Ichak Kalderon Adizes's Blog: Insights Blog, page 41

Video: In Search of My Personal God

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Attitude for Mutual Trust and Respect

Mutual Trust and Respect have always played a central role in my thinking and, of course, in many of my books.

 

The reason is simple: They provide the compelling underpinnings that all systems need in order to be successful. And by all systems I mean every kind from an individual (in which case it becomes Self Respect and Self Trust), a family, a business, a society, or even a macro system (meaning a nation-state). I would suggest that the concept applies to the global world as well.

 

It behooves us then to know how to create and nourish MT&R. If we fail to focus on Trust and Respect, neglect to work on them continuously,  our system—individual, business organization, society—will be eroded by change.

 

That becomes serious.

 

Why?

 

Because it is important that we place change at the forefront of our thinking. Change is not just any force, but can be destructive enough to cause disintegration. Simply stated, it is a force that generates entropy.

 

So, to keep any (and every) system healthy, integration…what I call negative entropy…is required. And that is what MT&R does: it integrates.

 

In my books I have elaborated on ways  to build MT&R . And at the Adizes Institute we have created a program built on four factors that help develop MT&R.

 

They are : 1) common vision and values; 2) functional structure; 3) collaborative decision making process; and 4) mature people.

 

I know, the concept of mature people seems out of place amidst “functional structure” and “decision making processes.”  But bear with me.

 

In my book How to Solve the Mismanagement Crisis (available www.adizes.com) I pointed out the essential role that mature managers play in solving a variety of crises. When you finished analyzing organizational structures and departmental strategies you still were left with the problem of which men and women were best able to carry out the necessary changes. Invariably, after citing requisite skills and experience, we realized the necessary factor was a human being we considered mature.

 

And so we came up with nine factors which my research showed mature people possessed: 1)  performs all roles of management at least to the threshold level; 2) knows his /her strengths and weaknesses; 3)accepts feedback from others; 4)possesses a balanced view of him/herself; 5 ) understands who He/she is; 6)  identifies excellence in others where he / she is weak; 7) recognizes the judgment of others in areas where his/her knowledge is limited ( controlled ego ); 8) resolves conflicts constructively; 9 ) creates a learning environment.

 

Is that all?

 

No. I just realized he/she must also have the right attitude.

 

Here are some interesting quotes I discovered in a yoga class that caught my attention. They seem to me to reflect the right attitude .

 

I do not know the author of the first quote. If anyone recognizes the source, please let me know.

 

Here it is:

 

Live without pretending

Love without depending

Listen without defending

Speak without offending.

 

Here is another one:

 

Give up speed

Give up greed

Be suspicious of urgency

and

Be curious, not critical

 Jim Mott

 

You can be rich by having more than you need,

Or

by needing less than you have.”

Jim Mott

And my favorite:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to accept the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.”

Reinhold Niebuhr

How about this one:

“The thing that upsets people is not what happens but what they think it means.”

Epictetus

And the last two for now :

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make drunk with power.

-Charles A. Beard

and :

“Though the wheels grind slowly, they grind exceedingly fine. “

-Charles A. Beard

It will take time and more work to construct a theory out of these quotes. For now, I hope you find them helpful as you explore ways to develop MT&R.

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

How I Found God?

Delivered at the AMICI Convention, July 26  2013

 

Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to speak about my beliefs and my search for a personal God.

 

I applaud the courage of the organizing committee to invite a management consultant to speak on a subject so far from his body of knowledge.

 

I am a management consultant, and my specialty is assisting organizations so that they meet their goals more effectively. Quite a few religious organizations, especially the Catholic church, use my managerial theories and practices to improve how they develop and nurture their congregations…even though the study of religion is not my field of inquiry.

 

I was not even raised in a religious family. But, I have been a seeker for much of my life, searching for some kind of  meaning both in my personal and my professional life. And in the process, I found my God. In my own way.

 

I appreciate your willingness to hear my story. Thank you for inviting me to share with you my personal spiritual journey.

 

I thank you for your trust.

******

 

 

One often hears people say, “There is only one God. The God of the Christians, Jews, and Muslims is the same God. We should all live in peace, because we all worship the same God.”

 

One day, during meditation, I wondered whether I agreed with this statement.

 

The God of the Muslims orders His followers to kill infidels.

The Christian God, like Zeus, has a child with a human being. The Jewish God is jealous and controlling: He orders His believers around, telling them what to do and what not to do, and threatens them with a long list of punishments and disasters if they disobey Him.

 

I realize I am interpreting the Holy books literally, but still, are these three Gods the same?

 

I do not know, but I do know one thing: none of these Gods strikes a responsive chord in me.

 

But I do believe in God. Who is my God then and how did I find Him?

*****

 

Two years ago, I joined the Sahaj Marg meditation community. It is based in India, with ashrams worldwide. I joined for a simple reason: I wanted to learn how to meditate.  I believed it would be helpful for my work and my state of being. Perhaps it would even bring me some moments of serenity.

 

I learned how to meditate and came away with much more than I expected.

 

I found my God.

 

Let me explain.

 

This meditation starts off the morning with a prayer that says, in part: “Oh, Master, You are the true goal of human life, for all we are is slaves to wishes that bar our (spiritual) advancement.”

 

Let me analyze the prayer.

 

The “Master” is God. We pray to be united with Him.

 

And what is it we want to be united with?  What does God represent?

 

LOVE. Total, absolute, unconditional LOVE.

 

And what is love?

 

Unity. Integration. Harmony.

 

The prayer basically says that we all strive to live in a state of love. In harmony. That is the true goal of our existence. But our wishes and desires enslave us, impede our ability to experience love. In essence, they hold us back from living in harmony, from becoming one with God.

 

How?

 

By reinforcing dissatisfaction and unrest.

 

What are our wishes, desires, and expectations but expressions of unhappiness with what we have right now. We want and expect something else, something absent in our life.

 

The wishes become a source of disintegration within ourselves. But, it is the expectations that separate us from God.

 

Why?

 

Because expectations presume controllability.  Expectations assume that we can control events and achieve our desires (which often are mistakenly translated into our needs). We mistakenly believe that power is in our hands.

 

Death is probably the ultimate example of how this way of thinking fails us. We wish someone we loved had not died. We prayed. Dutifully. But our wishes and prayers were in vain. Our beloved—friend, parent, partner, offspring—died.

 

We are upset and angry. What has God done to us? Why has He failed us? There is the expectation that our wishes and prayers should have been able to control even life and death!

 

Many holocaust survivors denounced God for this reason: How could He countenance such tragedies? Such evil?

 

When we expect, we want to control God.

And this is not the way to find Him.

 

Wishes, desires and expectation, distance us, undermine our chances of experiencing love and finding and becoming united with God, the ultimate manifestation of LOVE. They enslave us.

 

Enslave? Yes.

 

Because wishes, wants, and expectations are inevitably a moving target. They are temporary and ever-changing. We may satisfy ourselves for a short period of time. But then a new wish or desire emerges.

 

It never stops. Thus, the enslavement. We think: “If I had a million dollars, I would be happy.” But when that wish is achieved we now desire two million. And when we possess two million dollars, do we not crave five million?

 

We will stop being slaves when we are free of wanting and wishing and expecting.

 

Does that mean we should  have no wants or wishes or expectations? Such a path would lead to an end of progress.

Of course not. It is important that we continue to strive; that  progress not come to a halt.

 

What should drive us is reality; “what is,” rather than our wishes and our ego. When we go shopping, should we shop for the things we want, which have no end, or should we shop for the things we need, which are finite?

 

When I paint, compose, create, should I do so because I want fame and riches, or because I need to express myself artistically in order to be who I am?

 

So?

 

Let go.  Stop wishing and expecting. Surrender to God and His wishes. Accept life as is. Let go of the ego.

 

Surrendering to God is what makes us free.

 

Believing that we are free to wish, want and expect, is what  enslaves us.

 

One brief example: The rejection of God’s will in the form of an unwillingness to surrender, expecting instead to be in control of life, had its manifestation in, among other places, political ideology, namely communism.

 

Communists rejected God.

 

Communists, at the turn of the 20th century, believed they could plan and control everything.  Communists behaved as though they were the 20th century’s replacement for God. They would take control and provide everything. We only needed to respect and obey and surrender to them and their system, in place of God.

 

It was with a certain irony that some of the leading former communist writers and thinkers of the last century ultimately   became critics of communism. Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Richard Wright and Andre Gide among others, published a book about their experiences with the communist political system which they called “The God That Failed.”

Let me repeat: When we refuse to surrender, we consciously, or by default, reject His existence.

 

The first condition for finding God then is to stop believing that we are in control.

 

Stop expecting. Surrender. Stop wishing and accept His will.

 

*****

OK, to find God, we need to surrender to His will.

 

Ah,  but there is a catch.

 

To find Him, we need to surrender. But in order to  surrender, we  need to have found Him first. How can we surrender to Somebody  we have not found yet?

 

Is this the religious form of Catch 22?

 

The solution: In order to find Him, we have to start with the belief that there is God.

 

If we do not believe, we will not seek, and if we do not seek, we will never find Him.

 

Ok, so,  where is God?

 

****

 

I believe that all religions share the same perspective: namely, that God dwells in our heart.

 

And how do we find Him there?

 

In meditation, when we calm our mind and surrender to His will, our heart will speak, and we will experience LOVE.

 

We will experience God’s presence by finding love in our heart.

 

Listening to the heart via meditation and experiencing God’s presence  is not a new discovery.

 

Come to think of it, did not all religions start with a message from God via meditation?

 

Moses went to the mountain and meditated for forty days and nights before he received the Ten Commandments. Jesus meditated too. Buddha found enlightenment meditating under the tree.

 

I suspect that is how all religions started: With the heart. It is only over time that the heart was replaced by a “manual,” that is, the various religious books with instructions interpreting God’s will.

 

Following the “manual” blindly represents to me the negation of surrendering to God, because in that case we do not listen to our heart anymore.  On the contrary, it is as if we took control of our destiny by just assuming that all we need to do is follow “the manual.”

 

We need to go back to the essence:  Listen to the heart rather than follow “the manual” blindly, whether it is the Old or the New Testament or the Quran.

 

Read it? Yes. Study it? Yes. But listen to the inner voice of our heart. That is my belief.

 

******

 

When we listen to our mind we encounter a debate: pros and cons on any issue. When our heart speaks, there are no questions. No doubts. No disagreements. No cost-benefit analysis. We are complete. There is peace. We experience LOVE. Or as Gurudev, a yogi master says: “When you resist nothing, you automatically experience love.” And since love is God, you experience His presence.

 

Let me now rephrase the Sahaj Marg prayer in its totality and replace God or Master with the word LOVE:

 

“LOVE, you are the true goal of human life, for we are merely slaves to wishes that bar our capability to LOVE.  You are the only power that can make us advance (spiritually).”

 

Our goal is to love and be loved. Expectations undermine our efforts. And only love can make the difference; only love may change us.

 

And when we experience LOVE and find peace, we are on our way to finding GOD, because LOVE is GOD. Total harmony. Total integration. Thus, the One and Only. Thus the power.

 

****

 

For a long time, I could not accept this way of thinking and behaving.  I was unable to let go and connect with my heart. I trusted my mind. Not my heart.

 

Listening to the heart to me meant losing control . The mind was different. I believed that I was in control of my mind.

 

How misguided.

 

Are we in control of our mind or is it in control of us? Maybe our mind is controlled by wishes implanted by others. By people we want to please.  Or by the media that influences us with advertising and promotions and headlines. Or maybe our mind is ruled by an ego we do not control. It is not solely under our control.

 

How false this world of ours is. The world of non-believers.

 

When we calm our mind and surrender our ego, give up expectations based on a false sense of control,  we are ready to hear the voice emanating from our heart. We will find a kind of peace, a peace of mind. We will then cultivate a sense of gratitude for whatever we have in our life, for better or worse. We will  experience love.  We will experience God.

 

Is that all?

 

No.

****

Sitting in a cave, or seminary, meditating, listening to our heart , experiencing love, is all well and good.  These are all prerequisites for finding God.

 

But we must also share our love. A song is not a song unless heard. And Love is not love unless shared. The more we express our love in action the closer, we are connected to GOD. We have to love others. And not just other human beings .

 

Do we love the air we breathe? The water we drink? The people we live among?

 

Do we love the sea, the whales, the birds, the forest, the city, the country we live in?

 

If so, what are we doing about it?

 

Love needs to be expressed in action: To make a better world.  That is what mystic Judaism called Tikkun Olam. ( Hebrew for Improve the world ).

 

To find God, we need to express our love with loving action.

And when we embrace, and are embraced in turn by this way of being, we will find God everywhere. In the smile of a child that has finally been fed. In the whispering of the leaves on a tree that is surviving a natural disaster. In the gratitude of people who are finally feeling safe from war and danger. We will find God everywhere and all the time . Because we opened our heart. Because we listened to our heart and accepted God.

 

To me, to find God, it takes more than following rituals and manuals.  We need to believe that He exists  and be willing to search. We will find Him when we surrender to His will, listen to our heart, find love and share it by making the world a better place in which to live.

 

Is that all then?

 

Not yet.

 

***

 

I am a management consultant. I am trained to provide something more concrete. What does it mean: “experience love and share it?” What is love?   What is the Lord’s will? We are supposed to surrender to His will but what is His will operationally? (Pardon my management consultant term, “operationally.”)

What should we do? What is the action we are supposed to take when we share our love?

 

Some people behave atrociously in the name of “love;” by that I mean, in the name of God.

 

I am a descendant of the Jews of Spain whom the inquisitors tortured and expelled because they refused to convert to Christianity. Is that love? Is that what God wanted?

 

If God is Love, in order to find Him, we need to understand in an active way what it means to love. And comprehend “operationally” what is His will? What is the essence of His being?

 

Let me try.

 

Can we agree that Love is total integration?

 

I believe so. That is what happens when we are immersed in creating something we love. We forget everything around us. We are inspired. As Wayne Dyer says, the word inspired comes from the word IN SPIRIT.

 

When we create something we love, a painting, a sculpture,  compose music or write a book, we are united with the Spirit, with God. We are inspired and become a vehicle of His will. We transmit his wishes. We are totally integrated with our creation.

 

Now the next question: if love is total integration what is integration?

 

It took me forty years to discover what integration is about.

I will not bore you with how I figured it out. Let me give you the bottom line: it is Mutual Respect and Trust.

 

You can not be integrated with something you do not respect or trust.

 

There is no love without mutual trust and respect.

 

When is a marriage over? Not when the couple signs the divorce papers. That is the final official act. The marriage is de facto over when there is no more MT&R, when the loss of Mutual Trust and Respect is irreversible.

 

Now, what is respect and what is trust?

 

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that respect is to recognize the sovereignty of the other person to think differently.

 

When we do not accept that a person can think differently, believe differently, we are not respecting his or her sovereign, undeniable, right to be different.

 

When there is mutual respect, there is growth, we learn from each other’s differences and grow intellectually and spiritually.

 

When differences are prohibited we find ourselves in a desert. An intellectual and emotional desert.

But when they are allowed and nurtured, our surroundings are transformed into a garden; an ecological system in which we are touched and enveloped by synergy.

 

And when there is MUTUAL respect the other party has to  appreciate our differences too.

 

That is not what is happening with some radical religious off- shoots: either be like us, believe like us, or we reject you; and in some more extreme religious sects, the litany goes  further: we will even torture or kill you unless you  behave like us.

 

In my view that is not serving God.

 

And what is trust?

 

It is faith that the other person has our interest at heart. That we do not have to fear turning our back to him. That he will protect our back and when it is mutual we will protect his.  We share common interests.

 

When there is mutual trust we reach symbiosis. We help each other. We enrich each other. We seek our common interest. Not Self interest. And not other people’s interest at the cost to our own.

 

Look at my hand. Five different fingers together forming a hand. And this is how all Saints hold their hand in all icons, straight fingers touching each other. It is like a message they give us.   It is a blessing: be different but still be together.

 

So. what does it mean to serve God? What is His will?

 

Respect your fellow man and woman. Appreciate their differences. And at the same time, in spite of their differences, protect their interests.

 

A businessman who prays dutifully at church every Sunday, but the rest of the week exploits workers, pollutes air and water, is he or she serving GOD?

 

In my formulation the answer is NO. With capital letters: NO.

 

The person who does not go to church but works with homeless people, who helps the destitute, even if he is an atheist , he is serving God without even knowing it.

To summarize,  let us try again:

GOD is LOVE,

LOVE is total INTEGRATION

And

Total INTEGRATION  is

the existence of  absolute

MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT.

God is IN us, in our heart, but it is expressed in how we relate to each other, how we relate to air and trees, the environment we live in.

 

THE WORLD IS A SYSTEM OF INTERDEPENDENCIES AND

GOD IS THE ESSENCE THAT DRIVES THE SYSTEM:     MUTUAL TRUST & RESPECT

 

What makes or breaks the system is the existence or the lack of MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT.

 

M T& R is life.  It is love. It is workable unity. It is Harmony ( different voices singing in unison, complementing each other.)

 

Without Mutual Trust and Respect  there is destructive conflict. Disharmony. Social, political, physical BREAKDOWN.

 

When we do not practice MT&R, we are defying God, defying His will. And our world falls apart in more ways than one.

 

Without Self Respect and Trust we fall apart as individuals.

 

Without Mutual Trust and Respect our marriage falls apart, our country  falls apart, our environment collapses…We defy rather than serve God.

 

Serving God is expressed in the way we behave. And how much LOVE we have is weighed  not by intent, but in our action: That is, by respecting differences and seeking common interests.

 

Hallelujah  and may it be His will.

Amen.

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

 

Video: Freeing the Founder

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What is a “Real” Asset?

David Tice, a friend and a professor of Business from the University of California, Berkley, in a seminar that we jointly taught in Moscow, made a point on strategic planning which was illuminating. I want to share it with you.

 

What is a real asset of a company? (He used the phrase “real core competence.”)

 

For instance, he asked, what is the real asset of an oil company? Most people will say their oil reserves.

 

David Tice said that the real asset is the one you cannot sell.

 

Listen to this. This is very important: “The asset you can not sell…!!!”

 

Reserves can be sold. Machinery can be sold. People can be fired and new staff or workers hired.  So what is it that “cannot be sold?”

 

It is your connections. Your corporate DNA. Your culture. Your reputation. Your values.

 

It complemented my lecture on what makes a good leader: it is not what he or she HAS, but what he or she IS.

 

And what a person IS, his or her character, integrity, values, style and behavior, cannot be sold.

 

All of this relates significantly to building a culture of Mutual Trust and Respect. This is an enormous task. Time consuming. And even painful because you need, as a leader, to “swim against the current.” The “current”, the normal way people behave, leads to disintegration, not integration.

 

To love, respect and try to solve problems constructively, with maturity, is much more difficult than to hate and complain and spread rumors.

 

How many people watch a high rise being built? Now compare how many watch it being demolished.

 

Making war is so much easier than making peace.

 

Staying in a marriage is much more difficult that getting divorced.

 

Unfortunately, these very real assets-culture and values-are difficult to measure. Difficult to evaluate. Usually they appear under the heading “goodwill” in accounting.  They appear as a high multiple of earnings per share.

 

But for many economists, culture and values are too “soft” to be weighed or considered as reliable measures. The economists (like bankers) want hard assets that can be sold. The rest is “air” for them.

 

Many CEOs often hire a consultant to improve the way the production line operates; or to find new clients and to cut costs. Only, the very enlightened understand that the real asset is the culture of the company and investing in it is the most important corporate move to undertake.

 

What makes a good marriage? How many cars we have? How many homes we have ? Or is it the nature of our relationship? As a family?

 

The most valuable asset is the one we do not see. But feel.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

The Discomfort of Being Rich

I noticed an interesting phenomena with older, rich people. Especially those who made their fortune with their own hands.

They develop a certain suspicion: are they really loved independently of their wealth or are they loved because of their wealth?

Do people seek their company because they want a donation to a cause ?

Are the relatives, even their own children, nice to them because they want to be remembered well in the will or are they genuinely loving?

Rich people can be suspicious.

Some of them even hide their wealth for fear that it will lead to a wrong friendship. Or they stick to friends that are as rich as they are so they do not have to suspect them.

How many of us would like to be wealthy but are not aware that wealth carries with it a price? That it impacts the nature of relationships?

We all want to be loved. I think it is the most basic need of any organic system. Even plants flourish more and better when shown love, when spoken to with gentleness. Pets for sure react to love. So do people.

And when we doubt whether love is genuine we are in pain. Are we not?

So, being rich is not such a blessing. One is blessed with materialistic benefits but is saddled with suspicions about love, which is the most valuable asset there is; One wonders if the love shown is true love or a love based on interests….

This explains to me why poor families are stronger families. Show much more love and respect for each other than rich families.

And I wonder who is “richer?’’ The one with the money or the one with love?

Interesting that everything comes in pairs.

No benefits without costs. And apparently all costs have their benefits.  We just need to recognize them.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

“The Wall” – an Allegory

I remember the day my little son, who at the time was around four years old, was standing next to a wall shouting, “move.”

I  explained to him carefully that the wall could not move.

Four or forty-four, we often find ourselves up against a problem which we cannot control, but  nevertheless try to solve. We try to move “the wall” (a spouse, a boss, a subordinate…you name it). It is analogous to  banging a head against the wall. It  does not move and all we got for our effort is a headache. What usually follows is  the “victim scenario”  where we accuse  “the wall”  for hurting us.

Obviously, it is not the wall’s fault. It is our futile  attempt to move  an immovable object.

All of us who engage in this practice (and I include myself) tend to have a strong ego. We believe we should be able to solve the problem. That we should have control of the situation. To stop banging our head is to admit that we are not omnipotent. Our ego will not accept it.

In a roundabout way, I believe this touches on maturity. Which to me means recognizing that something that bothers you, because it is neither acceptable nor desirable, is “a wall,” and it is necessary to come to terms with it. In other words, you need to recognize and accept your limitations and your limited capabilities.

That is the beginning of maturity.

There is obviously a benefit from being immature.  If we were all mature, there would be no change, no revolutions, no breakthroughs; those who make the breakthroughs do not know that it cannot be done.

Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, when asked how he intended to start a Jewish state surrounded by one hundred million Arabs said: “Those who do not believe in miracles are not realists.”

So, here’s my curve ball. I believe that founders of companies, innovators, even charismatic leaders, are immature. They do not accept their limitations.  At times, when they succeed, they enrich us with their innovations and their leadership. But, they pay the price in the quality of their personal life. They often live with a constant  headache.

A mature person can distinguish between a manageable problem and one that is beyond his control;  between a partition with wheels that can be moved and a solid wall that cannot.

What should we do then when confronted with the challenge that will not be budged? With “a wall?”

First, we can always continue banging the wall with our head while leveling accusations against it.  That is, as I said, futile, immature behavior.   But presumably it serves us somehow. Fulfills a need. And we apparently are rewarded with the attention we crave.

Of course, there is another solution:  Go around the wall.

If the immovable object is a marriage, people find a way to enjoy life outside their miserable marriage. In business, they  do the minimum they can for the company,  and in their free time, which they try to maximize, they moonlight somewhere else.

And then there is the solution  where you surrender. You simply accept “the wall” and stop banging your head against it. In business, it is called “the moose.” A dead moose is lying in the middle of the room. Everyone knows the moose is there, but no one talks about it. They just live with it.

Why would they do that?

I have seen that happen in companies where the CEO is arrogant. Abusive. Demeaning. And people still do not leave. They do not even complain. They just live with the situation. Why? Because they get paid far above the market rate; and for them the alternative of leaving is too expensive.

Leaving the room for another place which has no wall to contend with is the last one of the choices we have.

What strategy do you choose if it is not “a wall” that confronts you, but a partition? It looks easy. All you have to do is push it aside.

Not so.  The analogy does not serve us well here.

A person-quite different from a partition-has a will of his own.

A human “partition”  does not change because YOU want him to change. He will change for his own internal reasons. Following his own self interest.

Accusing him of causing your head-ache-and because of that he must change-is a waste of time. He will change when it is in his interest to change.

So if you want to cause change you have to ask yourself why is it good for “the partition,” the other party, not why is it good for you.

And if such self interest is either not strong enough, or the other party is incapable of moving,  it is better to realize you are confronting not a partition but a “wall.”  Now you have the following choices: live with it, walk around it or walk out of it.  But stop banging your head,

                                    OR

There is one more alternative many people miss.

And, it is to enjoy “the wall.”   Look for the positives. Instead of cursing the rose for having thorns, bless the thorns for having a rose.

Is there anything positive in having this “wall?”

Instead of perceiving it as blocking our way, can it be perceived as protecting us, blocking  external threats…

There are no positives without negatives and by the same token, there are no negatives that have no positives. Can you see them both?

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Maintaining a Marriage

Entropy  is natural. Caused by change.

 

With change, “things” fall apart. Ruin sets in.

 

Build the most beautiful garden money can buy. Do not maintain it. It will be destroyed over time, overflowing with weeds.

 

Do not maintain your car. The most expensive, best car money can buy.

Do not drive it. Do nothing to it. After, say, two years, it will not start.

 

You must “maintain” everything that is subject to change if you want it to function. Your home. Your car. Your garden. And, yes, your company and your marriage.

 

The prescription for reinvigorating your company you can find in my lectures and books: redesign your organizational structure periodically. Realign the rewards systems. Redefine your mission. Adapt your information systems to new realities,  and do it all proactively.

 

Do not wait until there is a crisis. Adopt the same procedure with your car. Take it to the garage for maintenance every 6000 miles. Do not procrastinate and bring it to your mechanic only when it is broken or fails to operate smoothly…

 

So, review your organizational structure every year, preferably on the anniversary of your last structural change or renewal…It would be wise to review your staffing decisions thereafter; and your information needs and flows as well…

 

But how about “a marriage?” What does it mean to maintain a marriage, and proactively too?

 

Because if you do nothing, it will almost inevitably break down.

You do not have to destroy it. It will dissolve by itself…because of change.

 

A friend of mine recently was shaken. His wife wanted a divorce. “I do not know why she wants a divorce” he said. “ I didn’t do anything!!!”

 

Yes, unfortunately you have to do something. You have “to maintain your marriage.”

 

But what does it mean “to maintain a marriage?”

 

I just got the insight talking to one of my clients.

 

We were scheduling my visits to his company. I schedule it a year in advance.

 

When I suggested a certain date he said he could not make those dates  because he was on his honeymoon.

 

Honeymoon? I was shocked.  When was he planning to divorce his wife?  We had just been together for dinner, the other evening.  Now overnight he was planning to remarry  and embark on a honeymoon?

 

He saw the surprise on my face and, with a smile, calmed me down.

 

“It is with the same wife. On the anniversary of our marriage , every  year we have a fresh, new honeymoon. Because,  and here is where the tires hit the road, “one honeymoon is not enough for a lifetime of marriage.”

 

Aha. Once a year on your wedding anniversary,  go off on a new honeymoon. No children. No one else. Just the two of you. And select the most romantic place you know. An old one that the two of you go back to, or a new one you both want to explore .

 

Moreover, if you have a rocky marriage, very stressful for whatever reason, take one long weekend away from home, and away from stress; from work; from the kids. Go somewhere and be together. Slow down. Do nothing.  Just relate to each other and during the weekend agree that it is forbidden to solve any problems.

 

Just be with each other.

 

“Replenish the batteries.”

 

Not only your marriage needs maintenance. Your body needs it too. And your mind.

 

For the body, spas are rejuvenating. For the mind, meditation is freeing.

 

The faster you run, the more you should rest.

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

 

Video: Staff Line Relationships

Watch this video on YouTube.

Greece

This weekend of June 2, 2013, I was invited to meet  with a group of businessmen, politicians, and media people to diagnose the problems of the country and to express my opinion of what needs to be done.

 

Below is the illumination, which I believe can bring some additional light for those interested.  

 

(In order to diagnose and design a potential  plan of action, I am using  the life cycle theory (1),the attribution analysis  causality chain(2) and the PAEI (3) theory.)  

 

Location on life cycle:

 

Greece is in premature aging, close to recrimination stage where different parties have a destructive fight.

 

Greece avoided falling into recrimination stage, for now, by establishing a coalition of three major parties to run the country. Good move that should arrest for now a dangerous deterioration of the situation.

 

That Greece  is apparently in premature aging is indicated by the following potential improvement points: the culture does not honor rules, no rule of law, therefore, laws are made and not applied; judicial system is not effective, some major business interests (oligarchs) are above the law, (no lawyer dares to sue them), antitrust laws not applied; many laws badly written and are overlapping and inconsistent, and Greece has political dynasties: the nephew or son of the previous prime minister becomes prime minister, the daughter of another prime minister becomes minister of foreign affairs ( similar to a family trap in business organizations.)

 

In addition to no rule of law as a cause of the problems (overall no or weak (A), Greece has no culture of conducting constructive dialogues and no teamwork (Low (I)). This causes a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy, overlapping ministries, too many public servants for functions that in other countries one tenth of the people perform.

 

The lack of rule of law also causes: economic interests (oligarchs) to have an undue influence on  the government (by financial support in election time and by controlling the media). The government in return controls the banks that loan to the oligarchs.

 

The end result is that banks loan more to the big business interests than to the middle class which is slowly disappearing.

 

Another way the oligarchs benefit from the state of no rule of law

is by monopolizing  contracts for government  development projects.

 

As expected by the location on the lifecycle, Greek government has no vision, no clear long term  plans. They are caught in a cycle of tactical decision making trying to survive and meet  Troika’s demands which in order to give them loans requires that the Greek government cut public spending.

 

They did so, but not by increasing efficiency of the bureaucracy but by cutting salaries and pensions across the board. This has caused consumption to plummet and causing negative economic growth.

 

The end result is that there is even less tax to collect. To start with, taxes were not well collected partly because the rich had ways to avoid paying and now on the top of it, there are less people that earn enough to pay taxes.

 

That causes the gap between what the government spends and what the government collects not to be closed in a sustainable way.

 

The result of the above causes is that health and education services have seriously deteriorated, there is a  high unemployment rate, a brain drain, hate between the public service sector and the private sector, and a population that is becoming rebellious. (While I was in Athens, three bombs exploded in offices of various commissions.)

 

Observations

 

Greece culture has a soul. Listen to their music. Watch them dance their circular dances. Watch them interact. It is like one large, big family.

 

But, Greece has also a very individualistic and (E)ntrepreneuring  culture as a result of which there is little Mutual Trust and Respect; Everyone is trying to prove that he or she is smarter than the other one, and they are fiercely competitive. (Watch their TV debates. You do not have to understand the language. Just watch the interaction)

 

Without Mutual Trust and Respect, Greece can deteriorate to a serious disintegration manifested by internal terrorism and street riots. They have proven in the past they are prone to do that. After the Second World War they even had a civil war. (As we know, there are no more fierce fights than in a family.)

 

The economic crisis is a change which, as should be anticipated, releases centrifugal forces to action: The very extreme right wing party , and the coalition of leftist parties , both, are growing at the expense of the centrist parties. It can lead to a confrontation. A breakdown.  Or they can join forces and undermine democracy.

 

So far the manifestations of the disintegration are mild: street riots, manifestations that block traffic, suicide rate is on the rise but crime is not . Divorce rate is not on the rise either.

 

What is holding the society still together is hope. Hope that somehow they will pull out.  That hope is fed by the government that controls the media through the banks ( the media is in deep debt to the banks ) and the business interests I referred to before (oligarchs) who contribute a significant amount of the revenues to the media through buying advertising for their endeavors. Their interest is also not to experience turbulence. So the business interests and the political interests silence the media and no bad news are reported in local media.

 

Add to it that the summer is coming and with it a large inflow of tourism,  the future as of now does not look so bleak. But come winter if there is no improvement in the economic environment, some indication of economic growth, and improvement in employment rates,  it is hard to predict that peace will continue.

 

There is also a problem with the present solutions imposed by the Troika (European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and the European Commission).The people that work there are mainly trained as MACRO economists. For them the way to solve the problem is to cut labor costs,  to cut salaries and the bureaucracy, which will make Greece competitive and that will bring investments in  and the problem will be solved. When you only have a hammer as a tool all problems look like a nail.

 

For investments to happen the cost of capital has to be low. Today in Greece it is about 15 percent . That is high and thus not very attractive.

 

Greece needs more than just recapitalization of their banks, it needs badly external investments.

 

To be attractive to investors it needs a rule of law, a judicial system that works, decentralization of economic power, de-bureaucratized government and government policies that encourage the right investments.

 

Whatever the Greek government does must be done in a way that reinforces the rule of law, creates a civilized dialogue and cooperation which are the cause of the problems Greece has.  Just cutting salaries makes the numbers look good but do not attack the root cause of the problems of Greece.

 

The first thing to do is to remove the power of those who are interested and benefiting from the lack of rule of law.

 

Having done so, the government should enforce antitrust laws and bring smaller companies, not of the oligarchs, to bid on government projects so that a middle class will be  getting stronger and economic wealth will  better be spread out .

 

It also needs to revamp its tax collection procedures to increase harvesting of taxes equitably.

 

In the same time the government needs to design the vision of the country as to which segments it wants to develop so that its portfolio of GNP looks less dependent on tourism.

 

Only then should the government cut the ranks of public servants and free the labor force to the new endeavors the government started according to the designed vision, thus turning fat into muscle.

 

This move requires investments.

Beyond investments Greece will need to retrain bureaucrats to become productive in industry.  Not easy and expensive.

 

Where is the money coming from? So far, instead of investments we noticed vulture funds circling Greece trying to acquire assets at bottom prices.

 

Greece is not capable of running its own monetary policy. It is on the euro and thus can not print money to encourage economic activity.

 

This is a limitation and Greece must get the EU to invest in Greece and  not just recapitalize the banks. Greece itself can not generate the funds necessary for its economic growth, ( A type of a  “Marshall plan”  for Greece  is called for )   If this does not happen Greece will have to consider exiting the Eurozone and conduct its own monetary policy.

 

Projection for the future

 

If Greece continues to make tactical decisions, knee jerk decisions, to meet the demands of the European Central Bank mechanistically i.e. just meet the numbers but not deal with the source cause of its troubles , the rule of law, de bureaucratization and decentralization of economic power and does not get massive investments,  there is a chance of major social disruption, crime and disorder,  which will dry up tourism and bring Greece further into trouble.

 

The road to recovery is not easy. The slippery road of becoming a third world country is more probable.  

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

 

Footnotes:

For the theory of lifecycles  see : Ichak Adizes: Managing Corporate Lifecycles ( Santa Barbara : Adizes Institute Publications  www.adizes.com.

For understanding the chain of causality ( the columns ) see: Ichak  Adizes : Collaborative Problem Solving ( Santa Barbara California: Adizes Institute Publishing ( in print ) www.adizes.com)

For the PAEI theory see :Ichak Adizes : The ideal Executive , why you can not be one and what to do about it ( Santa Barbara ,California : Adizes  Institute Publications , www.adizes.com)