Syzygeist

Row Row Row Your Boat, Gently...

With uncertainty and complexity abounding, too much information flooding over most of us and the Global Happiness Index (GHI) challenged by much in modern life, it's worth noting that the best advice is often wrapped in a children's story or rhyme, which only endures to be repeated through generations and across cultures because it is quintessentially true. 

Few can beat the little song we used to sing in rounds while on summer holiday before anyone held a hand-held anything to amuse them during those seemingly endless hours in the car. (And kids singing verses together don't squabble.) 

This one has its origins in English nursery rhyme and American minstrel songs and supposedly first appeared in print in the U.S. in 1852.

Row row row 

your boat

gently

down the stream

merrily merrily merrily merrily

life is

but a dream. 

Why should this have become such a repeated mantra for children? Full of advice for getting through life, it has inspired many to reflect on its deeper meanings. As a sailor who has often rowed back and forth between shore and a sailboat, I have had plenty of time to think about it - and enthusiastically sung it many times with my own children when they were small.

Row row row 

Rowing requires both hands, applied equally for the most part (and use your back and legs if you want to bring real strength to the action) and a sense of direction. 

Balance! Don't pull too hard to one side unless you want to turn or you will soon be off course. Steady and rhythmical is almost always better than too much effort expended in bursts. Repetition and self control matter. Practice makes perfect.

Your boat 

Not someone else's. You're in it so you need to take care of it. It's the only one you've got. And it is uniquely yours - in what it's made of and contains and where it's going (or could go).You are on your own in most respects. So care for your boat like no other.

Gently 

Of all the adverbs in the language to appear here, why this one? Think about the way you conduct yourself. How does it feel, and feel to others? Considerate, tender, gradual, refined, of good family - and the word hints etymologically "of the same clan." So row with a sense of belonging among others - congenially.

Down the stream 

Yes, go with the flow, not fighting the current (although this may be necessary sometimes) but using the nature and direction of the stream to help you along. A stream is always moving and never exactly the same in any other place or at any other time.  So keep paying attention to the stream wherever you find yourself in it.

Merrily merrily merrily merrily 

"In a joyous manner" is one definition offered, but also consider that this adverb (any word that describes action) is repeated four times. No other word is given as much space or attention. So attitude matters a lot! And this attitude should live in the world of delight, pleasure, humor and joy.

Life  

Ah, life itself - everything around you that you see, feel, touch, smell, know, imagine, desire, fear, revile or revere...  

is but a dream. 

Images, ideas and emotions that seem to come upon us or that we may conceive spontaneously are all in us. This complex of perceptions are "real" but also "imagined" in the sense that they are the unique images we take from - or bring to - the world. That world is in us too. (Some might say it had its origins in us from birth, or even before that!) 

Is life not as we imagine it to be?

Row row row your boat, gently, down the stream… 

Merrily merrily merrily merrily - life is but a dream... 

Amen.

Four Principles to Guide a Life

Years ago I listened to noted columnist James Kilpatrick give a talk about writing. He said every good piece should follow the same formula:

"Let me take you by the hand and show you a place I know, which for seeing, will change you forever."

I would be delighted to think this is about to happen here and now for someone reading the words that follow!

In the autumn of 1996 I had just moved back East to New York City from California to work for Morgan Stanley after a 20-year career as a journalist and a half decade as a scenarios-to-strategy consultant -helping companies decide what they should do in light of the uncertain future.

It was a beautiful autumn day. I stepped off the curb in front of the public library, Fifth Avenue yawning full of traffic to the north and people bustling to work. I can still see all the details of that moment as clearly as on that day.

Four phrases appeared on the screen of my mind, as it were, and I stopped to write them down in a little notebook I always carried with me. (Retelling it now reminds me now of something that my scenario work has taught me - the most important idea can come from anyone at anytime, anyplace. But is anyone listening? And will they DO anything?)

The words were four separate thoughts in sequence, which have become principles in my business and I try hard to apply them in my life:

1. Clarify the Intention

2. Define the Sacred

3. Understand the Commitment

4. Act to Be

At one level - the words themselves, and the phrases, are simple enough. It is in their application that we can discover the value of them, as I have found in working with individuals and organizations over time.

Clarify the Intention.

It was Yogi Berra who allegedly said that if you do not know where you are going it is hard to know when you get there. We also learn that a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step - but a step of what kind, and in which direction? Directly toward the target, or just "west," as in "Go west young man?"

What is it you want and need to do, which in the doing will bring you closer to something you deeply desire? This may be a big question about what you want to become in your life, or a smaller one about where you want to live, or it could be an enterprise issue of defining a strategy for the next year or three or five.

Often in exploring this question - and it is valuable for executives of organizations to apply scenario thinking here - we discover that the intentions we thought we had are not as important as the ones we have determined to clarify for ourselves from this moment on, and pursue in a new way, for reasons that become clear in the present work. Our perceptions of the future can - and should - influence present action.

We want to "become," but become what? What is your intention, that you most need to express because in so doing you will fulfill what is very if not most important to you? You can apply this to a day, a week, a year or a lifetime. It's up to you - your clear intention.

Define the Sacred.

I directed a re-visioning effort at Morgan Stanley in the late 1990s to clarify the intention, so to speak, for the "new company" that was formed by the Dean Witter-Morgan Stanley merger. One company was all about retail investors, the other was all about institutional finance. Two cultures. What were they to become as one company?

They had different intentions, different value systems. A lot has been written about what happened there, and since, and I won't explore that now. My research at the time revealed that a visionary company is six times more profitable that one without a vision, and no visionary company succeeds without core values, lived and expressed by the people doing the work. Top-down, bottom-up, side-to-side.

What do we mean by "core value?"

A core value is one of a few closely held convictions that you actively express and do not abandon just because things are hard or the audience is hostile. You deeply believe it and stick to it. And you can't fulfill your vision - your intention, if you like - without core values.

So what are the few things that you believe deeply and do not want to abandon no matter what challenges you face because these values are deeply a part of you?

Perhaps you know them, and live them. Perhaps you know them and don’t live them. Perhaps you are not sure. They are worth thinking about, and worth expressing in your life if it is to become the life you want.

Understand the Commitment.

It is in some respects easy enough to declare an intention and lay claim to sacred beliefs, but the fulfillment of these requires resources - time, effort, expertise - and an understanding not only of
your course of action but of all the known elements required to "get there." 

It is not useful to declare an intention to be fit, and a belief in a healthy lifestyle, if you are not willing to do - and not do - the things required. We can all think of things we say we want to do but are unwilling seriously to undertake because of the commitment required. 

Before I went sailing alone in the ocean for the first time, I realized how much I had to learn, how much preparation the boat and I both required, and how the effort to prepare us would draw not only on all the

resources that I had but required that I add more abilities and understanding to my effort before it would become credible - or even safe - to undertake. 

As an old sailor warned me then, "The sea lies in wait for the unwary, but she stalks the reckless." It can be reckless to set off on a journey for which you are truly unprepared.

Act to Be.

Those of you who studied French philosophy might recognize this as the existential challenge. I heard it first clearly from a somewhat infamous land developer I interviewed in Hawaii after I arrived there
after sailing in alone from San Francisco.

His name was David Murdock. He was a controversial figure who had overcome considerable family tragedy as a young man and now was building hotels on Lanai amid objections that he was ruining one way of life in favor of another. I was interviewing him for a business story for the San Francisco Examiner for whom I worked then and he made a case for action that stuck with me.

"It's not bad to have an ego," Murdock said, "It's bad to have no ego. You understand this because you identified something you wanted and needed to do and you did it. You sailed alone in the ocean for 25 days to get here, and you got here, and now it is part of you forever. That is the lesson. Act to be." 

As it happened this decision I had made to sail alone to Hawaii and back at that moment in my life changed the course of it. It led me away from newspaper writing, started me on a book that took me 20 years to finish and also into scenario thinking as an business-like approach to uncertainty. This turned out to be a fascinating way to use possible stories about the future to change the story of the present – how you understand it and how you act on the possibilities before you. 

Scenario thinking, which was a perfect practice in many ways for a journalist - created an unexpected career that brought me to Morgan Stanley for one of the most extraordinary decades on Wall Street, and finally - or so far – here. As a consultant and writer and sometimes speaker – and father of three from two prior marriages - I am still trying to live certain ideas in my life to become the person I had in mind.

Or perhaps I should say, “have in mind” because intention is something we are expressing now, whether we are doing so clearly and intentionally or not. We are becoming as we behave. Intention is our guide, a compass of our own design. Perhaps if you accept this metaphor you should examine what seems to attract you most essentially.

These four principles are easy enough to remember and say aloud but challenging to apply. They are valuable insofar as you make them about you and your life, day-to-day, week- to-week, personally and professionally:

Clarify the Intention. Define the Sacred. Understand the Commitment. Act to Be.

It is up to you.

What Barry Bonds Shrank From (The Truth?)

A trip this past weekend for a book-signing party in San Francisco, city of my post-youth growing up,
brought a flood of associations and memories and in this case a brush with the famous and the infamous.

The party included a predictably amusing encounter with one Lance Williams, the gifted investigative journalist (and co-author with Mark Fainaru-Wada of Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroid Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports) with whom I worked as an editor when the San Francisco Examiner was still a viable afternoon paper owned by the Hearst Corporation.

Lance broke the early stories about Bonds and steroid use. Bonds was just convicted last week of obstruction of justice while being acquitted of perjury. So the jury concluded Barry did not lie to the Grand Jury about whether he knew he was taking steroids. 

This I found fascinating and a bit disillusioning. You mean after all this, the court process cannot establish that Bonds was taking steroids and he knew it and he lied about it?

Lance could only look at me and grin as I suggested a line of questioning that I thought Bonds should have faced.

Prosecutor: Mr. Bonds, when did you notice that your testicles were shrinking?

Bonds: (Unintelligible)

Prosecutor: Had you ever experienced shrunken testicles, or had reason to think that shrinking testicles were normal for an athlete of your age and ability?

Bonds: Uh, could you repeat that question?

Prosecutor: Let me put it this way. As you became more readily angered by small things, as your head and other parts of you grew larger while other, arguably important parts of you grew smaller, did you wonder why? Did you wonder about those injections that Gary Anderson gave you?

Bonds: Uh, I never really thought about it.

Prosecutor: Let the record show that Mr. Bonds is now apparently telling the truth.

Bonds: (Grunt.)

Prosecutor: Am I right in thinking you did not want to take the stand in your own defense because you felt you might incriminate yourself?

Bonds: Yes, I think so.

Prosecutor: So be it. 

Of course, that is how it was. Bonds declined to take the stand in his own defense. We are left with a great(?) athlete thoroughly besmirched. His records and reputation are in tatters, and a jury was unable to conclude without a shadow of doubt that he knew he was being injected with steroids - despite the visible changes in his body and personality, to which Kimberly Bell, a former intimate testified. (For derision Youtube-style, see also this.) 

The jury had to decide whether Bell was telling the truth or doctoring the facts to hurt a former lover from whom she'd unhappily split. Jurors also had to conclude whether Greg Anderson, who has gone to jail rather than testify, really injected Bonds with steroids as Anderson apparently was overheard to say on a locker-room tape made in 2003.

One might ask: who cares, in the end? Barry Bonds has been punished, betrayed by his deal with the Devil. Whoever once thought him a miracle hitter now knows otherwise, and he can take his place with Jose Canseco and Jason Giambi and others who juiced to improve their performance, got caught at it and either confessed or lied or kept quiet.

As someone with a 12-year-old son who plays a good game of baseball and dreams about being in the Big Leagues some day, I would have liked all the Bondsian facts to come out in open testimony, so that young players know what is really at stake here. A larger head (Bonds needed an increased hat size from 2002 to 2003, the clubhouse manager testified) is one thing, but smaller testicles and waning sexual ability are something else (this is perhaps a male view) and as warnings go, I prefer this one to be clear and well known.  

I am not suggesting that injecting Human Growth Hormone (HGH) would somehow be okay if procreative equipment were not compromised. It's a question of which bodily effect is more likely to scare young players away from their own potential performance-drug experiments in a highly pressurized and competitive society.

So Lance and I had a bit of a laugh - ironic and bittersweet though it felt - about questions that were never asked and never answered because, some might feel, they did not need to be. That is, unless you believe Bonds committed perjury before the Grand Jury, as accused, and should have been convicted of it, given the evidence against him.

Was justice achieved here? Maybe so. Whatever is left of Bonds - the man and the reputation, greater or smaller -  is the man he will live with, with full knowledge all his own. 

Does he still have a shot at Baseball's Hall of Fame? Does anyone care?

Do the Next Right Thing Right

A joke my father once brought home on a little poster from his office said:

"Keep your eye on the ball, your shoulder to the wheel and your ear to the ground - now try to work in that position!"

It comes to mind amid further news of the Japan quake and nuclear aftermath, Libyan fly-overs and Yemeni revolution. Oh, and the US Congress is struggling to address entitlement reform as our fiscal balance spins further out of control, and...

As much news as there is in the world demanding our attention, our lives are still immediately in front of us - children to raise (my 12-yer-old son needs a guitar teacher), relationships to tend (tend them, keep them happy; get over that one, find another), and the logistics of daily life (someone just hit the car!). 

And just yesterday a potential Florida client who owns newspaper properties pointed out that all the information on the Internet, as alluring as it may be, doesn't necessarily contain the answer or insight you need, if you can find it. Along the way you will spend time you probably don't have being distracted by things that don't matter - or are simply wrong.

All of this served to remind me of a principle that sailing in rough conditions taught me: when things get ugly, slow down and do the right next thing right.

It is simple enough to say, and not as hard to do as one might think. It means bringing the far horizon near, and focusing the mind, eye, hand and attention on the thing at hand that must be done next, and right, before the next right thing can be addressed. 

This has the effect of slowing down a turbulent situation and clearing away distractions that at a distance may loom as threatening or out of control - or both.

The good news is that there is always a "next thing" that has to be done right, and doing it right is worth all of one's attention, particularly if errors will be costly (even dangerous).

Slow down and live, you might say.

 



The Quake That Shakes Us All

I was asked to be on a 6 a.m. call this week to London that was cancelled because the European corporate client suddenly had to deal with Japan, its understandable workplace instability amid spreading fears of meltdown and contagion. I had not expected either the call or a related major meeting in Europe to be cancelled, but I was not surprised, given current volatilities around the world.

How prepared are people for the bigger reverberations of major events, and how to deal with them intelligently, of which the first step might be anticipation and planning?

I confess I have not yet read Kenneth Posner’s book, Stalking the Black Swan: Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility, although I think it advisable for anyone who applies scenario thinking and other basic risk-management techniques to the rising uncertainties of our time. Posner's attempt, according to reviews, is to mix quantifiable and computer calculation with human instinct, experience and intuition. A worthy goal worth thinking about, and actually trying to do.

(Number me among those readers who attempted Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan and put it down before the end, partly because at a certain point before page 300 I thought I grasped the thesis well enough and because, frankly, Taleb is a writer who does not know why he would use one word if he could use 20. Of those, more than half will be about Taleb's superior view of uncertainty, about which he appears to be uncertain not at all.)

As a longtime scenario practitioner, I have an aversion to certainties of all kinds, partly because it is always the unexpected that changes the way we think and subsequently must behave. Humans must live and work in a constant tension between confidence about what they think they know and flexibility in the face of incomplete information, and sheer ignorance. But how to identify what you do not know well enough and should consider?

Enter Japan's earthquake and unfolding disaster. Were quakes of this kind uncertain? No, they were inevitable (and still are.) Were those plants "safe?" No, they never were, located on the geological "Ring of Fire" that promises serious quakes from here to eternity.

The quake's timing, however, was uncertain, and also the extremity of its effects. We must now all reconsider whether:

- A nuclear cloud will get into the atmosphere and increase cancer risks everywhere

- Anti-nuclear movements will extend globally as the world comprehends that it potentially shares in every other country's nuclear risks

- Nuclear plants should continue to answer the world's energy appetite, given what we now know, and know that we know

- Recalculation of insurance liabilities will render nuclear energy just too costly

- Makers of potassium iodide pills are suddenly a valuable stock investment (Or are you too late?)

I mean this last only partly facetiously. It says something about positive pricing effects in negative macro conditions.

Vital lessons may be taken from Japan's experience - which, pray, does not continue to multiple meltdowns and swathes of dead areas of Japan from nuclear contamination. One lesson might be in the approach that executives and managers take to major "uncertainties" that are likely to unfold at some level and at some point reasonably soon. Don't we know what some of them are?

As much as a U.S. Treasury-market collapse, Middle East (Libya, Saudi-Bahrain) disruptions, oil prices above $120/bbl, rapid global inflation, European financial meltdown and China disruptions are known to be real and proximate possibilities, many corporate and public policy leaders have not really taken the time to think these through. 

Scenario thinking continues to be an invaluable tool in the risk-manager's toolbox because it allows for the unthinkable to be more easily thought and for the unspeakable to be spoken in ways that may be heard and acted upon in time. Examples are many of risks that were contemplated with scenarios and where subsequent actions saved millions or produced strategic options that were acted on profitably. Lives might well be saved as well.

Maybe Japan's quake has shaken the rest of the world enough to reconsider how prepared we are, and are not, on some of these fronts. "What if?" remains a powerful question for managing future risk, but only if you really ask it - the right way with the right people around you - and think it through.

Then you must act.

 

Out of Your Own Way

A reader last week responded to my blog "Be Your Own Coach" with a reference to Cognitive Therapy - an approach to addressing negative ways of thinking that are often implicated in certain forms of depression. This prompted me to look up the term and I followed a number of threads that I found quite useful.
The reader had also reminded me of lessons I learned some years ago while sailing alone in the ocean, when the only therapist aboard is oneself.
I did not know at the time of that journey that I was suffering anything clinically called depression, which I would discover later in life. Depression can have many root causes, both genetic and experiential, and often reflects a dilemma that one cannot solve. One such dilemma might have contributed to mine, about which I then knew very little. No one had ever told me that melancholy, or deeper, darker states of feeling are not man's natural way of being.
What I did know was that a strange and uncomfortable sense of emotional distress could creep into the cabin with me. Call it a dull whine, a high or low frequency background noise, a trembling in the system that might be associated with nails on a blackboard, or strange footsteps. Something creepy, but more deeply rooted. A slipping downhill with an uncertain endpoint, not good.
Part of sailing alone is knowing that there is no one around to help, so the experience teaches you to be your own best friend, even if that has not been your habit. (I had learned by then that mechanical self-steering devices for single-handed sailors, on which they rely heavily, are often named after their mothers. Need we wonder why?)
I discovered quickly in the ocean alone that the background noise or whatever it was could deepen to a point where I would not feel like doing much of anything, even those things required to keep the boat balanced and steady under existing sea conditions. And it did not take long to learn that this was a bad situation to develop, and I could not afford to let it happen.

I found I could intervene in that sense of slipping downhill. It was actually as simple as taking action - early - to do something to make me feel better. Make a cup of hot chocolate and drink it slowly. Concentrate on the pleasure and comfort it brings. Read a chapter in Patrick O'Brien's sea novels. Revel in that world. Play a favored aria from La Boheme loudly on my little boom box. Sing along. Possibly take a nap - but be careful not to take the system down when something needs attention, or was about to.
All this came back with the reader's note last week and served as a healthy reminder:
If that bad feeling is coming on, take care of yourself in simple ways that you know will work. You are the first one to get the warning, and the one who will benefit the most.

Be Your Own Coach

An old friend who is struggling through a dark period in life (recent death of a cherished parent) is trying to climb back into the light, so to speak, and called to talk things over. I found myself suggesting something that I realized I would do well to listen to myself.
In Little League coaching, the suggesting rule of thumb is 5-1, positive to negative. Say 5 positive things to a player for each correcting or critical observation you make. 
It works. They learn faster, play better, have more fun. 
I learned this a few years ago when I coached my son's team and found it is not my natural way. I am quite good at spotting what is "wrong" and suggesting what should be done to "improve." 
I was raised by two parents who watched quite carefully and commented on any shortcoming, error or misstep they saw in their children. There might be a bonus for exceptional performance in the form of praise or rewards  (or sometimes just an absence of criticism).  It often seemed that love itself was conditional on good behavior (and to some degree on good manners and general appearance.) It certainly wasn't enough in my family to simply be. 
I sometimes have to fight this now in myself and in the way I treat my own children (and others). Being truly positive is a challenge. The negative is often trying to find its way in, as if it were just as "good" to see what is wrong as to see what is good. 

It isn't.

So in this spirit, I encouraged my friend, be on guard against negative thoughts and feelings about life around you, and yourself. Try to outnumber them 5-1 with positive ideas. It's a way to become a better coach to yourself.

You may find you play better, learn more and have more fun. 

And tomorrow is another day.