Business | The Direction of Intention

See The Story

Posted on November 27, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

628. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I haven’t a thought in my head. It’s late and I just finished teaching a class on story to entrepreneur’s preparing to make pitches to investors. They’ve created apps and need capital to fulfill their business vision. I helped them to stop thinking of their apps as “things” and to start thinking of them as “motion:” a pitch is a story of a yearning meeting an obstacle, just like any story they see on a screen. Yearning initiates motion. They were amazed when their focus shifted from selling a product – a focus that limits – to the recognition that telling a story always opens possibilities – a focus that expands. Motion.

It is funny where life takes you. Not so long ago I was a pariah to the business community; I am an artist and, therefore, non-essential. It occurs to me that I spent a long time being a pariah, going where I knew I would not be welcome, saying what I knew no one could hear. Apparently I am clearing some karma or I’m an odd sort of masochist! At this late hour I can’t even remember why I thought it was a good idea so long ago to go into businesses hocking my story wares. I knew I could see what they could not and what I saw was useful and beautiful (I’d never use the “b” word in business, it makes their ninnies twist and eyes bulge). I’d attempt to get them to look through the lens of story and they’d roll their eyes.

So you can imagine how delightful and existentially curious it was for me to live long enough to witness the swing of the pendulum: my business pals are now routinely asking me in to help them learn to thrive in ambiguity. Tonight a class full of MBA candidates listened to me like I held the key to obscene wealth (I do, by-the-way). The key to better business is story. Consider this: a world of absolutes needs stasis: black and white thinking is useful to folks that refuse to change. So is a hierarchy. In our world, where change is the only constant, it is useful to know how to shape shift, it is essential to learn to dance with what is there, not what we think should be there. Assumptions are routinely popped in this fast moving stream. Hierarchies need a bottom-up energy or they move to slow to be useful. Motion, shifting forms, ambiguity.

Prior to class I went to the Apple store to pick up a new printer and the man that helped me told me the most difficult (and rewarding) part of his job was staying on top of the changes. “Things are obsolete the moment they hit the shelves,” he said. “I’m constantly learning and adjusting to the next innovation.” I wish I’d recorded him so I might play this fundamental insight to the public schools so they might recognize the mismatch. This economy is not their grandfather’s Oldsmobile.

Tonight, a student in the class said, “Seeing our app as a story has made me realize, much to my surprise, how human our work is.” I smiled a crooked tooth smile. She hit the nail on the head: “product” is anonymous; story is personal. Business is not business anymore.

Filed under: Art, Business, Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Think Twice Before Parking

Posted on July 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

496. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Years ago I consulted with some financial guys. They wanted to know about story. They wanted to know how to tell a better story. Before I could teach them about story I needed to know the story they were currently telling. My friends call me a “circular” thinker so I imagine outside eyes would have seen a brilliant comedy routine: several “linear” financial thinkers trying to squeeze my circular mind through their two-dimensional picture. I knit my brows so many times they were bruised. When I am older I will have deep furrows cut in the field of my forehead from that difficult day.
Although I had to squeeze my thoughts across the chasm I was able to finally grasp their story. Here’s what I learned: Money needs to move to grow. Our entire system is designed to entice the average Joe to “park” their money in a bank or a 401k or an insurance product. Most of us still imagine that our money goes into an impenetrable vault; the money goes into the vault and is safe, secure and the nice banker/broker will pay us a tiny percentage to keep our money parked in their vault. That image is a carefully crafted illusion to make us feel secure and grateful for the return on our parking job.

Their job is to make the money move. And they make it move a lot. There isn’t a vault, there is no parking lot; there’s a racetrack. They make the money make lots and lots of money because it never sits still. They will make your money grow 7 to 10 times larger than the amount you parked in their lot-illusion. But wait, there’s more: even it they lose the money they have a fail-safe built into the program; it’s not their money being lost, it’s yours. They were very serious when they said to me, “You never work with your own money.”

Here’s the core of their story, the story beneath the story. It is finance 101: their job is to keep you and me on one side of the debt line (we pay the interest) with them on the other side of the debt line (they receive the interest). They need to create debt for us to pay (think credit card, mortgage, student loan). As they said, “Debt is not a bad thing, it just depends upon which side of the debt you are standing.” That’s why crashes like the 2008 disaster made money, lots and lots of money for some well positioned financial guys: They created lots of good debt and it wasn’t their life savings that they gambled away. They play a game in which they win either way and, in the story they told me, are careful not to consider the consequences for others.

I was not much help that day. I couldn’t get over the notion that it was not a better story that they needed but a better intention, perhaps a bigger conscience, or maybe even a better understanding of the word community.

Filed under: Business, Perspective, Story, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Truly Powerful People (435)

Posted on May 18, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

435.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.</e

Last night Horatio and attended fundraising pitch for an independent movie. Horatio is a filmmaker and was invited to attend the pitch so I tagged along. I like stepping into unknown cultures. Both Horatio and I were underdressed in a room of suits and slacks. His shorts and flip-flops accompanied by my jeans and painter’s clogs made us curiosities at the cheese tray. We were not careful with our wine – spilling held no danger to our clothes – and unlike the real investors we exhausted our quota of laughter in the first 3 minutes; we were forced to borrow laughter from the others unused laughter bank. I think we left it fairly empty. We had fun.

The screenwriter/director of the film told us of his background and qualifications. We saw clips from his past projects, actors read portions of the screenplay and then the executive producer made the pitch and gave us some idea of the return on our investment if we bought in and if the film made money. Horatio and I nodded our heads as if we had the $50,000.00 to buy in and were seriously considering it. “Hmmm,” I said. “Yessss,” Horatio wrinkled his brow and nodded; a mixed message. I was tempted to roll my program like a telescope and look through it but refrained. This was a serious artist trying to finance his next project and telescope antics seemed disruptive. Had he been a real estate developer I would not have hesitated. Peering through my program/telescope I would have said, “Those numbers seem awfully small!”

Horatio is a tall drink of water and I am not. I teased that we were like George and Lenny and he said, “If I start picking up mice slap me.” If I slapped high I might catch his shoulder. He held a plate of cheese so I scanned the floor just to be sure. Mice can climb and I was feeling more and more like I was in the movie and not the pitch for one. Anything is possible.

We knew it was time to go when the nice young man, the intern, sauntered over to learn who we were. Horatio had credentials and I opted for mysterious. I can be pleasant and obscure, saying nothing with too many words, though I liked the intern and asked what he dreamed of doing. He said, “When I graduate I am going to Japan to spend two months in a Buddhist temple, then I’m going to spend 3 months in India before I go to Rio.” He told me that, at 18 years of age, he was aware that he saw the world through Western eyes. He wanted to shake things up a bit. “Why wait for graduation?” I asked. He didn’t understand but neither did I at 18. I was tempted to give him my telescope but thought better of it – he’ll be better served by learning to roll his own telescope. Anything is possible.

Filed under: Business, Random, Truly Powerful People | 4 Comments »

Truly Powerful People (420)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

420.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I spent the day in an organizational training designed to help people in office settings have difficult conversations. It is a formula, a training from a box, good for any context. It outlines specific communications steps to prevent emotion from overwhelming the conversation. An essential step is to distinguish between “fact” and “story.” The facilitator was excellent and guided us through exercises meant to help us separate our facts from our stories, our emotion from our intention. We practiced our skills in scripted role plays and wrestled with questions like, “I wonder how this would work in an actual crisis or when facing an angry co-worker?”

Our facilitator was very personable, relational, and taught through story and I wondered how I would experience the training with a less capable trainer. Although the information was useful in the abstract I couldn’t help but wonder if it was training from another time – something that had great application in an industrial world, a world where relationships are commodities, but might not be as useful in the age of story (information). It is predicated on a false premise: the processes are rational/sequential, grounded in acronyms and in a hot moment the rational mind leaves the building. It flees. It runs for the hills. The reptile brain is left to navigate the discomfort. The training is meant to make relationship efficient through application of formula (which negates relationship in the moment; the formula pulls focus from the person). It’s built on the premise of separation.

The previous day I had a lengthy discussion that, at least partially, was a pursuit of the intersection of art and science. I wondered when we separated these two disciplines. Leonardo would not have recognized the fence that we’ve erected between them. I suspect we tore them apart at the same time we separated head from heart, mind from spirit, and cast emotion and intuition into the closet.

At lunch Mark reminded me that EO Wilson has spent his life trying to bridge the gap between biology and the social sciences and both camps are firmly in resistance. I joked that the resistance comes from an obvious admission we’d have to make: that ant colonies are as complex as human colonies; no university-educated human wants to admit that an ant is his or her equal. After lunch I wondered if ants attended trainings to learn how to better work together in a hot situation but something tells me they have that one already figured out.

Filed under: Business, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Truly Powerful People (416)

Posted on April 29, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

416.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Sylvia and I talked this afternoon about a project and our conversation sparked a return to an old topic: place your focus on creating a great process and the product will take care of itself. You’d be amazed at how many organizations hire consultants to pull employees out of their working environment, give workshops about team building and expect the employees to return to their work and magically be a better team. Sylvia has a magic wand and we had a good laugh imagining the corporate change fairy dinging people on the head for instant “team-ness.” Team is not an outcome; it is a day-to-day process. Team is a relationship and relationship is not an outcome, it is a process that happens in the little choices we make together each day. The same is true of happiness. Or living with purpose. Or peace.

Here is a list of some of the other relationships that we’ve mistaken for outcomes: business, education, leadership, management, administration, governance, marriage, friendship, art, worship, nation, and community. These grand words are forms of relationship and are not achievable: they are created and recreated every day in the little practices that we practice together. They are the stories we tell and live each day through the actions we take, the agreements we live with each other.

We know how to make the trains run on time and we know how to produce stuff but seem utterly inept at being together in a generative, life-giving way. Our focus is glued on the outcome while things like meaning, happiness, and higher purpose are found in the relationships we create in the process of making stuff.

It seems so simple and that is probably why it is so difficult to see and embrace. So we seek for an answer. We hire consultants or watch the news or buy self-help books– seeking something or someone that will provide the answer. It is not until we surrender the need for an answer that we can fully taste the life that we are living now. Turn off the television, put down your book. Look at who might be in the room with you or in the next cubicle. What are you practicing together?

If we want to create something else, we need practice something else. And that implies a certain amount of responsibility and a new understanding of power created with others. Be your own magic wand and see what amazing relationships you are capable of creating.

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Truly Powerful People (368)

Posted on March 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

368.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I had a conversation today with Sylvia and many bulbs lit above my noggin. Things I have been chewing on for a few years came into clarity. We were talking about teams, particularly training people to work as more effective teams.

I have been saying to no audience in particular that “Time is money” is an antiquated industrial era notion; today relationship is money. That is not some woo-woo notion. Read any business magazine and count the number of times you see the word “nimble” or “responsive” or “flexible” or “fast pace of change.” These are the words and phrase used to describe the characteristics of a successful business; these are the words used to describe the business needs of the day.

In the old world the structure of a business was the management hierarchy, business as control. Control models slow you down, they restrict energy and innovation because that is what they were designed to do. Nimble is anathema to the culture of control.

What I realized today, what has been right in front of my face for ages, is that the structure of a nimble business exists within the relationships of a team. The structure of a team is concrete, it is in the agreements they make and hold and cultivate together. Nimble is a team that knows what they serve and why they serve it (they are oriented according to what they bring). Nimble is a team that can adjust and respond to rapid change; it is a form of flocking behavior: simple relationships that are capable of complex movement. Nimble is possible when the team holds itself responsible, when the individuals that make up the team hold themselves responsible, when accountability (one of my least favorite business terms) is personal and does not require any form of accountability police (otherwise known as management) to hold the line.

Relationship, carefully created around specific agreements, is the structure of contemporary business. Nimble is possible when powerful people empower people.

Filed under: Business, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

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