As Culture Eats Strategy, Action Eats Fear!

So we are most all familiar with the famous Peter Drucker quote "Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”. He posits that much good strategy is thwarted by organizational cultures which fights and kills strategies they are uncomfortable with. We know it takes great skill and persistence to shepard innovative strategies through the organization's cultural gauntlets. 

Lately I have been experimenting with a variation on this theme, "Action Eats Fear for (you insert the meal)". :-) In this context, action is the proxy of strategy and fear, of culture.  

Being on sabbatical, I have more time than usual to be plagued and paralyzed by fearful feelings and thoughts. I have found though that when tempted to bog down in this paralysis, “skillful" action is a reliable antidote. As with myself, so with organizations where we often see that in the face of uncertainty, organizations succumb to a "sickness of fear”, a topic my good colleague Bill Drummy recently called to our attention in a TEDMED recap blog post. 

In situations where we are experiencing a sickness of fear, we are not so much at fault for being inactive as for being unskillful in the actions we take. This is a conundrum as skillful action is often the child of unskillful action that we learn from. This pondered, a good addition to my original premise is that while Action may eat Fear in the short term, Educated Action breeds Success over the longer term. :-D

David Allen’s (of Getting Things Done fame) Next Action is a good practice to execute this Action Eats Fear strategy. Forgetting about the fear of what could go wrong and what resource is lacking, I find that taking the Next Action is like a lit candle which pushes back the darkness of fear. In each Next Action, one more step toward a goal is accomplished, and hopefully learned from. 

I am also finding that sometimes the best Next Action is one of (relative) non-action, taking a nap, sitting in meditation, going for a walk or writing an encouraging note to a colleague who inadvertently crossed my mind. This non-acting action often unblocks the flow of creativity and courage that fear blocks. 

So as Culture Eats Strategy, let’s also remember that Action Eats Fear and be skillful in how we confront to get the change we are working on in the world, however we define it.

Bon appétit! 

Everyone A Pawn on Someones’ Chess Board

As I continue to enjoy my evolving “big picture, middle age mind”, or so I have read, I relish the analogy of life’s relationships as all occurring on myriad overlapping chessboards. I further note that on every chessboard, both mine and those of all I am in relations with, I am a piece, sometimes queen, a few times king, most times pawn, and when in the zone, knight. :-) This consideration has caused me to meditate more and more on the reality that I, and so we all, am a pawn on every someones’ chessboard that I engage with. Everyone has an agenda for me. I play a role of getting everyone who values me something they want else they do not value me, else they probably do not perceive themselves as even being relationship with me, despite the fact that I might perceive otherwise based on my own chessboards.

Acceptance of this reality helps me to better tolerate being manipulated and used, sometimes even betrayed, by others. With this understanding, I am able to take all this less personally knowing that this is the nature of things. I can even have compassion on the idea that everyone is mostly just moving me around, sacrificing me, advancing me, promoting/demoting me, etc., in order to win some particular chess game they are playing against someone else, or maybe even themselves, or worst yet, me. Additionally, I work to understand what piece I am, queen, knight or pawn, and with this understanding to be the best piece I can be, as I understand I should, in order to help people win their (legitimate) chess games.

This is most challenging when you find yourself simultaneously a black and white piece on a board where 2 people are playing against one another and you want both of them to win. These paradoxical situation definitely require thinking beyond a zero-sum paradigm.

So remember, we are all pawns on someone’s chess board and may we have the grace, wisdom and guilelessness to be the best pawn possible in on every board we are being played in order to manifest the Great Commandment of “love” in the world.

Some good reads that compliments this one I wrote awhile ago are at http://www.delicious.com/cadelarge/wiseworking_games

Happy checkmating to you!

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