, Celebrations, Community, Communication, Caring, Commitment to Learning, Consistency, Connect, Chronicles

Read more about how he uses parties, newsletters, town meetings, employee's kids t-shirt design contests, and an online "Ask Paul" column for employees to connect with him. He also encourages any and all talking between employees and a care-based approach. While many old paradigm leaders are still trying to squelch fun, chat, and genuine concern for individuals, leaders like Spiegelman are laughing all the way to the bank while other businesses are faultering under the weight of unconsciously dense cultures.

Like Zappos and many other break out successes, their leaders built what might be considered downright zany cultures on intuition. The data is in now - they work. Contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to talk about how to make your culture more fertile for profits, stakeholder loyalty, innovation and more.

Professional Coaching

Wheatley talks about fields:

"I can’t touch it but I know what it is.  What we’re doing is creating a field
through making things truly personal.  At the heart, we’re
encouraging personal meaning.  We’re reframing safety from
something that people need to the idea that being vulnerable is
something that people need.  This is where growth happens.  One
of my favourite quotes, I’m not sure who it’s attributed to, is ‘To
make meaning is human.  To choose the meaning we make is to be
leaders."

It's been a rough month with a Verizon phone switchover. After hours of working with company reps and finally with a higher up who had the power to make a change, all was supposed to resolve in the wee hours this AM.

When I couldn't receive the call from USA Today columnist, Steve Strauss, for our interview for his Small Business Success Secrets podcast show, I found out that my phone situation is worse than ever - completely down!

That's entropy for Verizon and for me - and for Steve - lots of resources draining down a hole that just isn't that deep. My phones aren't complicated.

As a small phone and internet based business, FIOS technology matters but it's already cost me more than I'll save with in my new 2 year contract. Athough they can't get me up, if I go to another company, there's no way around automatically paying the penalty for cancelling my new contract plus I'd lose FIOS. No warm fuzzies in the customer loyalty department.

As a business consultant, I question how this all scales up to Verizon-sized issues. Despite having a relatively minor issue that fell between automation and organizational cracks, I've cost them a bundle in support hours.

I met one excellent top level manager who's working hard for me, and one-for-the-books awful service rep, and a whole lot in between over the last month. What they have in common triggers my consulting and coaching instincts: I smell a culture problem.

There's a lack of cohesion, lack of accountability for resolution,  no leadership empowered enough to rectify the hole in the system that my pretty simple account fell through, and a long process to even get through the frontline automated and live operators to access that disempowered leadership.

They sure can't be breaking any stakeholder loyalty records internally or externally because it's no fun to work in that kind of muck  and since culture is one of the best indicators of sustained success, I wouldn't invest in the stock.

Whether you're a business owner or top level executive, if you consciously develop the culture around you, you'll fortify your organization against this kind of nonsensical entropy. Consciously building your culture will yield a synergistic organization that continually meets criteria for excellence and that ongoingly evolves that criteria through dedication and innovation.

Coaching exercise:

• Identify a specific problem at the front line of your business or service
• Connect the dots between that and the top. The best way to do that is to figure out what values are operative on both ends. ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
• Identify the values matches and mismatches and you'll be getting at the core of the problem so that not only will the front line symptom resolve, you'll do systemic development in the process because values development is cultural development.

Some new friends started calling me "Indiana Joni" after I shared about how I'd been in the Amazon with a tribe who recently stopped head hunting/shrinking, with a group of village chiefs in the remote African bush, at universities, Asian temples and monasteries, Seminary, and with countless thought leaders, and many leaders in their fields. They connected the dots between my travels and my insatiable curiosity about what it takes for everyone to do good and do well.

Traveling a path of many paths, and developing a consulting practice in values-driven leadership and cultural development, has taught me there are undeniably universal values and principles that support humanity's best interests. I'm 100% convinced that pretty much everybody wants to live and work by those values.

What's lacking is the infrastructure to do that because today's norms reflect a dangerously sick culture that does not value values adequately. Too many leaders and systems are still operating from the broken platform of a crumbling profit-at-any-cost paradigm. Although values-void concepts of success  have set new benchmarks on the universal scale of failure, many leaders have yet to incorporate the real deal: values-driven leadership increases profits, share prices, innovation, stakeholder loyalty, teamwork and more.

I've learned a lot from working with top leaders and from exploring the world: Want to do well and good? Start with curiosity. Buddhists have a concept called "beginner's mind." They teach that "expertise" has a front and a back, a yin and a yang.

We're emerging from a power-over into a power-with paradigm of leadership. But even thought leaders are fish in the water of their own culture and so have blind spots about how they perpetuate old paradigm policies and behaviors.

An old paradigm behavior was to run over anyone who might "get in the way" of personal gain. That wasn't our oldest paradigm behavior. Measuring from the Big Bang, the dysfunction, death and greed that we have accepted as leadership occurs as a nanosecond - an isolated fall into a dangerous operative mythology about the human condition.

New paradigm leaders understand that it's better to rev people up than rev them over. They are trail blazers who ride the edge of creativity with much less certainty but far more stability than the dying breed who still doesn't get that the Golden Rule rules.

Execuspeak just posted the 10 words receiving the top hits and/or Likes on their website. I thought 1 & 6 were especially interesting:

1. Socialize     To gain acceptance for an idea or initiative by communicating with all of the individuals or organizations involved.    Usage: Let’s socialize this plan with the team before bringing it up in the meeting.

6. Political Capital     A form of goodwill. A combination of good relationships, a good reputation, and a track record of doing good deeds for others.    
                                                                         Execuspeak Dictionary

It takes political capital to socialize an idea - the better relationships are, the easier it is to communicate with individuals and organizations.

Our task is to reframe political capital in terms of a greatest good rather than merely a capitalistic agenda.

Here's an article I think is important in that our definition of success is changing. It's becoming less material - which was necessary if we want to have a planet to be successful on. Old paradigm ideas about success equaling consumption are still prevalent in part because we are still all "fish in water" and don't really see some of the social mores we've bought into.

Still, it's undeniable that consciousness about what does and doesn't constitute success is shifting. I think Madrigal has some important insight:

The Beginning of the End for Suburban America
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/The-Beginning-End-Suburban-atlantic-1156625650.html?x=0
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   (Alexis Madrigal), On Wednesday September 14, 2011

From Richard Barrett's book, Building a Values-Driven Organization, www.valuescentre.com

Fact 1: Leadership development drives employee fulfillment

Fact 2: Employee fulfillment drives customer satisfaction

Fact 3: Customer satisfaction drives shareholder value.