If the world had only a 100 people

Jim Estill has been my mentor for almost 4 years now. He is the CEO of Synnex Canada. I meet with him about 4 times a year and we also exchange emails, particularly when I have questions regarding expirences I want to learn more about. I also read his blog on regular basis

He has a lot of wisdom to offer!

Jim has an interesting post today. I will quote part of it here....

The World As 100 People...

"If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would like this…

60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 7 Latin Americans, 5 from USA & Canada and 1 from South Pacific
49 would be female and 51 would be male
82 would be non-white, 18 white
67 would be non-Christian, 33 would be Christian
32% of the world’s wealth would be in the hands of only 5 people and all 5 would be US citizens
80 would live in substandard housing, 24 would not have electricity, 33 would not have access to safe water
67 would be unable to read, 50 would suffer from malnutrition
One would be near death, 2 would be near birth
Only one would have a college education but 7 would have internet access

When you consider our world from such a perspective, the need for both acceptance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent."

Community in Business

I’ve reflecting on what it is that I’m trying to accomplish by blogging. One of the things I told myself when I started this blog, is to have an ability to organize my thoughts. I find it to be working well.

Some of what I have written may have been idealistic. There is nothing wrong with idealism but ultimately ideas and thoughts need to be practical. A solution to problems and taking action is what will spin the wheels. I’m still learning how to make the wheels spin. I’m a visionary and need to surround myself with people who can keep me in the present.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it would look if a community mind set would be embraced in the business world (there are positive signs already that the business world is beginning to adopt community). I believe that if community were adopted by businesses it would at least solve some of the ills (serious ills that is) in today’s corporate world. When I talk about community in groups or with friends I see puzzled faces and frowns. It does not surprise me considering that the majority of people today are embedded in rugged individualism. This is reflected in the corporate world on more then one level.

The following are community attributes according to Scott Peck who wrote extensively about community and also did Community Building Workshops (CBW) for businesses and individuals before he past away. They are realistic and obtainable.

Inclusivity, commitment and consensus
Learn to communicate
Realism
Contemplation
A safe place
A laboratory for personal disarmament
A group that can fight gracefully
A group of all leaders
A spirit

On the fifth point Peck says: “An experiment is designed to give us new experience from which we can extract new wisdom. So it is that in experimenting with personally disarming themselves, the members of a true community experientially discover the rules of peacemaking and its virtues.”

Based on his experience with community building workshops, Peck says that community building typically goes through four stages (stage four is a true community)

Pseudo community
Chaos
Emptiness
True community

For a description of the four stages click here. Similar stages are also described in what is called organization theory. See the above link.

The personal experience I’ve had in community for two years now, the above stages work like clock work. Sadly many groups (including in businesses) are either stuck in pseudo community or chaos and when out of chaos (a group that does not know how to work through emptiness) will go back in to pseudo community.

For more information on community building these two books have a wealth of information. A World Waiting to be Born and the Different Drum both by Scott Peck

Failed Toastmasters Speech

I failed at my toastmaster’s speech on Tuesday. Somehow I had an inclination that I was not prepared to speak on the subject I choose. Although I spent 7 hours to prepare most of the time was spent on the content and very little on presentation.

First what I did is write out the whole speech and then took the highlights and printed them on 4X6 cards. After going over the speech about 10 times I had become highly dependent on the notes (which I only realized after the speech). Writing about a subject is different then speaking about it.

I will try sometime new. I'm thinking about writing down questions that I want to address in a speech and then speak out the answers without notes. This will give a greater opportunity to focus on presentation then on preparation for a speech. After I have my speech right then it would be appropriate to do research and backup what I'm saying.

I realize that I'm on a new frontier and it will be a learning curve for me to master a subject and also be good at presenting it. As I travel and take part in training and hear speakers one of the common observations is that they have good presentation skills but lack in subject skills. I realize now that it is a challenge to be good at both.

Although this is an over quoted quote form Henry Ford I will use it here and take it to heart.

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently" Henry Ford

Technology Sophistication

When I first began consulting with businesses (early 2000) I had no knowledge of running a business. If someone had asked me back then what strategic planning was, I would probably have given them a frown and said it is something people do at NASA. Nevertheless I thought wonders of my innovative ideas of technology and was eager to have businesses implement them. Slowly it got to me that business people were not that interested in my ideas, especially when they could not see how it would work for them. They had reasons not to be interested!

Trudy and Peter Johnson-Lenz state, "Just as word processing does not make good writing, even with spelling and grammar-checkers, groupware, [technology] no matter how sophisticated, will not create collaboration by itself. Groupware [technology] introductions fail or backfire when they are not supported by participatory planning, pilot projects, team-oriented culture, and plenty of training." (Source: Community Building...in Business)

I have seen this many times. Sadly many technology companies don't know how to use technology as an advantage (as was my case when I began my business) and go around mindlessly selling and implementing technology that will be of little or no use.

Human Fundamentals

Here is a quote that speaks to human fundamentals:

"In giving birth to a sustainable species-civilization, humanity will probably move back and forth through cycles of contraction and relaxation until we utterly exhaust ourselves and burn trough the barriers that separate us from our wholeness as a human family....Numerous times we may go to the very edge of ruin as a species, hopefully to pull back in time with new levels of maturity and insight." Duane Elgin, Awakening Earth

Leadership Defined

The following is a definition of leadership. I took this part from the scrip I will be using at a Toastmasters speech this coming Tuesday. For those close by drop in to hear me speak. For directions click here. I also plan on recording my speech for review and post it here through www.youtube.com

Leadership Defined
Contrary to popular belief and self-help books it is often stated that leaders and managers fulfill different roles in organizations. They are wrong! We are all leaders. It is more of a question whether we are exercising our leadership abilities. Management is a profession. The exercise of leading and appropriate use of power is crucial in management roles. Sadly many self made managers through mindless promotions abuse power and don’t know what it means to lead. “The one mask, above all else of the true servant leader is that she empowers others” says Scott Peck in his book “A World Waiting to be Born”. A leader then will use power for the opportunity to be of service to others. This can be the CEO, President or General Manager or any other role that involves managing people in a company.

Who is reflected in Your Business?

Businesses and organizations are systems by definition whether functional or dysfunctional. The same can be said about marriages, they are system between two individuals and whole families. For families the system is different than a business but it is a system without a doubt.

Because businesses and organizations are systems the whole organization will be reflected in how the executives perform for the most part. There are exceptions of course but usually is goes like this. If the boss says “our client is stupid” all individuals in the organization will think or say “our client is stupid”. If customers are a pain to serve for the boss it will be a pain for the employee as well. If the owner is frantically running around all day doing mundane tasks and never stop to think where he wants his business to be in 5, 10…years that is exactly what the employees will be doing.

On the other hand, if the CEO of a company plans strategically and teaches his employees how to use the system he develops they will follow it (not to say that it will always be easy for the CEO or employees). Of course it is also important for the CEO to follow what he teaches. If employee retention is important to a President of a company he will provide adequate ongoing training and support for his employees so that will be more fulfill at work.

The challenge from being one to becoming the other (dysfunctional to functional) is and quest to learn and grow.

I’m currently exploring community in business. Having experience community on a personal level for two years now it can have a profound impact on people as it has for me. Recently I bought a book called, “Community Building: Renewing Spirit & Learning in Business” featuring 34 Essays by authors currently involved in community building in businesses. No essay suggests that building community in business is easy but all say that is it a rewarding experience.

An essay written by Beth Jarman and George Land and then say, “One of the assumptions that must be made in building new communities is that everyone is creative and that each person has a unique contribution to make to the whole. The rigid structure….assumes that people must be controlled and managed.” I have also seen where the last thing a manager wants to do is take responsibly for managing people. That is perhaps even worse then controlling and managing people.

I will continue writing what I’m learning about community in business and I’m also doing research right now in how I could bring community to businesses.