What Would You Do? (Part 4)

I accomplished a near-miracle during Thanksgiving week when, tempted by the opportunity to eat a great deal more turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans and pie than I ought, I refrained.  I resisted the urge on my own behalf, but believe me, the temptation was there!  What food!  And I wasn’t compelled to run ten miles the next day to work off the extra calories.  My legs and back were grateful.

Food is so plentiful in our society that for most of us there is little thought given to how much we consume, where it comes from, how it’s produced, what’s in it, whether there will be more available, and perhaps most importantly, do we need all this?

It’s estimated that the average person needs about 2,500 calories every day for reasonably good health.  Of course, most of us consume a great many more than that every day, whether it’s Thanksgiving or a normal Tuesday.  Lots of us look for ways to cut back on the calories we take in daily, knowing that not only do we need require those extra calories, but that doing so is actually harmful to our health.  But we live in a culture of plenty and the temptations are always in front of us, and so hard to ignore.  

When we finally decide to push away from a great meal, having taken in  more than we need and perhaps even leaving a remainder on the plate, someone will inevitably remind us that there are starving children in the world.  It’s a reminder that often frustrates us: we know there are starving children in the world, but how do we expect to get that last piece of turkey or helping of corn all the way to Nicaragua or some other far-off place?  And how could this little bit of leftover make any difference?  It’s a conundrum that usually goes unanswered, because it is all too far away and complex.

But what if we could understand it in a different context?  What if we came to realize that there really is enough food, that the 2,500 calorie-counting that so many of us indulge in could be applied in a different way?  It goes something like this:

If we could combine all the food in the world, both grown and processed, and count it up in one place, we would have enough edible food to provide more than 3,500 calories per day to every current inhabitant of the earth.  We would have enough food to not only meet the minimum requirement for sustaining healthy life, but to actually exceed it!  If we could do this, each of us receiving enough calories each day to more than meet our needs (and even protect us from our own tendencies toward obesity) and in the process see that every other human’s caloric needs were also being exceeded, we would have an end to hunger-related death and disease, not to mention a host of other political and social conflicts.  Let’s start with this fact-set and do some imagining.

  Imagine that we have enough for everyone to eat and then some.  We know how to get the food to every person.  Starvation has become an historical concept.  We all visit the “food sites” each day for what we need and want.  The distribution of food is unexpectedly easy and satisfying, both nutritionally and emotionally.  And then, imagine that something goes awry.  Something in the distribution or “counting” process breaks down and you suddenly find yourself with 5,000 calories a day on your plate.  You had nothing to do with the error, nobody has noticed the  inequity, and so you say nothing and quietly enjoy the excess calories that you’ve been dealt.  You actually kind of enjoy saving some of the excess food for a late meal at night before bed.  You grow accustomed to the mistake until one day, as you arrive to receive your extra-large portion, you learn that there is an individual who unexplainably has missed out on his portion of food for the past weeks and has become quite ill because of the error.  The food administrators haven’t been able to discover the source of the error, and so can do nothing immediately to correct the shortage.  You learn of this as you walk from the kiosk where the 5,000 calories have been erroneously assigned to you.

What would you do?  When you have enough, when you are healthy and providing plenty for your family, and then learn that another has become ill due to the excess amount that you have been receiving, what would you do?  Will it be enough to say that it’s too difficult to correct the error?  Is it acceptable to thank the fates for your good luck?  Are you free and clear since it wasn’t your error to begin with?  Do you have any responsibility for the individual who faces starvation due to the extra food that you have received?  What would you do?

As we push away from the table of plenty and roll our eyes at the reminder of starving human beings because it’s just such a big problem, maybe it’s time for an after-dinner stroll.  Perhaps a short walk under the early evening moonlight will remind us that we have walked up there on the moon, that we conquered with resources and will and creativity a frontier that was millions of miles away, not even of this earth.

                                                    

What Would You Do? (Part 3)

I remember watching a World War II film that included a concentration camp scene wherein a Nazi commander was hosting a civilian visitor to the camp.  The commander and his guest were sitting outdoors, on a veranda of sorts, enjoying refreshments and a view of the nearby woods where they would not be offended by the grim realities inside the camp.  As the two relaxed with food and wine, a prisoner detail was being marched back into camp, presumably after a long day of physical labor.  Haggard, wasted and near death, the prisoners stole furtive glances at the two men enjoying their late-day break.  In return, the commander, noticing their uninvited looks, began tossing scraps of food to his two dogs, his disdain for these captives and their condition plainly etched in his face.  As if their hunger was not painful enough, this waste of food in their presence represented a horrible insult intended to hurt their souls as well as their bodies.  For me, the scene portrayed an evil that has never left my memory.

I remember thinking to myself, how could the guest or even the other guards have stood by and let this happen?  How could anyone have tolerated these injustices and degradations of humanity?  I used to think, if I had been there, I would have attacked that commander and thrown the food over the barbed-wire fence in order for the prisoners to have had at least a moment’s satisfaction.  Boys often imagine themselves doing such heroic things as this, and I find myself wondering whatever happened to such inclinations to heroism?  Because today, the same degradations, inhumanities and even insults are part of our everyday lives.  Yes, yours and mine.

What would you do?  What if you are out for dinner on a pleasant Sunday evening, at an outdoor cafe near the lake that you particularly enjoy.  It’s been one of those perfect summer days, where you are  attuned to all the sounds of nature surrounding you and you are aware of how its music soothes you.   Your table faces the lake; a walking path is just beyond the outdoor patio and follows the shoreline.  Your meal is done, a spread of food and condiments befitting this luxurious setting.  You have joked about how much you have eaten and the need for a “doggy bag” to take the rest of the food home.

You are startled by the sound of rustling shrubbery off to your side.  From a wooded area a man wanders onto the walking path, glancing at you and the other diners.  He appears disheveled and disoriented and to your growing discomfort he is approaching your table.  You think about summoning the waiter but before you can spot him, the stranger speaks.  “Excuse me.  I’m sorry for intruding.  But I see that you have finished eating your supper, and I wondered whether you might be willing to share your leftovers with me.  I’ve been without work and a place to stay and I’m very hungry.” 

To begin with, you’re a little irritated at the intrusion and the awkwardness of it.  You’ve simply wanted to enjoy a beautiful evening and a fine meal, and now this stranger has appeared.  And yes, you’ve finished with your meal but the idea of giving someone your leftover scraps doesn’t seem quite right.  Maybe you’ve even thought about these leftovers as part of tomorrow’s lunch.  In any case, the waiter and the maitre d’ are nowhere to be seen, the man and the food are before you, and all you can think of is how does this kind of thing always happen to me?  What would you do?

It’s a sobering and downright shameful fact that in the U.S. we throw away nearly 40% of our food.  Whether disposed of as garbage from our tables, unused in warehouses and destroyed, kept from  markets due to economic reasons, or otherwise rendered unusable, our food waste could feed the world.  While 25,000 human beings die each day from hunger and hunger-related disease, we discard enough food to have saved most of them.  It is insanity and insult that calls to mind the actions of that camp commander who I wanted to throttle! 

The solutions may not be as easy as throwing scraps to a hungry man at the table, but our outrage ought to be no less than what we feel from the movies….

Who Will Poke?

When I was a young boy- long before video games and at a time when playing evening “yard games” with neighborhood friends was the best part of the day- we often played a game called Who Will Poke?  The game was a simple one, where the person who was “it” had to turn his back to the rest of the group and then one among the group had to poke the individual in the back, with whatever force, delicacy or elan desired. The one who was “it” had to guess the culprit.  If the guess was incorrect, the “it” had to run a predetermined distance, during which time the others hid.  If the guess was correct, then the “poker” had to execute the run.    Being “it” could be a long and exhausting role, especially if you weren’t particularly fast!  As a result, the determination of who would poke usually required a lot of time and argument, such was the vulnerability if you were revealed as the culprit.  Poking required risk, an ability to mask your “poking personality,” even a bit of courage, and a willingness to run a lot.  But somebody had to do it in order for the game to work.

It seems as though we always need someone who is required to be “it,” to take the risk and initiative to make things happen.  Such individuals are not always successful, nor are they always recognized for the  important roles that they play, but they are essential nonetheless.  The sad and unexpected news from The Ohio Employee Ownership Center about the passing of John Logue made me think of the old yard game for some reason.  Because losing John’s voice and passion for employee ownership changes the game suddenly.

Back then, when we would lose a player some night, someone on whom we could rely for willingness to poke, the game became different.  We waited longer for action, we stood around a lot more, and sometimes the arguments about who would poke would lead to frustration and some kids would even go home early.  Do you know how some players just seem to make the game better?  That’s a portion of John’s legacy, that while he was playing, he made the game better, because he was so into it.  His passion for the subject of employee ownership made him a great teammate.  I recall conversations with John about some aspect of employee ownership that I had never before encountered, and his views enriched my own understanding and experience of something about which I, too, feel deeply.

The news about John Logue reached me very shortly after hearing of the stillness of yet another ESOP voice, Mr. John Donohue, Chairman of ESOP company Moretrench.  Perhaps you never met or heard of John, but I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance at the ESOP CEO program at Penn several years ago.  That first cohort in the program became a pretty tightly-knit group, even continuing to meet yearly after the conclusion of the program.  John was a terrific contributor to our group; his quiet voice of experience served as an important offset to the sometimes “over-the-top” expressions of a pretty confident group of ESOP CEOs! 

But my fondest recollection of John came from the day we spent in the CEO program working on a Habitat for Humanity house in Philadelphia.  John was an accomplished handyman and he quickly recognized that I was anything but accomplished in such activities.  He demonstrated the very characteristics that drew all of us to him: he patiently showed me the duties that I could tackle in preparation for the more demanding actions that he could perform.  Within minutes we were working as a team, and I immediately understood how John came to be a leader.   And all the while we talked about employee ownership and why it is so important to our people and our country.    On the bus ride back to the hotel, John was still teaching, reaching.  “Wow, good work today,” he told me.  What a fun, memorable day John gave to me.

Neighborhoods change, kids grow up, the games of our imaginations change, as well. But we still need the activists, the risk-takers, the leaders, to organize us in our fun, to make sure that the game can be played, to be a voice in the neighborhood to let the rest of us know that the game is on, to coax us to play when we sometimes just might not feel like it, to make the game fun, and sometimes to even teach us a new game.   At a time of mourning such as this, I can’t help but selfishly ask the question, “Who will step up next for employee ownership?  Whose voice will follow either John?”  And it’s just like being in the back yard again, when the question we asked ourselves was, “Who will poke?”  Maybe it’s time for more of us to be in the game….

What Would You Do? (Part 2)

The idea of thousands of human beings dying each day from hunger and hunger-related diseases is beyond my immediate comprehension.   The numbers are too big and the problem seemingly too immense to spend much time contemplating.  Sometimes thinking about the issue of hunger in our world is better done in relation to things in our lives that are more familiar to us. 

So drawing upon a talk that I heard the other day, I decided to pose the following “What If?” scenario to think about.  Disregard the plausibility or lack of technical accuracy; just imagine.

What if, on this past Sunday as millions of travelers began making their way back home after the Thanksgiving feast, a crisis emerged in our air traffic system.  Without controllers’ ability to adequately see it coming, a “glitch” in the system quite suddenly threatened the air safety of all the aircraft currently en route to their destinations.  After repeated attempts nation-wide to fix the problem, the  air control management reports that there is nothing that can be done, and among the hundreds of flights in the air, some are bound to crash, either because they have no flight visibility or because they cannot be cleared to land anywhere before fuel is used up or they suffer mid-air collision.  In fact, the sobering estimate is that thousands may die, that 25,000 people will perish on this day of unprecedented loss.

What would you do?  What would WE do?  Surely, the country would spare no expense or effort in order to create a strategy that would carefully, methodically bring those planes down without tragedy.  No expenditure of resources would be spared.  (If we doubt that, all we need to do is look back a few months when the U.S. government was willing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into an economic tragedy brought on not by an unintended “glitch” but by outright greed and malfeasance.)  In short, we would do anything to prevent the disaster, and if the government did not act quickly enough each of us would be on our cell phones, at our computers, or even out in the streets to protest and demand moral action.  We simply would not accept the pending death and destruction.

If the reaction I’ve described above is at all realistic, then why is it so difficult for us to react to the equivalent of 60 airliners a day crashing to earth, destroying lives and property and promise for the future?  If we can spend billions of dollars in this country alone to bail out mismanaged banks and fund  extravagant bonuses on Wall Street, how can we remain so unmoved?  Is this really who we are and what we are all about, or have we simply shielded ourselves from the enormity of the truth and grown afraid of the “disease” that might infect our hearts if we acknowledge who we have become?

Is the problem of hunger too big?  I guess the answer is dependent upon our priorities.  But 60 airliners are in the air today, destined to crash to the earth, and those aboard wonder how important that is to you and me waiting below.  What would you do?

What Would You Do?

I mentioned in Winds of Peace blog that I had become infected with a serious disease, and that I was certainly not resting very comfortably during this holiday season.  The infection has been an attack on my conscience, my sense of justice, my very soul, as I come to terms to with the utter shame that we have brought upon ourselves in the face of a pandemic that grips our world.  it’s not the swine flu.  It’s hunger and starvation.  In the ninety minutes during which I sat at Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday, more than 1,500 people around the world died of hunger or hunger-related disease.  Preventable. Stoppable.  Shameful.

So in my fever I try to imagine what to do, how to get my arms around this infection that won’t leave me alone, how to know how I should act.  Do I ignore the symptoms and hope that they go away?  Should I be asking for some magic pill?   Is this something my chiropractor or some other doctor can fix?  More likely, is there some sort of home remedy?  These questions lead me to this blog entry and those to follow in the days to come.  In search of answers for my own disease, I wonder what others would do?  And so I have decided to pose the question in hopes of obtaining real answers or, at least, spurring your own thinking sufficiently to inoculate you against the worst of the infection’s symptoms: apathy.   I hope you can help me get better.

What if the world was much smaller than it is today, and that the entire population numbered only 100?  This is one of the questions raised by the anti-poverty organization, One.  It has compiled some interesting statistics about our imaginary world demographics.  For instance, of our one-hundred people, eighty would live in substandard housing.  Fifty would be malnourished.  Thirty-three would have no access to safe water.   Thirty-three would be living on only 3% of the total wealth of the world; five people would control 33% of it.  One person would have AIDS.  And one of us would be dying from starvation. 

In such a world, the chances are pretty good that you know each and every member of it.  (Think of your current circle of friends and acquaintances; it’s probably greater than a hundred people.)  And with such a familiarity, the face of that starving individual is known to you.  The individual is known to you.  You see all that he/she is, all that he/she can be.  And you experience his/her pain because he/she is one of you.   So here is the first of my questions: what would you be willing to do? 

It’s not a philosophical or theoretical question.  It’s life-and-death in the moment even if we choose not to see it.  We are collectively insulated from much of the world’s hunger because it is buried in statistics that have no names or faces.  But when we are forced to confront it in the face of a friend or family member, hunger takes on a much different meaning: there is almost nothing we would not do to feed a starving friend; you know that you have sufficient food for both of you. 

In reality, of course, the world is far bigger than one hundred souls.  But then, the world’s resources are more plentiful than in our fictional example, too.  In both cases, the resources are sufficient to feed the hungry, and therein lies the shame.  How do the remaining ninety-nine survivors in our example look at one another in the eye after one of us has died without cause, within our capacity to have helped?

My own exposure to this disease has been heightened by numerous visits to a very unhealthy place, Nicaragua.  But the main threat from disease there is not malaria or dengue fever.  It’s the disquieting realization that hunger is taking the energy and life from people without cause.  Some are people I have been getting to know.   That’s a disease which can create irreparable harm to one’s heart….

It’s a very real question worth pondering, especially during this season of thanks and giving:  what would you do?

Technorati Tags: Winds of Peace Foundation,World Hunger

The Disciplines of Health

As I “enjoy” the benefits of living in my sixties, I am increasingly amazed by the truth of something I have known for a long time, but which I have come to appreciate with even greater intensity: health requires a level of discipline that is not easy to maintain.  Now, everyone recognizes this truth almost intuitively.  We are acutely aware of foods that aren’t  nutritionally good for us, but that just flat-out taste great!  We know that exercise is a fundamental need of the human body, but creating the time to work out in the midst of our long days seems almost impossible.  And we all have our excesses; whether it’s smoking or drinking more coffee than we should, or eating beyond our needs, we are beset by drives that harm us in the long run.  What compounds the problem is that the resistance to such temptations seemingly grows less and less as the years go on. 

But when people stop long enough to muse about the secrets of a long and healthy life, the answers are not difficult.  The answers simply bring us back to the same basic tenets that we already know to be true, but which require at least a modicum of discipline to follow.  We seem to want to ignore these basics, though we know that in the long run (and sometimes in the short run)  these are the things that can and will trip us up.  Oh well, we think to ourselves, maybe some other day, when we have more time, when our doctors tell us  we “have to.”  What a shame that we will wait until a crisis occurs to pay attention to our health.

Sound familiar?  If it doesn’t ring true regarding our own personal health circumstances, then maybe it sounds a little bit like the financial health troubles we’re having.  Clearly, we haven’t been monitoring the health indicators which tell us about our fiscal fitness.  Just think about the habits that we (collectively) seem to have acquired over recent generations.

1.  Obesity- We have become very fat, to put it bluntly.  There is an increasing presence of  high-calories and empty-nutrition in our diets.  Not enough “real food” makes it into our lives.  Lean strategies have contributed mightily to stemming the expansion of growing waste-lines, but not heavily enough to counteract the fat that has formed, particularly at the top of corporations, where the will to say, “Enough” seems to have withered away along with other muscular thinking.

 

2. Lack of Exercise- Exercising is not easy; we all know that.  It requires     resolve and strength and sufficient knowledge to understand what it does for us.  And exercise experts all say that a variety of exercises is needed to develop overall fitness: exercise of restraint, exercise of judgment, exercise of fairness, exercise of reason.  Too few players or captains of industry seem to want to train anymore, leading to our current state of weakness.

 

3.  Use of Stimulants- We’re becoming a society of junkies, waiting for the next fix to  spur us on and unaware of the addictions that are making us sick.  Our purview is roughly the time between the current high and the next fix, and we really don’t seem to care too much about the detox that has to follow if we’re to survive.  The substance abuse is broad: oil, bailout money, credit, health care, market sovereignty, political truth.  To make matters worse, there’s new dealer around, and his name is Sam.

 

4. Irregular Check-Ups- It’s a longstanding truth that in order to maintain good health, we have to monitor our vital signs.  If we don’t truly know what those metrics of health are, we have no way of gauging our condition.  And lately we seem to want to hear what we would like to hear, rather than what the actual numbers might be telling us.  Ignoring an entire category of unemployed or a bulging credit bubble because we don’t like how it looks is no different than discounting twenty points on a blood pressure reading because we don’t think it matters.  Check-ups matter, and numbers don’t lie; people do, and mostly to ourselves.

 

5.  Following Fads- We have become magnetized to the steely draw of get-healthy-quick schemes.  The seductive allure of strategies that require no pain, no patience, and little effort are siren songs for dashed hopes and disappointment.  Just as junk foods contain little but empty calories, our entitlement demands for instant gratification lead us to quick-fix fads that are actually harmful to health.  Swaps and replacements aren’t of the same values as organic goods; organic may take longer, but it’s healthier.

 

6.  Delusions of Immortality- We might enter adulthood believing that we’ll never grow old and die, but we do.  We might believe that using tobacco is OK, that cancers happen to other users but not us, but it’s not and they do.   We might think that we’re entitled to abuse our systems and natural laws without paying the price, but we aren’t.  The future is created by the present, and that future is no less precious, important or in need of our best than today.  If nothing else, our children might appreciate having us around in the future, or even having a future at all….

Staying healthy isn’t always a matter of choice, of course.  Accidents happen, unexpected natural disasters occur and our well-being is tested.  But we are capable of withstanding the unexpected jolts far better if we’ve paid attention to those elements which we do control.  Having resources in reserve for such occasions better ensures fitness.  As Kenneth Cooper, the father of aerobics and fitness pioneer has said, “Fitness is the ability to carry out daily tasks with vigor and alertness, without undue fatigue and with ample energy … to meet the above-average physical stresses encountered in emergency situations.”  The Boy Scouts of America say it a different way: “Be Prepared.”

Discipline.  It’s not the easiest virtue to embrace, but easy is not always best.  With the benefit of years behind me and 20/20 hindsight, I more readily recognize the importance of disciplines in my life.  Age and experience provide a clearer picture of where my life may be leading me, and that clarity affirms my need for those basic disciplines.  I won’t live forever, but I want to live each of my days to its fullest, and leave for my children a healthy legacy.

Getting Well

I read with great interest a story in the Minneapolis StarTribune the other day.  The story described a health insurance “risk rating” program adopted by Minnesota-based Graco (and others), a plan to reduce health costs through wellness promotion.  The idea is that individuals who exhibit controllable or treatable health risks will pay more for their insurance premiums than their less risky co-workers, unless they address their risks through medical consultation or lifestyle modification.  Whatever else one might think about the idea, it’s presented in the article as an innovation, a creative approach to a difficult problem.  Actually, I saw a CBS news story about similar programs  within the past year, with the concept again being presented as a somewhat new and radical approach to motivate individuals toward healthier lifestyles and, in the process, control costs of corporate health insurance.

I find these stories interesting in part because my former company, Foldcraft, adopted what was likely the first such risk-rating program in the country almost twenty years ago.  Featured in wellness conferences, business periodicals and even a mention in Time Magazine, the program was obviously way ahead of its time, a risk rating plan that carried its own risk because of the newness of the idea, a personal responsibility for health risks that insurance companies and government agencies viewed with suspicion.  Despite the dramatic decrease in our health care costs tracked over the first five years of the program’s existence, the plan was eventually discontinued from fear of legal challenge which the Company simply wasn’t in a position to fight had a legal challenge been made.  To this day, the decision to discontinue the plan is one of the few regrets that I have from  my years there.

The point to be made isn’t about how Foldcraft Co. led the way on corporate wellness, but rather, the importance of seeing new ways of looking at the problems that confront us.  Wellness programming at Foldcraft stemmed from a few employees who had an interest in driving the Company to an holistic health in all of its dimensions, including the personal health of its members.  That interest created the foment for thinking about health insurance premium costs in a very different way, which in turn created a new source of cost savings for the Company and health for the participants in the program.  Skepticism from others didn’t diminish the importance of a new way of thinking about improved self-responsibility and cost reduction.

Our current economic and business dilemmas are nearly unprecedented and demand no less than the same kind of radical change in our perspectives.  And nowhere is the potential for such innovative thought broader or stronger than within employee-owned companies across the country.  Solutions to the distresses of the times are to be found within our collective, collaborative experiences, if we are willing- and allowed- to look there. 

Academics and some politicians don’t see the solutions residing there, instead relying upon their own inexperience and often untested ideas to throw rocks.  The latest attack on ESOPs comes from Andrew Stumpff, an employee benefits law professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Alabama Law School, along with Norman Stein, a Douglas Arant Professor of Law at the University of Alabama Law School.  Their article published in the October 19, 2009 issue of Tax Notes posits four arguments against current ESOP law, arguments which likely would never have even been made had either of these pundits actually been part of an ESOP or even seriously studied ESOP performance.  Nonetheless, they have taken their best shot out of some egalitarian and/or short-sighted perspectives, views that have always been killers of creativity, innovation and change.  While the ESOP community implores business and government entities to look at the realities of ESOPs, the academics argue from theory and supposition. 

This latest episode is quite reminiscent of those years ago, when an ESOP company launched a new wellness idea that offered one reasoned solution to the growing health cost problem in our companies and society.  The pundits took aim and, despite metrics of success, managed to kill off a strategy that today is apparently coming back stronger and more necessary than before.  Similarly, the ESOP community has relied upon the wisdom and voices of its members over the years to forge a new way of thinking about corporations, ownership, wealth and fairness. It’s a lesson that academia and Washington would be well-advised to hear.  Innovations are found throughout the length and breadth of this country and its workplaces,  even moreso than in ivory towers or Washington….

Optimistic Pessimism from an Optimist

The American public seems to have receded in its anger and indignation over the recent, egregious examples of corporate financial malfeasance, but I haven’t.  The stories just keep on surfacing, but as in many cases of overexposure, the constant drumbeat of greed and irresponsibility eventually makes us numb and, worse, non-responsive.  As I witness  job losses by honest and hard-working people continue to grow, the return to business-as-usual on the part of the Wall Street wizards, and a government which has become capable only of narrow, self-interest action, I am shaken when I read this quotation from author and philosopher Ayn Rand:

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing- when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors- when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-scarifice- you may know that your society is doomed.

I’m compelled to see our current circumstances in light of Rand’s observation.  But I also know that our world is filled with individuals who still see the wisdom in the greater good, the nobility of servanthood, the wealth and rewards of a “compassionate capitalism.”  I know ESOP companies and their priorities and their commitments. 

We need the voices and experiences of employee ownership now more than ever, not just as a means of legal ownership succession, but as a tool of cultural transformation at a time when our system desperately needs the model.  As the famous 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke is attributed to have said:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

I cannot help but feel the call to action….

Seeking the Magic of ESOP

Over the years, I’ve frequently used magic  as a metaphor for the incredible achievements that companies can realize through employee-ownership.  I’ve sawed ESOP Association President Michael Keeling in half three different times, as well as various unsuspecting others.   I have vanished coins and scarves, I’ve read minds (some of the content of which I couldn’t repeat) and even levitated a real human being!  It’s all been good fun and a pretty good representation of the excitement and wonder that can be captured in an ESOP.  And of course, everyone loves an illusion, the momentary suspension of logic which makes us believe in the impossible.

When I was asked to address the Southwest Chapter of TEA last week on the topic of “Leading In Tough Times,” I had the suspicion that what the audience might be hoping for was something akin to “magic.”  No one suggested that miracles were in order, of course, but even the notion that there might be special tactics to employ during these tough times seems to suggest that maybe there’s something unique, some unusual strategy that companies have somehow overlooked as they have sought to contend with the economic mess.  It’s seeking what National Center for Employee Ownership Executive Director Corey Rosen calls the “a-ha moment,” when inspiration suddenly hits us with wonderfully creative, productive ideas. 

Knowing that I did not possess such “a-ha wisdom” myself, I spoke with a wide variety of ESOP CEOs, ESOP community leaders, practitioners and providers, and then distilled the experiences and perspectives into a handful of insights.  The collection made for some interesting consideration, but perhaps the greatest “a-ha” came from what was NOT present in their comments.

For there were no real a-ha’s at all.  What we heard from these sages was the consistent, repetitive drumbeat of basic good practices that we have come to know over the years from ESOP conferences and from ESOP experts: practices like participative involvement, strong and frequent communications, open-book management, organizational transparency, continuous improvement methodologies, constant teaching and learning.  The “a-ha moment,” I suppose, was the realization that the most effective way to deal with an economic environment such as we have today is to prepare for it with the consistent development and application of these basic tenets of well-run ESOPs.  It may not sound flashy or sexy, but it’s the truth.  Wailing over a missed opportunity in the past is no reason for missing an opportunity now.

And for those who may say, “Well, that doesn’t help me much at the moment,” I’d suggest that there is no better time to begin preparing for the next economic crunch than right now. 

Got any better ideas…?

Going A New Way

For me, one of the great things about living in Decorah, Iowa is the number and variety of places to run.  If the weather is dry I can head up into the woods and run the trails there.  If the weather is wet, I can follow the Oneota Trail which is paved all the way.  If it’s sunny, I  follow the forest floor at Twin Springs and if it’s cloudy I can use the trails of the Decorah Prairie.  Every route is breathtaking in its own way, a series of scenic, secret places where I rarely encounter others.  The variety is a welcome feature of my running schedule and I feel as though I’ve come to know the various trails intimately, like old friends.  Given the outdoor conditions, I can tell you with little hesitation where I’ll be headed on my next run.

I became curious last week when a local publication referenced some trails in a different section of town, a wooded area that I had not previously explored.  During our two years here thus far, nobody has really ever suggested this other area as a  running destination.  And given the beauty and variety of my known courses, I wasn’t really looking for new venues.  In fact, I look forward to enjoying my usual paths whenever I run, precisely because they are so inviting.  But the descriptions of these trails- how they challenged the hiker/runner, the way they followed a forest canopy for miles, and how they provided a solitary place of beauty for those willing to go there- captured both my attention and curiosity.  In addition, the entry to this wonderland lay but a short distance from my own house.  (Remembering, of course, that almost everything in a town the size of Decorah is but a short distance from home!)

The end of this story could be simply that I have now run in this new, unknown woodland every day since my discovery of it.  I love its height, expanse, solitude and the way it cools me during warm, summer runs.  But during my most recent foray into these trails, as I marveled at new landmarks and bluff-high vistas, I was mindful again of a lesson that I know as certainly as my name, but of which I seem to need continual reminder: discovery- and the energy that it creates-is most often generated by going a new way. 

The lesson doesn’t apply to everything, to be sure.  But my own experiences have taught me time and again that staying inside the boundaries of what I know is a comfortable, safe and static place to be, but that’s not what I was made for.  When I have allowed myself the opportunity to explore beyond those borders, the discoveries made there have been consistently among the most important and lasting experiences of my life.  Virtually every wonderful event of my life has been the result of a willingness to go somewhere about which I was unfamiliar.

We’re faced with a lot of circumstances today that are completely unfamiliar to us and not of our choosing.  Housing, jobs, investments, a new government, growing complexities, a shrinking globe- today they all pose great uncertainty and uncharted waters for solution.  But it’s within some of those unknown places that we stand to embrace a new way, a better way, to whatever it is we aspire.  The way ahead may appear unsure or even frightening, but it’s where we discover those next pieces of ourselves and each other, and it’s the very best place for such discovery.

I’ll still visit my old trail sites regularly; they’re part of the landscape and still full of inspiration and motivation, but now enhanced by my willingness to have explored and looked for a new way….