Ideas Make One Free

Ideas Make One Free

I came to realize through working with leaders and their organizations that their problems were not just organizational. Within their teams and workforce, there were philosophical differences that made creating a culture of trust more difficult. I found that when the ideas that we identify as values were treated as secondary or optional aspects of the business, it also contributed to difficulties in how people worked together. Trust in relationships is a product of clarity of not just the why of the company, but the how. It doesn’t take long talking with people from any business to discover if they are clear about the company’s values and goals. When that clarity is missing, there is reticence on the part of employees to give their best each day.

A Fool’s Paradise

A Fool’s Paradise

We live in a media saturated, propagandized world. Everywhere I turn I encounter people who are living in fear. Paul Virilio, a decade ago, called this culture “the administration of fear.” If you live with fear, you won’t ask questions. Yet it is only in asking questions, in being skeptical, that we find truth. Not political truth which is mere propaganda as current situation proves. But the truth that we can live by.

Transitions in Cultures

Transitions in Cultures

In order to understand who we are, we need to understand the culture that we live in. Over the past three or four generations, we have transitioned from a culture where we were subjects to powerful institutions to where we became captives to a culture focused on consumer products. And now, we are on the cusp of a third cultural transition. The following selection is from my short book, Seeing Below the Surface: The Brokenness of Modern Organizations. 

Where Did Trust Go?

Where Did Trust Go?

When a book or essay appears in print, it is never all that could be said. It is a distillation and essence of the whole topic.

For my short book, Where Did Trust Go?, the instigating moment was a question from a Nairobi businessman. He asked me following a presentation to his group last February,

“What are we to do about corruption in government and business?”

At that point in time, I did not have an answer. I do now. It is found in this little book.

Let me describe what I see that led me to write. Let’s look at this through the lens of the Circle of Impact in terms of three problems.

Three Things to Know When Making an Offer

Three Things to Know When Making an Offer

It is important to know what you have to offer, as I wrote about previously. However, that is not everything you need to know. At best, it is 30-40% of what you need to know.

Too many times I’ve met with someone who is trying to sell me their services, and all they tell me is what they are selling. The only offer is for me to give them my money.

Every day people connect with me online to sell me services. They is no indication of the impact that they aim to create for me. In one of those conversations, I asked one guy how he would market to people and businesses in transition. He was honest. He had no idea. He said that his firms markets to the titles in an organization.

To fully understand what you have to offer, you need to be aware of three areas that are important.