February 17th, 2010
With my writing and speaking I get to live in a very cool world called “The Way It Should Be.” I love that world dearly and I spend a lot of my free time there. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, as my work is really about helping to build the bridge from “The Way It Is” to the “The Way It Should Be”, so I need to be familiar with both places.
But I am reminded from time to time that thinking about what our organizations and communities could be and should be in the future is often a very different thing than figuring out how to get there. I think that there are a lot of different answers regarding how to get there, and that answers have to be organic and personal to stand any real chance. But I do think that there is at least one common thread.
Courage is required.
I have written and spoken several times over the past couple of years about our way of leadership as a significant part of the problem we face today. Part of what is missing from our way of leadership is courage. Not only is it missing…it is not generally allowed today.
We have more access to more information than ever before. We have greater and more powerful technology than ever before. Yet we continue to find ourselves in very serious predicaments that are largely if not completely avoidable. Look at our national debt. Look at our current financial circumstances. Look at what has recently happened at Toyota.
In all of these situations there were people with great power who knew that things were heading in the wrong direction, yet took no action until things had reached the point of crisis. It does not take great courage to respond to a crisis. When you are in an executive role, you are expected and required to respond.
What does take courage is avoiding a crisis.
Stepping up to take on short-term pain when core values require it takes courage. It requires courage because in the world of business you can almost always find justification for not doing it…and there is usually some personal risk involved.
This topic has been bouncing around in my big empty head lately, thanks to these recent posts from Jamie Notter: Paying the Price for Truth, and The Truth About Change. The ongoing conversation that he has been facilitating has reminded me of a line I heard somewhere; “we get the leaders that we tolerate”…and I think that this is often true. It also reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:
“Lying is done with words and also with silence.”
-Adrienne Rich
So.
What is important to you? Are you tolerating less than that in your place of work…in your leadership, your peers, yourself?
What are we willing to do to raise the bar? What are we willing to risk for what we claim to stand for and what will we do to support one another?
Be good to each other.