Public Library
Up one levelDeeply Real
Colin writes about the journey to becoming real. With so much noise going on inside of us, so much confusion and disorder, can we become quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine in us?
Baking & Cooking
Colin assimilates the metaphor of cooking and baking to describe what it is that is taught at Learning to Lead - baking is a science, while cooking is an art. At Learning to Lead we don't teach baking, we teach cooking, and the ingredients we use are humans.
Carpe Diem
“Carpe Diem” – seize the day – was the inspirational challenge of that wonderful film “Dead Poet’s Society”. The sentence continues ….. “seize the day and do not at the time of your death find that you have not lived at all”. So many people and organisations with good lives and ample resources aren’t fully alive....
Behaviour Change
Everybody seems, in one way or another, to be wanting to change behaviour – their own or someone else’s!. But for all our efforts and all the power at our disposal, we aren’t doing too well. A recent study in the United States revealed that over one third of the entire population are clinically depressed, and are probably only just surviving because of the drugs they take!
Customer Energy/Rage
Colin discusses customer energy which is the net available energy after the customer has been through the experience of a product or a service. It can be positive, but all too often it can be negative.
Customer Energy
We all have “customers” – people to whom we sell things. It used to be goods and services but, since we appear to be entering what is called an experience economy, more and more it is “experiences” that we are selling. What we call “customer energy” is what happens to one’s energy as a customer as a result of the experience. Does our energy spiral up when we recall the experience? Or does it spiral down in disappointment, anger or unhappiness?
Energy Formula
e = it² is about relationships, where e = positive human energy. i (information) and t (trust) are the critical ingredients of a high- energy relationship. Starve a relationship of information and it starts to die. If there is little or no trust the information has no value. It is undernourished. Information is the oxygen of all relationships.
Energy in a business
Colin discusses Personal, Leadership and Organisational Energy. The key to customer energy isn’t good marketing or good advertising, or word of mouth or the new sophisticated CRM – we are quite sure that it is “organisational energy”. It’s what customers feel – and it comes from everyone in the organisation in contact with customers or thinking for the customer behind the scenes. What drives “organisational energy”? “Leadership energy” - the combined energy of all in the organisation who take on leadership roles, however briefly.
Energy and Effectiveness
Energy plays a critical role in effectiveness – high energy individuals and high energy teams perform at levels way above those with low energy. Research done by the Gallup Organisation found that in any population – i.e. in a church, a school, a community, a local council, a State department and in corporates of any size – over 75% of all those in it are “disengaged”. Learning To Lead specialises in measuring levels of energy in individuals and organisations using a practical but powerful tool in a high energy participative team exercise.....
Execution Excellence
Managers are on a treadmill – a daily grind towards execution excellence. Driven by competition, internal and external. Yet the awful truth is that the organisations they are managing are standing still or even going backwards. Ernst & Young's research found that 66% of strategic decisions taken don’t get implemented. A study in the United States amongst senior and top management showed that 69% didn’t know what their company’s vision, mission or objectives were ….. and didn’t care! Why? Why? Why? Because we have lost our balance – personal and organisational. We have forgotten that willing human energy gets things done far quicker, far better and far cheaper than power and punishment. We can arrange to help you measure your organisation’s execution effectiveness. Even more exciting will be the energy journey when you see the prospect of a high energy team of high energy individuals on a sustainable basis – including yourself!
Flat Battery
Colin makes a metaphor between the flat battery of a car and that of a human. The human "flat battery" also made him think about human relationships, teams and human organisations. Wonderfully designed systems of extraordinary human potential – but hardly capable of getting out of bed in the morning when the battery is flat. What makes it worse is that humans, unlike cars, can deliberately run one another’s batteries flat. Negative energy shorts, sparks, fuses and burns out - and positive energy people get tired of always having to jump-start others. On our programs we share ideas about sustainable positive human energy at all levels – personal, leadership and organisational.
Every business is a market place
Colin discusses the vibrancy he discovered within the village markets - in every business every individual is running his or her own “stall” buying or selling or both. Trying desperately to sell more than they spend and attract their customers to buy more – and tell their colleagues of their goods and services. Corporate markets have very little of the charm of village markets. Colin looks back on a long corporate career and wonders what a happy experience it would have been to create a true market place of unique skills and talents, akin to that of a stall holder in a village market.
Energy Flow
Colin uses the metaphor of "Hydraulic Engineering" in the understanding of flow patterns. What happens when you disturb or distort natural flow patterns? And, even more important, what is possible when you don’t? Understanding flow patterns would make it easy to understand that power does not flow or speed things up. Power dams and clogs things up. Power causes resistance, hurt, resentfulness and anger. Using free energy flows to enhance more energy flows on a sustainable basis – that’s the challenge. That is synergy.
Information or Misinformation
Margaret Wheatley’s asserts in her book "Leadership and the New Science", that “relationships are all there is”. Nothing exists as matter – everything is a set of relationships. She explains that what sustains and enhances relationships is information. Trust enhances information, while distrust destroys information. Misinformation poisons relationships. On our Leadership Programs we work hard at creating that essential awareness.
Customer Loyalty
Horacio Falcão of INSEAD observes, “Once customer loyalty is lost, it can be very difficult to retrieve, leading to serious financial repercussions". The article goes on to talk about how to keep customers “cool”. But for us the challenge is to keep customers “warm” – and in our language that is all about positive energy. We are fascinated by human energy. We create awareness, we measure it, and we teach how to sustain it – at a personal and an organisational level.
Leaders and Leadership
Oscar Wilde seems to have been right when he said, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all”. Leaders are people who live, who “experience” life, who have learnt how to create “kairos” moments when the minute becomes a moment and which lasts joyfully in their memories for aeons. They know that it is easy to count the number of seeds in an apple but are challenged, at the same time, to reflect upon the number of apples there could be in every seed. For them the world is a vast network of interconnectivity, not a dog eat dog world of independence and constant competition, and they don’t often find it necessary to use power over others. Though they have authority they seldom need to use it coercively. It is the leadership we teach and we teach it in the context of Africa.
Synergy
Nature, left to its own devices by humans, is the most remarkable self-regulating system. What is amazing is how carefully and judiciously nature uses power and how exquisitely it maintains the balance of power between those that are scarce and more powerful, and those that are abundant but occupy a lower rank in the power hierarchy. Therein lies a lesson for humans and especially for those who occupy positions at the top of human hierarchies – governments, corporations, schools and even families. But the really exciting lessons that nature teaches are about maximising energy - finding synergy, exponential energy – enhancing the life experience for all who are part of the system.
Life's a chess game
Colin writes that LIFE is akin to at least a three dimensional chess game in complexity. How exciting! What a challenge! So how do we play, productively, safely and joyfully? How do we survive? How do we cope? How do we prosper?..........
Marketing in Africa
Colin talks about networking in the business world and how everyone is connected to everyone else. Information is the food source of networks – starve the information flow and you starve the network. The network is relationships. Network marketing is about using these relationships effectively and charging them with positive energy so that more and more people know who you are and what you sell best. And the investment you have to make is in relationships. Networking is an art – a particularly real vibrantly alive art form, special to Africa.
Measurement of Human Energy
Confidently measuring human energy seems to be elusive. We all know it when we experience it – we know how our energy affects us and we know how the energy of others affects us too. We may not be as “energy aware” as children are, but when we stop and think we can almost see energy around us – negative and positive. High-energy people create high performance teams – people with negative energy undermine them. True leaders instinctively create high-energy teams with high-energy outcomes. LTL have developed and tested a simple set of tools to measure human energy – at the personal level, in relationships, and at leadership and organisational levels.
Energy?
Managers daily face a linear relentless journey to Effectiveness. But often the flip side of this challenge - "the Energy to get things done", is forgotten about. Without energy, with batteries that are flat, getting anything done becomes difficult, sometimes impossible. Leaders understand that balance between effectiveness and energy is crucial …. on a sustainable basis. They can create the conditions in which high energy effective teams of high energy effective individuals constantly outperform low energy teams and low energy individuals. Managers simply cannot. Low personal energy, low or negative energy in an organisation, is as infectious as a virus. It doesn’t take too long to infect the customers and low negative energy customers are a nightmare. We have developed a simple but reliable tool to measure energy at the personal level, amongst the leadership, and at the organisational level. It’s an Energy Survey (eQ) and it provides a “photograph” of the levels of energy and how it is flowing (or not flowing!), and whether it is negative or healthy.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The decision to acquire or merge is usually driven by the assumption that the whole is always bigger than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately, as logical as it seems, it doesn’t always work out that way. Research has shown that nearly 80% of mergers and acquisitions fail to meet the expectations that were used to justify them. And almost three out of five marriages end in divorce. To say nothing of those that fail but aren’t brought to a legal end. Why? - Well we think it is because we use the wrong criteria in making the decision. We use money and power – instead of extra free willing human energy. Neither power nor money has sustainable impact upon happiness – the happiness of individuals, partnerships, relationships or organisations. Only high-energy people are really happy and only high-energy partnerships and teams too. That’s when synergy abounds and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That’s what we define as leadership. That’s what we enjoy most and teach best.
Personal Energy
When we think of energy, we can think of people who subtract – who take energy away from us. Other people add and our energy lifts. The very worst are those who divide. They seem to be deliberately destructive. They make trouble, they set one against another, they stretch relationships to breaking point. And then there are the multipliers – those wonderful people who come into our lives and spiral up the energy – infinitely. Somehow they seem to know how to generate huge amounts of positive human energy which they share abundantly. The difference between living fully and existing is personal energy. We believe that we can enable people to become aware of, measure and maintain their own personal energy – their qi. We can do the same for teams and organizations.
Playing Dare
The human race plays dare with its own survival! Why? We constantly rob the systems, of which we are part, of their essential and amazing energy. We distort, disturb and destroy the natural flow of energy. We pollute, waste, plunder and steal energy from one another and from the natural and human systems of which we are a privileged part. And then we constantly replace energy, natural healthy energy, with power. Power over one another, power in hierarchies, government power, corporate power, the power of the despot, the autocrat and the bully. Why? But joyfully we see signs all over our planet of wonderful hope - humans as individuals, in groups and in communities who choose to buck the trend and who foster energy, free its flow and spiral it up. By our definition these people are true leaders who have found the crucial balance between effectiveness and energy and who create the conditions in which high energy effective teams of high energy effective individuals do their miracle work on a sustainable basis. Teaching this kind of leadership is what we do best.
Politics and Power in the workplace
“Life at the top can be bloody and unforgiving” – from an article entitled “The long journey to the top” published in World Business Nov/Dec 2006. “Many managers find the transition into leadership one of the most emotionally fraught stages in their lives and one of the toughest challenges faced is navigating organisational politics”. Max Landsberg, a former McKinsey partner turned author and leadership coach, claims that 50% of new leaders don’t survive in their new roles for more than two years. It’s no wonder that such a high percentage of employees opt out of the promotion race. They simply “disengage” – i.e. come to work but leave their energy at home. And research by the Gallup Organisation shows that the percentage of disengaged could be as high as 75% … or higher. We think we know how to change it. It’s what we do best
Power the enemy of Energy
Wherever we look we see the use of power – wherever we are we feel it …. subtle, overt, cruel, unthinking, disguised as blandishment, raw and ruthless. The power of the powerful over the powerless. We feel it all the time – we use it all the time too. I have the responsibility, I have the authority, and I have the power. Overtly, blatantly or subtly, quietly or stridently I use it because I feel I have to. We need it, we have it, we use it – and, sadly, often we abuse it. It was Lord Acton who observed that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Managers understand how to use authority and power. Leaders, however, understand how to balance the power and authority necessary to get things done with the profound empathy for, and understanding of, human energy. Their followers follow with enthusiastic, growing and sustainable energy – not because they are frightened or will get hurt if they don’t. It’s this leadership capacity that we teach best.
RUACH – in Hebrew meaning ‘wind’ or ‘spirit’
I have been told of a lovely Hebrew word ‘ruach’ which, translated, talked to me of the power of the human spirit, of wind, of sailing and of soaring. It talked to me of human potential, of positive willing human energy with all its possibilities. Learn how to harness it and humans can really fly. When we use the free lift that air gives us when we fly, we can travel to the other end of the world … and back. Our possibilities are unlimited, endless, infinite …. When the fuel is power – the power one has over another, our horizons are near and the costs are high. If this somewhat lyrical proposition is true and we believe implicitly that it can be proven, then what is the leadership role of a Board?
"Short Looping" - a quick strategic response
I was enjoying a cup of tea and a stimulating discussion with a leading neurosurgeon and his wife when, to my amazement, he tossed a teaspoon towards her face. She caught it deftly – apparently he often does it to make his profound point, and fortunately she is wide awake and accustomed to his unusual display. “That’s called short looping”, he explained. “At that precise second my wife’s brain is processing three trillion (yes three trillion!) bits of process information from every cell in her body. I was fascinated to know how the system works and works so instantly, and what we could learn about human organisations on a larger scale. “How does it all happen?” I asked.....
Sir Isaac Newton
On my “Big Yes” list would be to have an opportunity to talk to Sir Isaac Newton! I would really like to be able to understand how he came to the conclusion that to understand humans and human organisations one needs to understand how a clock works! It just doesn’t make any sense to me and yet for over 300 years Newton’s mechanistic theories have dominated Western thinking about humans and human organisations. But Sir Isaac is hard to argue with about gravity and his Third Law of Motion, which states that every force generates an equal and opposite force. So sooner or later countries will turn against invaders, power hierarchies will fail as power corrupts, and one day those who were powerless become powerful. Huge quantities of energy – life’s most precious human resource – get wasted on concern, command, control, competition, ego and anger. We measure human energy, available and wasted, in organisations - and we teach how to maximise human energy as an alternative to power to get amazing things done.
Strategic Planning
Over the years we have participated in many strategic planning sessions – at the office, at home and at exotic conference centres. The purpose of these “strat sessions”, “team builds” and “off sites” is to determine vision, mission, values, goals and objectives. They are used to define where we are going and how we are going to get there. But only a handful of these expensive experiences come to mind, evoke good memories or make any real difference. In a recent research project Ernst & Young discovered that 66% of all strategic decisions never get implemented. Why? Why is the impact not sustainable?.....
South Africa in 2007 and beyond
Optimism enhances energy, pessimism can wipe it out – and energy is the key to living fully, which is surely the challenge for each one of us. As South Africans we have had our fair share of both optimism and pessimism and if you read the newspapers and listen to dinner table talk there is currently much to be negative about. Colin quotes excerpts from Sir Anthony O’Reilly's (Chief Executive of Independent News & Media) recent article “Why I have faith in South Africa’s long-term prosperity”. The government is all too aware of its problems. Of course, there are huge concerns – crime, poverty, joblessness, HIV/Aids – and a whole lot more besides. But where in the world are there so many opportunities to make a difference? And making a difference, however small it may be, seems to be a critical source of sustainable personal energy.
Team Builds
So much has been said and written – and tried – to achieve an effective team. And then to sustain effective team behaviour. What drives team effectiveness? Power, sheer coercive power, doesn’t. An expensive adventure away from the office is more subtle and more fun for the leaders – but no more effective. Expensive hype doesn’t drive team effectiveness for long either. Team effectiveness is driven, achieved and sustained by willing positive human energy. The combined energy of all the members. The net positive willing energy after the deduction of the negative energy of some - for not every member of the team brings positive willing energy. Team effectiveness requires a deep understanding and respect for positive willing human energy – at the level of the individual, in relationships and in teams. That is what we teach – it is sustainable, fascinating and fun!
The Four Steps to Living Fully
Observing our own lives and watching others, and then seeking wisdom, has helped us see that there are four clear steps to living fully. Step one is personal effectiveness. Step two is what we call personal mastery or personal leadership. Step three is team effectiveness. Step four is what we call team mastery or team leadership. We have observed that the key learning to take Step 2 and Step 4 is the critical component of positive human energy … on a sustainable basis! Until one understands and masters sustainable personal and team energy, one cannot take these exciting steps. We also observe that those who have mastered both energy and effectiveness are capable of quantum achievements......
The Network
One of the hardest lessons I have learnt in a long business experience, is to trust the network. I understand it intellectually and New Science has convincing arguments to show that everyone and everything is connected. I watch carefully in Nature. I listen to the wisdom of our African heritage – ubuntu. I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point” and he shows me how the network works. It all makes exquisite sense to me, but how do I get it to work for me?
The Task…..The Challenge
On the 27th of April 1994 Nelson Mandela led an appallingly divided people out of a country of stunted potential called “Apartheid South Africa” into a united country of seemingly infinite possibility called the “New South Africa. Ten years later the “miracle” that is the “New South Africa” is celebrating its first decade of democracy. The circumstances of the daily lives of all South Africans have been transformed by new legislation, innovative educational theory and the shared sense of human possibility called ubuntu. Yet the face of our nation continues to be scarred by the deprivation of opportunities, skills and resources created by the policies of apartheid. Ten years after democracy, South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world.
There Are Two Educations
“There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live”. If it is true that somewhat more than 80% of all humans are only existing – not because of poverty or illness or joblessness but because they don’t know how to live fully - …….. then it seems that we aren’t doing at all well with the second education. We aren’t teaching people to live.
What About Energy?
From when we are very young getting things done has been the daily challenge. A daily relentless challenge we all face with limited resources of money, time, ideas and help. We have to get things done right. But it gets worse. We have to get right things done right – morally right, the right priorities … and so on. And then we have to get right things done right together, so we have to master social skills, emotional intelligence, trust, communication and tolerance. Then we find ourselves working in teams and that changes the dynamics of the daily challenge. It now becomes the management challenge! But in all of this we seem so often to forget the key input – the flipside of the challenge. It’s energy – the energy to get things done. Without energy, with batteries that are flat, getting anything done becomes difficult, sometimes impossible. We have developed a simple but reliable tool to measure energy at the personal level, amongst the leadership, and at the organisational level. It’s an Energy Survey and it provides a “photograph” of the levels of energy and how it is flowing (or not flowing!), and whether it is negative or healthy.
What can South Africa teach about Leadership?
It depends on how you define “leadership”. There seems to be some consensus around the idea that leadership is about getting things done, either by getting others to do them or by doing them oneself - personal leadership, if you like. South Africa once led the world in using power to get things done. The thing to get done was called apartheid. The method used was blatant power – coercive power – wielded by a small minority over a large majority. Apartheid ultimately failed, and what is amazing is that its successors chose not to seek retribution and revenge – they didn’t seize the levers of authority and power. They approached the challenge of getting different, and by now urgent, things done by encouraging all South Africans to unite in the doing of these things – willingly. Leaders, in our definition, maximise willing positive human energy – their own first and then that of others, using power - authority over others - judiciously, sparingly and effectively. This maturity of approach seems to us to offer the greatest potential to humans as individuals in relationships, in teams and in organisations of any kind to reach and live close to their full potential. High sustainable energy is what we teach, and teach best. It is surely what South Africa’s recent history teaches too.
What is African Leadership?
What does African Leadership mean? Does it mean a natural, homegrown approach to leadership that is unique, peculiar or endemic to Africa? If that is what it means, I haven’t come across it, though I have diligently searched for it over the past 15 years. If, however, “African Leadership” means an approach to leading, a leadership style, a competence and quality that is most likely to work in Africa and results in enthusiastic - even passionate – followership, then that is much easier to define and teach. The starting point on that journey is to understand Africa; its history, its culture, its beliefs, its diversity and how it is developing. That understanding provides clear pictures, or paradigms, which seem to determine followership behaviour in Africa.
The Lesson of Yeast
Colin uses the metaphor of two dough mixtures, one without yeast vs one with yeast, to describe the key ingredient to every relationship that is important. The yeastless dough lot, when baked, stayed absolutely unchanged – it was the same weight, size and shape as it had been. The yeasted dough however, had to be divided because it had grown so healthily and filled two baking pans producing two light appetising loaves. The lesson to be learnt is that without a carefully grown and nurtured investment in energy, the most competent humans and human organisations are dull heavy and almost indigestible...
Strategies of the Serengeti
“In the 1980s we went in search of ‘excellence’. Today, many of the companies heralded as excellent have floundered or died....
Galvanizing Gucci
Robert Polet, the CEO of Gucci, is a business leader who consciously, or not, understands how to enable energy to flow in his organisation.
How to really enjoy your 70th birthday - if you get there!
To celebrate my 70th birthday, I had a "birthday party" EVERY day of the year and it has been amazing!
Small boys and memories
In a world in which everything seems to be changing, some valuable things aren’t.
Sensible Effective Cost Cutting, or Corporate Bulimia?
Once upon-a-time General Motors owned half the automobile market in the United States and was the world’s biggest and most admired company. Today it has only 20% of the market and is pleading in Washington with its begging bowl.
No way the hundred is there
Poem by Loris Malaguzzi – founder of the Reggio Schools. Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) founded the 'Reggio Emilia' approach at a city in northern Italy called Reggio Emilia. The 'Reggio' approach requires children to be seen as competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, inventive and possess a desire to interact and communicate with others. The 'Reggio' vision of the child as a competent learner has produced a strong child-directed curriculum model. Reggio approach has a strong belief that children learn through interaction with others, including parents, staff and peers in a friendly learning environment.
“We have been taught to live in fear”
Profound words from Neale Donald Walsch's best-seller “Conversations with God (Book 1)” which we have used on our Programs to explain why human behaviours are so negative and so damaging to other humans and to our planet.
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