Quotes

"Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality." -- Theodor Adorno

"Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." -- Benjamin Franklin

"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries." -- James Michener

The Green Wars

I'm passingly familiar with the issues surrounding global energy use, peak oil and the need to move economically to sustainable energy sources. Some people say there is a global climate change crisis, some deny it.

As one with a scientific background, but not a background in ecological science, I can't say from direct study who's right. But I have looked at the issues enough to know a couple of things: the unanimous verdict of the scientific community in the science journals is that global climate change is a real, man made emergency. I'm also hearing from some insurance industry contacts that they believe it and are trying to make plans: they can't keep underwriting many coastal areas and businesses the way they have in the past, based on recent risk assessment history.

The New York Times offers this bit as part of a series:

When Timberland, the outdoor clothing company, studied ways to reduce its carbon emissions four years ago, it weighed several options: building a wind farm in the Dominican Republic, buying power generated by renewable resources and setting up a vast bank of solar panels at one of its distribution centers in Ontario, Calif.

It chose to do all those things, but that was the easy part. When Jeffrey B. Swartz, Timberland's president and chief executive, considered how much carbon dioxide was produced in making leather for the company's famous boots, the answer came as a surprise.

"As it turns out, the vast majority of the greenhouse gases associated with manufacturing leather comes from cows in the field," Mr. Swartz said. "Yes, methane."

While Timberland figures out how to reduce these emissions — it is examining ways to change the feed for cows — the company has already cut its greenhouse gases by 17 percent from their 2002 level and aims to become carbon-neutral by 2010 by offsetting its emissions through renewable or alternative energy sources.

Americans are increasingly recognizing that the effects of carbon emissions on global warming are a serious problem, but there are no rules in the United States regulating heat-trapping gases comparable to those that most other developed countries have adopted under the Kyoto Protocol. Some United States businesses, though, are responding for a variety of reasons anyway: to satisfy customers or shareholders who worry about the environment, to improve their public image or to drive down their energy costs. In addition, some states and local authorities have stepped in to try to curb their contributions to global warming.

For Timberland, while it shares the concerns over global warming, it's mostly a matter of dollars and cents. As Mr. Swartz put it: "What idiot will leave costs on the table? I hope it's our competitors. I get paid to create value."

But reducing carbon emissions is no easy task.

Scientists, economists, environmentalists and a growing rank of business leaders warn that corporate America needs to move more quickly or it will face the consequences: higher energy prices, a potential cost for carbon pollution and, eventually, products that will have trouble competing globally because other countries are reducing emissions.

The United States is responsible for a quarter of all the carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere each year. It has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty on climate change that went into effect last year for more than three dozen countries in Europe and elsewhere, that set targets and timetables for cutting emissions.

If consumption of fossil fuels continues at today's pace, the Energy Department predicts that carbon emissions in the United States could rise to more than eight billion tons by 2030 — 38 percent above current levels — as energy use keeps growing.

"This is a huge challenge for American businesses, particularly those trying to compete internationally," said Adam Markham, executive director of Clean Air-Cool Planet, an advocacy group in Portsmouth, N.H. "Most of the rest of the developing world has a legislative mandate to curb emissions, but in the United States, in many cases, there is no real reason for companies to act."

The major energy companies are pushing back hard, through advertising and lobbying, against these trends. But the green wars are here to stay for American and global businesses. I expect we'll be hearing more, not less, about this. Politicians and demagogues can say what they will, but my business sources tell me carbon emissions and sustainable energy will be huge priorities at the beginning of this century. There's room here for innovative, smaller companies to lead the way in the development of sustainable energy models and technologies that the big players lack incentives to explore in earnest.

It's Annual Subscriber Survey Time

Last May we had our first annual subscriber survey, and it's that time again.

Though this blog is open to the public, since we've just kicked it off, anyone here is probably already a subscriber to "What's Up, Doc?". Please take 10 minutes to complete the survey to help me understand your interests, topic preferences, etc.

Click here to take the survey!

The Paradox of Leadership Power

"What's Up, Doc?" Volume 6, Number 5, May, 2006

Understanding People = Power
The more you rise in repsonsibility in any organization, the more your people skills become paramount. That's because getting things done through people requires an understanding of human styles of thought, emotion, talent and motivation. People are not robots or computers. So, in order to move groups of people to effective action, you simply must understand people. Leadership requires you to understand how individuals think, what makes each person tick. That's what it takes to develop leadership power.

Reading People Requires Emotional Intelligence
The concept of Emotional Intelligence is a little fluid, but it encompasses our ability to understand what makes people tick. The main idea here is that understanding others is an area of intelligence, susceptible to learning, just as any other area of knowledge or growth can be. In my experience and through all my studies in psychology (you can learn more about me here), I know that all human growth, from cradle to grave, happens in the context of positive relationships. We seldom if ever overcome our blind spots in emotional intelligence through reading a book. We learn as we get feedback from people we can trust, who have our best interests at heart, like family members or close friends - maybe even a boss. Even if you feel you've achieved a breakthrough from a book, it probably was prompted by some interaction with another whereby you became aware of a need for growth, and you then sought out some writing to help you make sense of your experiences. Learning is socially mediated.

Emotional Intelligence Requires Self Awareness
To be able to understand the motivational styles and personalities of others, we need first to understand ourselves. Other people are not motivated as we are. They think differently, organize their worlds differently in their minds, and have different patterns of feeling. Before you can even begin to develop a "language" through which to understand others, you'll need to understand yourself more and more. Then you can possibly begin to learn how others differ from you. The weakest leaders I see in my consulting work believe there's not much they don't know about themselves or others, and yet, each of us is far more complex in our programming than the computer you see in front of you. Wilfull ignorance of yourself or others weakens your leadership power, and you'll make lots of mistakes from which you'll never learn. To grow in emotional intelligence, you'll need to form the habit of looking in the mirror to understand your own patterns of thinking and emotion.

Self Awareness Requires Vulnerability
Here's the hard part: the best way to learn about your blind spots - and we all possess blind spots - is to get feedback from people we trust. That means being able to hear what we by definition don't want to hear. This is personal feedback. Now, no one should open himself up to abuse, so it's important to have trusted people who can tell us what they think in a helpful way. But to allow ourselves to be that open, we need first to be vulnerable, to let our defenses down. That rubs many leaders the wrong way, because we tend to think power comes from conviction and an outward posture of strength that renounces vulnerability. Bzzzzt! Wrong. There are times to be resolute, of course, but learning and growth require an openness to the right kind of feedback. Closing yourself to the wisdom others might be able to offer you is the height of foolishness.

Power Therefore Requires the Willingness to Become Occasionally Powerless
So here we have the paradox: growing as a powerful leader requires you to become occasionally powerless, in the sense that you must open yourself to hearing things about yourself you don't want to hear, from people you trust. That process never stops. I encounter many executives who decide that such feedback is necessary early in one's career, but not later. As Hall of Fame baseball manager Earl Weaver said, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts!" When you stop learning, you stop growing.

Global Economies Require Even Greater Emotional Intelligence
More and more, the business world requires us as leaders to interact with people from different cultures. Well, it can be tough enough to understand individual diffrences in thinking and motivation within our own cultures, but then, when we need to translate what we know onto experiences with those from a different culture, it gets that much harder. Imagine running Apple software on a PC. The basics of computing are the same, and human nature does not change, but we don't all grow up with the same "operating systems." Global economies make it even more critical to develop leadership power through regular pit stops to being powerless. Leading and succeeding in a global environment requires even greater emotional intelligence in leaders.

Intransigence is Your Enemy
As I've mentioned already, deciding you know all you need to know means deciding to place a ceiling on your leadership effectiveness. I encounter many good people with great potential to take the next step as leaders who nevertheless act as if an openness to growth is for "other people." It's a shame, because businesses really grow, innovate and seize opportunities when great leaders create the conditions for others to become the best they possibly can be, and that begins with the leaders themselves.

On a final note, I'm still putting this blog site together, and learning how it should be done. Somewhere in the main architecture of the site template I need to create a link to my business site, where you can find many articles in the archives, with a search box tool to help you navigate. In the meantime, here's a link to the mother ship.

Welcome!

Welcome!

This is my first post since moving over to a blog format. I hope subscribers to "What's Up, Doc?," the Schuler Solutions Newsletter, will find this to be a convenient format. I'll use this web site to post future issues in the "What's Up, Doc?" series. Feel free to use the comments section to discues questions or air opinions about the ideas offered here.