Banks back to bankers

Money is our defense against poverty and threat of poverty. Money is the gate to prosperity, luxury and power. Earning, administering and spending money are matters of grave concern for most people. Where appetite for money and appetite for risk-taking combine, we get speculation. Human nature being what it is, we should accept that. Speculators are there, they will stay and they fulfill a function. Like predators in the food chain. Now they act like they own the place. Casino capitalism is the financial system being hijacked (again) by the speculators. Speculators are very clever. And very dumb at the same time. They hunt in flocks, they copy-cat and they live by the day. There is one group of people more money-wise than the speculators: their traders. They get ample bonuses when they gain, they pay nothing when they lose.
There is a simple solution to the public indignation of bonuses and a large part of the volatility of the financial markets: pay bonuses of any size, but pay them in company stock, not in stock options, and pay them in stock that can only be sold after five years, even when people have left the company before. Bank people should become co-owners. Even if bank managers and bank staff owe only a few percent of the stock, all shareholders will know it is in their interest to have good dividends and stock appreciation on the long run. Employee-ownership should go by a foundation managing the stock and giving certificates to the employees. Employees who need cash, can always borrow with the stock as a collateral, but the durability of the stock-ownership will make for a conservative appreciation.
We can trust bankers when they play with their own money, with slow money. Today, the traders and many bankers earn better than the investors and speculators they serve, and certainly much better than the shareholders they are supposed to serve.
When bankers depend on the longer-term value of their stock, we don't need to establish minimum capital requirements. Their own interest will take care of that.
Now regular stock-owning is less attractive tax-wise. So the 'best' people may leave. Let them. They probably go to your competitor. So the knife cuts both ways.

Of course, separation between retail banking and commercial banking is a good thing. And the compulsive overspending of governments has to be bridled. European countries shed crocodile tears about their national sovereignty weakened by a new pact. When you can still decide how you earn your money and what you spend it on, but you are limited in your overspending, is your personal sovereignty affected? Not at all. Only money junkies could complain.

True performance

There are four kinds of performers:

1. With a task that is bigger than their ego.
2. With an ego that is bigger than the task.
3. With a big ego matching a big task.
4. With a small ego matching a small task.

Type 4 is simple: weak competence and weak performance, which is made palatable by modest behavior and modest pay.
Type 2 is common: whatever the position, the performance is to advertise the person, to advance in power, money and career prospects. What task? Think Berlusconi. A lot of vanities and an often long wait for the bonfire.
Type 1 is rather common: when people really try to do a good job. At the very top it is less common: think Harry Truman.
Type 3 is overall less common: when a strong personality is needed for a heavy job. Think Churchill, possibly Kennedy.

In organizations with are cursed with type-2 leaders, type-1 people are forced out. Type-4 people remain, with a whole bunch of type-2 crowding in the higher layers.

A blog is an acceptable place to simplify. So here it goes: Technical people tend to be type 1, administrative people tend to be type-4. Commercial people tend to be type-3. If they are type-2, they will usually fail after a time. But some make it to the top.
Financial and legal types are both in the large-ego and small-ego types. The small-ego types fill the many staff functions, the large ego-types make it to the top. As they usually have neither technical nor commercial competence, they engage in massive, impressive change projects that will show their real effect after they have gone over to their new positions: mergers, acquistions, selling off parts of the organization, reorganizations, efficiency drives. It's mean people that make lean organizations. Before you know it, the last people that have practical knowledge of products and clients are banished from the board room.

Whatever the size of your ego, try to make it bigger. As long as your mission in life is commensurate with your sense of self. To look for true challenges is not enough. Your challenge should be meaningful as well.  How many dragons have you slain sofar?
Now be careful before positioning yourself as a knight on a white horse. Many a knight has entered the cave, slain his dragon and married the princess, only to discover afterward that the princess was the real dragon and that the dragon did humankind a favor by keeping her behind lock.
Without common sense and practical wisdom any ego may be too big, any task may be too big. Go for rewarding and meaningful performance. And retain a sprinkle of dissatisfaction always. Nobody is perfect. (Famous last words.)

A changing perspective on change

Since I started being involved in organizational development, around 1970, I have learned that change is here to stay, that change goes ever faster, that change is the key to success, but that - alas! alas! - people have resistance to change. The hallmark of true leaders and true consultants is that they are able change agents. I since have become convinced that much of this gospel is bull.
Imagine two guys at a bar, talking about women. (Guys have been known to do that.) One of them tells the other what the problem is with women: they have resistance to seduction. What does this  slightly repugnant story teach us? That this guy is a failure when it comes to women - in more senses than one. For me, people talking about resistance to change also are downright failures, and also slightly repugnant.
Imagine people that have no resistance to change: tasteless and spineless twisters. If people lack resistance to change, by all means change them for people who have it.

Resistance to change is just as natural as feeling a need for change. Most people have both, even at the same time. The resistance to change that many managers, management consultants and even management writers complain about, is just resistance to ill-considered, arrogant views from outsiders. When you feel things have to change, meaning people have to change, there is no better platform to start from as becoming interested in things how they are, in what people are doing, how they feel about it, what they think about it, why things are as they are. You should understand that, you should appreciate that, even admire aspects of it. If things have gone downhill for a time, understand how and why that happened. The people it has been happening to are rarely the perpetrators, more often the victims. And if they are the perpetrators, they got there after having become victims. Of previous change czars, for example.

If you have a true understanding of what is happening, your suggestions become concrete and specific and can build on what people themselves have told you. Very often, you don't need to start with suggestions, but you can ask for suggestions. And if the situation has so deteriorated that no positive suggestions are forthcoming, you can at least communicate your understanding of what happened and why. The best way to start changing is to understand the present, and value the past.
One of the most moving moments I encountered in an organizational constellation about an ICT-firm with internal tensions between conservatives and progressives (changing the focus of the firm), was when the representatives of the future and of the past finally could look eye to eye and immediately fell in love with each other. The whole constellation and everyone in it, was transformed with a sudden glow.
So shift your attention when change seems to be indicated. Start with what should be retained. Appreciate that. As a PR-exercise that is fuitless. You need to understand and really appreciate the situation as it is. I you can't, if you won't, get the hell out of here.

The more women try to change their men, the more these men resist usually. Resistance to well-intentioned and well-argumented improvement. Same problem; same solution. No use in trying to make angels out of beasts if you hate beasts.

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT

Nothing is more easy - apart from situations in which it is difficult.
The first option is simply to want what you got already. The second option is to want what you are about to get. The third option is to want something you haven't got. The fourth option is always wanting what you haven't got. The fifth option is to want what you surely can't get.
The fourth option is a no, the fifth option is a no-no. The fourth option is for neurotic people, the fifth for obsessed people. Fortunately, those people don't read my blog.
Seriously now, before listing what you want and setting about to get it: Are you sure you realize what you have got already and what you are about to get? If the grass is greener at the other side of the hill, all your plans and actions will never lead to satisfaction, let alone happiness. It is a common scene in both tragedies and comedies that two people find out that they have been envious of one another.
So, make your Wanted list, but start with your Having list. Make your Wanted list as 'sexy' as possible, formulating your wants as attractive and as precise as possible. Than select. Find out which items would give you real satisfaction. Meaning they would give either real pleasure or would be really meaningful. Or both. This is your light list.
Now make a dark list: anything that spoils your pleasure or empties meaningfulness. You might have to work on this list before you can work on the light list. Sorry. But you can never get what you want, if sources of dissatisfaction will spoil whatever you reach, whatever you get.
Now you are ready for the real thing. And remember, whatever your goal, during the way toward your goal, your goal may change. Mary Parker Follett explained this already 80 years ago, talking about business goals:
What we possess always creates the possibilities of fresh satisfactions. The need comes as need only when the possible satisfaction of need is already there.  … The automobile does not satisfy wants only, it creates wants .  … The purpose in front will always mislead us. … When we carry out a policy, it begins to change. When we have to form specific regulations and provisions to see that that policy is carried out, often we find a  purpose developing that differs from that on which the policy was founded. Activity does more than embody purpose, it evolves purpose.
Activity does more than embody purpose, it evolves purpose. (For what purpose I am writing these blogs, anyway?)

Good Government

In a workshop on creative thinking participants were asked to assume that magic was really possible. What kind of magic would be the most desirable? In the end we concluded: good government.
Good government is managing a community, a province,  a state or a federation well. How to find out what good government is? By identifying what bad government is. Really bad government is unjust, cruel, arbitrary, corrupt. Unfortunately, even reasonably decent and reasonably intelligent people without ill-will can make a mess out of things. How?
Within the frame of a blog, we have to keep things simple. Looking around me, I see four things:

1. Policy not aligned to practical execution.
2. Execution not aligned to results.
3. Results not aligned to clients.
4. Results not evaluated or evaluations ignored or rejected.

Always the same measures are proposed: new laws and regulations, new budgets and either reorganizations or new institutions. Critical evaluation of proposals are routinely ignored. The results of measures are hardly evaluated, if ever. Managers are appointed that have no knowledge of, experienxe with or interest in the processes they are supposed to manage. If knowledgeable chiefs have mysteriously survived so far, they are eradicated and supplanted by 'professional' managers. Management is on numbers and PR-effects. Fortunately, both numbers and PR can be managed themselves.
If by any chance bad results can't be polished away, no one takes responsibility. Bringers of bad news are branded as suspicious, ill-informed outsiders. And if all else fails, the 'victims' are entitled to ample compensation for their stroke of bad luck and undeserved bad publicity. There is no correction, no learning, but excuses and accusations galore.
Policy-making is the preferred activity. Policy is vague and full of good intentions and positively looking for the future. It has more prestige, is better paid and much safer than practical execution. If 90% of policy-makers in the public domain would perish by a miraculous disease, and any policy function is only an episode in a career that is mainly in execution, the world would become an unrecognizably better place.
Strategy should be made by special meetings of practical managers and specialists, with one or two consultants (at most) and a few staffers who prepare those meetings - and know they may end up implementing their own recommendations.
Mancur Olson would know the recipe to get there: first a destructive totalitarian regime and than losing a great war bigtime. Are there other recipes? Not many. Almost all really successful periods of government were of societies just having been on the brink of disaster: Rome after Hannibal, the Netherlands after almost losing to the Spaniards, France right after the revolution. Wise, enlightened, forceful times without that are scarce. Maybe Prussia under Fredrick the Great qualifies and Britain, right after the Napoleonic wars. By the way, what is the first sign of good government? Fiscal prudence. No loans. No loans at all.

Seven career handicaps of women

To be a career woman is much less difficult than it used to be, but being a woman still brings  handicaps. In my listing, career women have seven handicaps to overcome, two that make entrance more difficult and five during their careers.

One: outright prejudice.

Prejudices against women working, against women having responsibility and against men reporting to women. These prejudices are stronger at lower management levels.

Two: lower expectations.

Expectancy of lower job stability: monthly dips in productivity and emotional stability, pregnancies and the pull of home life and domestic responsibilities.

Three: doubts because of alternatives.

Women, like men, have such choices as: become employee, free-lance or entrepreneur; be a business employee or government employee; invest in further schooling and training or not. Many women have, however, one basic choice extra: to work or to stay at home.

To go against expectations costs energy, to have to consider pros and cons costs energy.

After the decision to work, the option to stay at home, now or in the future (get married) stays, resulting in recurrent moments of doubts or choice. When working is less obvious, it costs more energy. This handicap has lessened considerably the last decades.

Four: belonging to a conspicuous minority.

What attitude to take to the male majority? Be grateful? Ignore? Apologize? Defend? Be extra assertive? And what attitude to take to the female minority? We are all sisters, so we should stick together? We are all sisters, so we compete? We have nothing in common apart from our gender, which is irrelevant here? To position yourself, also among other women who take other positions, costs extra attention and energy. This handicap is greatest in organizations that have yet few women; it is growing less, but it's still there.

Five: ambivalence of femininity.

Judgment on femininity is on-going. You are supposed to be feminine and non-feminine simultaneously. Being feminine is not quite OK, being masculine is not quite OK, to be halfway is not quite OK. This means on-going positioning in behavior, dress, decisiveness, etc. and so costs attention and energy.

Six: the ambivalence of attractiveness.

Unattractiveness is a burden, attractiveness is an ambivalent privilege. Should you try to enhance your attractiveness? Should you use your attractiveness? Or should you downplay your attractiveness?

Seven: political vulnerability.

Allusions are made to personal attractiveness and unattractiveness, to femininity and masculinity. In general, allusions and speculations are made about private life; personal relations, personal plans (marriage, children) and personal frustrations.

Coalition-behavior, both with men and with women, is easily suspicious. Special efforts are also easily suspicious. The continuous awareness and caution and positioning on the previous four items leaves less energy for defense.

These handicaps do not depend on any specific female characteristics. They would be precisely true for men in a female dominated society in which most married men would stay at home. Some handicaps would be true for men in a predominantly homosexual organization.

Running with a handicap is like swimming with your clothes on. Such swimmers become stronger. Therefore, average career women are more aware, more energetic, more capable than their average male counterparts.

Recommendations

1.  Have a plan. Unless you change that plan consciously and willingly, stick to it; don’t yield to pressures.

2. Have your attitudes well-defined about: your “sisters,” your femininity (and masculinity), your attractiveness, allusions, speculations and criticism that relate to your gender rather than to you; clear discrimination. Unless you change your attitudes consciously and willingly, stick to them, don’t yield to pressures.

3. Don’t position yourself in any way that makes it more difficult to be yourself. Watch your energy-level!

4. Keep business and private life separate.

And if you think this list is too extensive, I can provide a short list. One handicap: men. Sorry.

How to find a coach - if you really, really need one

In the Netherlands, everybody who is somebody nowadays has a coach. Even coaches seem to have them. When a government department was recruiting coaches for top civil servants, candidates needed to tell if they had a coach themselves. I didn't.
Most coaches are not coaches at all. Real coaches let you train till you drop and they decide in what role you are going to play  - if they let you play. The coaches we are talking about, can't do that at all. A personal coach is a combination of a personal teacher and a personal consultant. They may advise you what to do and preferably do that in a way you also learn how to do similar things in the future.
Advising and teaching in what? In my experience mainly with two things: politics and presentation. How to operate in internal and external force fields and how to sell yourself and your ideas. That is mainly useful in situations of strong competition, in conflicts and in crises. And in assuming new responsibilities and still finding your way. It is a kind of action learning outside the work situation.
Coaches have only one client per assignment. They work confidential, they are often invisible - if not for the accounting department. Their greatest advantage is that they can concentrate on one person, their greatest disadvantage is that they are, because of this, expensive.
Are they worth their money? Let's assume that a particular coach is a truly excellent teacher and a truly excellent counselor. He or she knows everything about how to be successful in organizations, in business, in adminsitration, in politics. Then the question is: why did that person become coach? As the old quip goes: Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach. Or they coach.
There may be good reasons for people to become coaches or consultants: having become older and wiser and less eager to do battle and join the fray; or being young and having a quick mind and a quick temperament and rather jump from one challenge to an other than stay long on one spot.
Many people that present themselves as coaches seem to overflow with positive energy. They are there to stimulate their fellow human beings, equipped with NLP and other workshop-wisdoms. But often they haven't been in the real-life situation of their clients - or they have withdrawn from that, sometimes for good reasons, but rarely because of an overdose of personal success.

Go for people who are practical, asking practical questions and giving practical suggestions. And are willing, eager even to hear how their suggestions worked out. Avoid people who are wholesalers in calendar wisdoms. If you want to be fired up, visit a motivational lecture or motivational workshop. Don't look for a motivational coach. If you need to be motivated all the time, you better spend your money on analysis or therapy. (How to find a therapist - if you really, really need one, is an other story.)

Mubarak, personnel management and systemic persistence

Mubarak is being called the last pharaoh of Egypt. But we probably only need to wait for the next one. Societies have tremendous persistence. In system dynamics we know 'path dependence': once a path is formed, once a pattern is formed, even from random beginnings, new events tend to follow the same path, the same pattern. The decision to hold to the left at roads is just as natural as holding to the right, but once the pattern is there, it is very difficult to change.
After the Russian revolution, the communist leaders turned into czars, and after the fall of communism, the present leaders turn again into czars. Edward Rutherfurd, who wrote about London through the ages, was struck by the fact that the enormous waves of immigration through the centuries were absorbed without leaving traces. Wherever people came from, they turned into East-enders. Also today you can see a Pakistani boy, a Chinese boy and a Jewish boy walking along the Thames and hear them talk cockney together.

In Brazil, I worked with a group of human resources professionals. We did a constellation to find the core issue of personnel management in Brazil. The representative of the Brazilian HR profession was avoiding all the time to look at the core issue. The representative of the core issue felt heavy and dark and had no idea who or what he was. Then I asked "How old are you?' and he blurted out to his own amazement: "More than 300 years." We found out it was the history of slavery in Brazil, still a shadow over apparently modern HR management. It suddenly dawned on me why, when I was a HR director over there, my policy of "internal mobility" was so resisted in the company, that was in other respects a shining example of modernity. Although everybody could always apply for jobs outside the company, people were not allowed to apply for vacancies inside the company. Managers resisted the freedom of choice of their subordinates.

Systemic role patterns are extremely persistent, therefore, real societal change mainly happens after a country first is going through a dictatorship and then through a lost war. The dictatorship destroys most of the old social infrastructure and a lost war destroys the remaining. Mancur Olson sees that as the main explanation of different speeds in economic development. The longer a period of stability and peace, the more the growth of "collusive" organizations, the more the system calcifies.
We see similar processes in families, where family patterns repeat themselves through the generations. Sometimes we can trace them back to their origin: usually times of war, revolution, famine and pestilence. By the way, the social consequences of epidemics are liberating and the social consequences of famines are stifling, as Pitirim Sorokin demonstrated. Think why.

The War on Terror

The War on Terror cannot be won, I've read many times. That's true, but I can't remember I've read anything more downright stupid.
First of all, the reverse is also true and much more important: they can't win.
And second, it is irrelevant that we can't win. Why?

Remember that other (in)famous statement: The War on Drugs cannot be won. Let me add a third one, that anyone would agree on: The War on Crime cannot be won. How long are we fighting crime? At the very least since the beginning of modern police, almost 200 years ago. And we still have rampant crime. So we lost that war? Let's assume we would stop fighting crime, what would happen? Theft, robbery, fraud, murder, mayhem would multiply. We would have vigilantes and many unsavory types of self-defense.
The only real question is: should we do more? Or could we do better? Is the sum total of all our efforts worth the trouble? We can't win the war on crime, unless we somehow could prevent people having criminal intentions. That seems a long way off, if at all doable. The question is even if that would be desirable. A society without crime may have negative side-effects we could consider undesirable. The only real questions are if we can be more effective and if we can be more efficient in our crime fighting.

That is the same question with the war on terror: are we effective enough and are we efficient enough? Could we direct our efforts better? Should we do more? Can we do better with the resources we are spending? At least theoretically, and probably also practically, the answers to those questions are affirmative.
The War on Poverty and the War on Hunger are not won. Still, a larger percentage of people are not hungry and not poor, compared to where we have been before. We are not doing really good, but we are not doing really bad either. We should seek room for improvement, not give room to despair. We need realism, not fatalism. The road to fatalism is fatal. Even more fatal than the road of Great Expectations.

In fighting the War on Terror, we need also realism, not fatalism. And we don't need absolutism. If we want to be sure that no children would ever be abused in their families, we need a form of control that would bring its own abuse. We shouldn't go there. And, of course, we shouldn't simply accept that children are abused in families. We should always seek to improve on present conditions.

With the War on Drugs, we may also do things that are counterproductive. Therefore, many people advocate legalizing drugs. Those people have a point, I think. Think about the War on Alcohol, that helped institutionalize an organized crime that we are still suffering from. But legalize alll drugs for everybody all of the time? Seems wrong, and worse: counterproductive.

Terror is the ultimate social evil. But we should not forget that terrrorist regimes create much more havoc than terrorist groups. In my book How People Make the World, I consider Terror the oldest and most fundamental of the ten global challenges we are facing. We should go on fighting that war, as smart and as tenacious as can be. And efforts to prevention are an essential ingredient. Let's set realistic goals, let's have an effective strategy, let's have smart tactics (yes Sun Tzu, we are listening!) and let's have efficient execution.

And let's not forget the War on Weakmindedness. Can't be won either.

To be in flow

To be in flow is considered one of the fundamental states of happiness, next to pleasure and meaningfulness. Go with the flow, is one of the oldest recommendations, especially by those who prefer to be outside the mainstream of analyzing, goal-setting, planning, and doing. You hear it rarely in war, in business or in chess play. It also can be utter nonsense.
I remember for the first time canoeing on a river with a noticeable current. A few miles took me hours, going several times over the top, being most of the time across on the stream, hindering other canoes no end. It was the most tiring experience I ever had of making a fool of myself.
An other piece of wisdom I came across recently, a Zen saying or something: The fruit falls when it is ripe. A load of crap, as everybody knows who has fruit trees in his garden. Unripe fruit rains for over a month on your lawn. Ripe fruit stays on the tree, eaten by wasps, rotting on the branches. Such pieces of wisdom are for people who don’t do anything practical and don’t want to do anything practical. They make us feel wise and profound during reveries on languid Sunday afternoons. Or in ashrams where it is always Sunday afternoon.

To go with the flow requires often subtle and experienced navigation. Rare are the situations in which we can passively and dreamily drift on. And if there are more currents than one, with which flow do we go? And if the flow leads to sharp rocks? And what means ‘go with the flow’ if you are nearing a roaring waterfall?

The advice should rather be: don’t fight the flow. Use it if you can, and at least reckon with it. The principle of least resistance can’t be followed when you ignore the flow. If you want to cross the river, don’t try to do that at right angles. And if you really want to arrive straight ahead, walk upstream before plunging in.

To be in flow is truly great. It is enormously efficient. It is rewarding. It is beautiful. It is the hallmark of true professionals: it is a pleasure to watch them while they work. One of my favorite quotes is from Tom Peters’ A Passion for Excellence’: Real success comes from the soul and the marketplace simultaneously. That is what to be in flow means: a perfect alignment of talents and efforts with circumstances and customers or audience. We forget the time. We forget our petty selves. We are not sidetracked; we are not blinded. We don’t wonder if we are meant to do this or if this is useful for our career, our future or our soul’s salvation. We get into a rhythm without knowing it. Higher and lower brain functions stomp along happily. We got swing. We are cool.

And what when there is no flow at all? When everything oozes stagnation, when nothing happens or is about to happen? Go with the no-flow? Well, maybe you have no choice. Dress well, eat well and sleep well and wait till spring comes. If it comes. But remember the times you were in flow. What did you do? Where? When? With whom? Under what circumstances?
We truly are ourselves in situations where we don’t reflect on ourselves. Because we don’t need to. Maybe we can only find ourselves in flash-backs.

Anyway, you can’t go with the flow if you keep staring at a computer screen. Or can we?

Finding the core issue

Imagine you get lucky: you will be granted three wishes. What will you wish? From fairytales we know how easy it is to wish foolishly or to wish for something that appears foolish afterward. The old Greeks said already that when the gods want to punish people, they grant their wishes. So we need wisdom. Maybe the best first wish is for wisdom with the second wish. And what would the third wish be? The surprising answer is that we cannot know. When our best wish is granted, our situation will change, we will change and only after a while, we may find what would be the best wish then.

I developed core issue identification from my experiences with strategic issue management. After proper analysis, we would usually find between 5 and 15 strategic issues for an organization like a company or an institution. Working on an issue list for the Netherlands, we found six real strategic issues out of a first list of about 35 possible national issues. My issue list for the planet came ulimately to ten issues. With police forces, the first lists would be about 15-20 issues, after analysis reduced to 5-7 strategic issues for the next 5 years.
Interestingly, almost always, by further analysis, one issue would dwarf the others in importance. That discovery would lead to an initial shock and then galvanize the team involved into action. Several times that number one issue, that core issue, would be utterly and totally solved within a few months. Because the organization really set its teeth in it.

In a number of cases, there would be two issues vying for first place, but of a completely different nature: one would be an issue within the present mission and capability of the organization, and one would require a new capability and some redefinition of the mission. Guess which of the two was always taken up first.
Later, I began to apply the same core issue identification for more individual situations, in the framework of coaching and personal consultancy. Usually, it was less easy. Although an individual is a much smaller system than a company or a government agency, both mission and capability are much more indefinite. Few people can bring themselves to the rigorous self-reflection that is necessary. Many seem afraid to look into the mirror and confront the momentary key challenge in their lives.

From a completely different angle, I found an other approach: my work on organizational constellations. I started to do what I call core issue constellations. And I found these can be applied very well to individuals also. Though still I would find that it required both personal courage and wisdom of the client to face and understand the issue. Anyway, finding your core issue is galvanizing.

So now I approach core issue identification sometimes from the analytical and sometimes from the intuitive side, sometimes by strategic issue analysis and sometimes by constellation work. I like this work, though it produced one drawback: I have become impatient with clients who don't want to go to the core of things.
I can't tell you the core issues my clients found and I won't tell you my own core issue, but I can tell you the core issue we found for the Netherlands as a country, six years ago: Immigrants and Immigration. Still sounds right to me.

Talents and personal destiny

I will announce a new workshop: 'Discovering your talents.' As so often, once you are into a subject, you meet entries and references at unsuspected places. A fortnight ago I was at the book presentation of 'Coporate Entity,' the posthumous life work of Karel DeVries, who was a colleague and partner in Ansoff Joele Associates, consultants in strategic management. His book is about the corporation as an entity with its own personality and its own life forces. A healthy corporation contributes to its stakeholders, internal and external. Its managers and employees contribute to the corporation. Viable systems within viable systems.

The whole of nested systems is more or less alive, it is vital. Individual vitality and individual contributions rest on the talents of the people involved, having functions in which they can express those talents. It is the responsibility of people to maximize the use of their talents. Their talents determine where they fit. So, in the view of DeVries, Talents are destiny.

This is interesting when we compare it with the well-known dictum: Character is destiny. This is used mainly to explain failures and apparent bad luck as the consequence of character flaws. But also that successes and apparent good-luck are to a large extent the consequence of good character. We have many - also very recent - examples of public figures whose careers crashed by character flaws.

But we can also look at careers from the point of view of talents. Now exactly what are your talents? What can you do better than most people? What can you do better than almost anybody? What can you possibly do better than anybody in the world? Or, more to the point: what can you do while being perfectly in flow? Reflecting on this is more useful, as it avoids clumsy comparisons and avoids ego inflation, a condition less common, but more irritating to others than ego deflation. Less than a century ago, Alfred Adler coined the terns inferiority complex and superiority complex. When you are in flow, you hardly care about how good you are and you don't care s.... (you know what) about how good others are.

Your talents are not necessarily what people say they are or what you think they are. They are in where you are in flow. One of my favorite quotes is from Tom Peters: Real success comes from the soul and the market place simultaneously. How about that as a definition what in flow really means? In flow with yourself and with the world at the same time. Of course. Realizing that this is what it is, is a blinding flash of the obvious.

Anyway, discovering and freeing your talents is the surprising twin to market intelligence.

Effectiveness is a miracle

I am busy preparing with colleagues a program on transformational leadership. Pretty pretentious. What does really transform a business, a mission, a work situation?
I remember a client, a Brazilian engineering firm, who, in the seventies, spent 1,5 million dollars on a motivation program for its employees by a prominent US consultancy firm. What difference did it make? Half a year later, bosses and employees couldn't tell.
I think of seminars I attended by famous authors. What did I really learn from them? From a lecture by Carl Rogers I just remembered one example he gave. That example stuck in my mind and taught me something.
I recently met a Finnish colleague. In the early eighties I gave a workshop for his new consultancy firm how to do strategic consultancy. He remembered only two things I taught them. Interestingly, those were exactly the only two items I remembered teaching them. At least, I didn't teach them wrong things, because they became the premium strategic consultancy firm in Finland. But the encounter reinforced my general impression that teaching that is not part of the real daily work, has a moot chance of being remembered or, more important, having effectively improved practical work. Therefore, I am a great fan of Action Learning. If people have been to a 3-year MBA-program and they are asked years later what it meant to them, quite a few mention first and foremost the contacts and business relations they won, not the course content.

Though I don't come across as a particularly modest person, I have always felt very modest about the real and durable effects of my seminars, training programs and consultancy assignments. I am relieved when I hear years later that at least some people had some real benefit.
Few subjects are more important than leadership. Few subjects are more slippery and more intangible. So to start a program on leadership that really will make work situations more effective, more meaningful, more rewarding and more successful, is pretty pretentious.
I want to concentrate on the few interventions and exercises that at least have helped some managers or some consultants in my experience. I did (and I still do sometimes) with a colleague a program called 'Management and Intuition.' How more intangible can you get? To my amazement, I got the highest evaluations on any management program I ever did, on the item I expected it least: practical applicability. That taught me something.
Once a prospective client asked an other manager what kind of a consultant I was. The answer was "a no-nonsense consultant." That was a great compliment, especially because I deal in intangibles: strategy, mission, leadership. If a new type of gearbox in a car is nonsense, it wont survive the test phase. But in consultancy and coaching the difference between meaningful and meaningless, effective and ineffective is much more difficult to establish. And it may change between one person and the next, one situation and the next.

I want to present a program that is effective. That may be pretentious, but that's my ambition.
I think I am about ready. I will blog and tweet about it when it's presentable.

Meanwhile, if you have any experience of a lesson you learned that really changed your way of working, share it in a reaction to this blog. Others may learn from it, I may learn from it.

The March of Folly - about power and sex

I read Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly right after it was published in 1984. I reread it now. Being a fan of 'good government' - today often changed in 'good governance' - it remains interesting to read her shortlist of misgovernment:

1. Tyranny or oppression
2. Excessive ambition
3. Incompetence or decadence
4. Folly or perversity

Tyranny and oppression we can  read about each day and we can watch the uprisings against it, especially now in the Arab world. Excessive ambition, also known since Paul Kennedy as imperial overstretch, we know mainly from the US. On a personal level, many more examples can be found. Decadence doesn't survive too easily in today's interconected world, incompetence is rampant. And as to folly, think of the Peace Process (yes that one). This reminds about an old quip about processes: a process is anything that is almost succeeding for a long time.
Tuchmann defines folly as grounded in preconceptions, contrary to common sense, rational inference and cogent advice. Government is it favorite field, because power not only corrupts, it also blinds. She sees lust for power as the chief trigger of political folly. Government remains the paramount area of folly because there men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

Combine this with the often noted connection between sex and power: powerful men are usually oversexed. Think of that IMF-chief (whose name I strangely can't remember right now, although it is blaring all day over the news). Now the relationship between sex and folly we don't need to explore. Even love, that much nobler emotion, can blind us easily. Anyway, power, sex and folly are a potent cocktail. Good for storytelling, bad for real people. Now what again is the name of that Italian prime minister?
Are powerful women also oversexed? Probably often, but they are less aggressive about it - and they usually don't need to be.
Anyway, the March of Folly has a twin sister: The Waltz of Folly.

Bankers and Bonuses: does size matter?

Are bankers overpaid? Maybe and maybe not. Compared to whom? I want to make an unfashionable suggestion: they should get higher bonuses - but in a different way. In stock, not in stock options. Bankers should co-own banks.
To receive bonuses in the form of stock options makes directors want to increase short-tern share value - and it rewards them when they sell them.The idea is that in this way their interests and the interest of stockholders are aligned. First, it is only half true. Second, it is only half true.
First, because the prime interest of investors is dividend, the interest of first-level speculators is share value. And the interest of second-level speculators is volatile share values. Second, because bonuses don’t align. Alignment would mean that directors get extra paid when the stock goes up, and pay back when it gets down. But they cash when things get well, and they don’t pay when things get rough. The intelligence of shareholders apparently has its limitations, just as with ordinary mortals.

Directors, especially directors of banks should get bonuses in the form of shares, shares that can only be sold when they leave the firm and not faster than 10% a year. That will tie them to the long-term success of their firms. That will align their interest much better with the shareholders - and with the personnel by the way. Employee-owned stock can be administered by a foundation that issues certificates, which may make the whole operation cost less.

It could be argued that this is less tax-avoiding. Oh my! It could be argued that it makes people dependent on their successors. Oh my! Often, directors leave after impressive feats that bring their hidden costs out in the open long after they left. The proposed solution would make people interested in having good successors. Nothing wrong with that.

Altogether, this would mean that as to bonuses, size doesn’t matter that much. It is the kind of bonus that matters.

Debts and Greek tragedy

When a creditor can't pay the debtor, who is responsible? The creditor of course. But when credit comes on top of credit and keeps growing and the debtors know this, who is responsible? And when debtors know the risk and so ask for higher interest, and so the debts grow extra fast, who is responsible? Of course still the creditors. But now the debtors become responsible too. If it is selling mortgages to poor people, or big banks lending to countries. The moment interest rates get higher because of risk, debtors should know what they are doing.

And governments cannot and should not economize to the extent their tax base shrinks.

In a real debt crisis, debtors should suffer. They don't like that, so they try to shift the burden. They should not be allowed to do so. Shifting the burden is one of the classic systemic sins, like the tragedy of the commons. Any division of sharing the burden is arbitrary, but the creditor is always more responsible than the debtor, criminal debtors excepted. So my suggested arbitration is that debtors take 1/3 of the burden and creditors 2/3. So 1/3 of the Greek debt should be discounted. And interest rates should be average, without risk premium.

Or debts should simply be traded. Speculators like risky and muddy waters. They can't earn on simple discounts. So they are against simple rules.

And if banks come into trouble? They don't. They went into trouble. To big to fail? To big to learn. Don't tell me this is not feasible. When nothing is feasible, everything becomes feasible.

Helsinki and Tampere

A new round of organizational constellations and a new round of the Leadership Game.
What kind of themes did the participating management consultants have?

•  What to focus on? And in what market?
•  What do i write my management book about?
•  How do I make my consultancy more profitable?
•  What is the best way to become influential?
•   What is the next step in the development of my company?
•  How do I build an influential consultancy doing meaningful work?
•  How do I get work that has my heart in it?
•  How do I get rid of the ‘dogs’ in my work?

During the game, with many the focus shifted or became more precise. New ideas, new awareness and, above all, more focus. One colleague bought the Leadership Game, so Finnish managers can reflect on their behavior and their career also.

In constellation work it is not only the thoughts the representatives get, but also feelings and bodily sensations. One of the most common bodily reactions is the tendency to change position or posture. People may have other kinesthetic sensations, like heaviness, warmth or coldness. In one constellation, one of the participants had an even more peculiar sensation. In the constellation were two square pillars. The office building once had been a factory. The representative was positioned with her back to one pillar. She represented an entrepreneur and felt herself as a kind of locomotive. Then she got the strong sensation that the pillar behind her and the whole building started to shake and tremble. She knew it didn’t happen, but she felt it nonetheless.
This reminds me of a constellation I did in São Paulo, about the problem around the Nr.2 director in the firm. He suffered forever from high blood pressure, had had already several heart surgeries and gave everyone around him high blood pressure. When his representative stood tall, legs a bit apart, telling the world that he felt strong, a rumbling was heard and the building trembled slightly. But that was a real earthquake, pretty uncommon there.

The eternal doubt of consultants is if their work really does matter. So it is nice to experience that once in a while our work is among the movers and shakers.