Every year–I review last year’s posts and figure out the top five. I know, I know–it’s almost June. But given my growing readership–better now than never to look at the posts that made 2013.
1: Insiders, Inside Track, Inner Rings
I received CS Lewis’ essay from a senior USCG Officer–and it really affected me. I hadn’t thought about it before–but it’s become a core part of my leadership. Also covered in Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last–the leaders that win are the ones who are the most inclusive–who create the broadest rings of followers and peers. The leaders that lose are the ones perpetuating and instigating a sense of a small “inner ring”. It’s great to have insiders–every leader has a core group of advisers and consiglieres. But there’s a difference between a core group and excluding the larger tribe.
Jesus fed the multitude, but his message was still carried by 12.
Much of our economy is driven by this antic of making an in group and an out group. I defined them both using a velvet rope in my original post–but we see it everywhere. Product branding revolves around people who can identify with something as insiders–as well as empower them to label others as outsiders. Look at many of the “self-improvement” markets–even the automotive industry. Creating an inner ring is how these economies succeed.
It’s One Thing to Get in the Ring, Another to Make a Ring. (Photo by Vinoth Chandar via Flickr)
This post reminded me to be careful of creating a perception of an “inner ring” at the expense of being a better, bigger, bolder leader. The lesson for me as a consumer is to make sure I’m not being trapped by the velvet rope some marketer came up with.
2: Heretics and Faith
Change is a prerequisite for success. Heretics believe and see change where no one else can. Think about the first scientists who discovered climate change–what did they see that led them to their conclusion? What did they have to endure until the rest of the scientific community caught up to their truth?
Look around you–who are the heretics now? And why are we afraid to believe them?
Heretics move from an unassailable sense of inner faith. It’s not just about religion–it’s about Steve Jobs’ temper tantrums that led to Pixar, iTunes, and the entire mobile industry. It’s about friends like Kathleen who walk away from institutional education to build a community and ecology of education–who are about the people and potential, not productivity and performance.
Tribes are bound and found through their heresy. In the post-privacy age–it’s easier than ever to connect and be connected by those who believe what we believe. Even if it’s not what the mainstream believes. In this age–it’s easier than ever to never enter the mainstream. We have vagabonds who never own homes, travelers who never own cars, workers who never work in office. Politicians who float from district to district. All are heresy to history.
Seth Godin’s Tribes gave me the idea for the post. Writing it helped me accept and become unrepentant for wanting to lead and be with a tribe of my own. Because building and becoming a tribe is an innate need for each of us.
Michelangelo’s Act of Heresy Inspires Faith (photo by Bill Read via Flickr)
3: Rent Seeking Behavior
The old economy doesn’t work anymore–it’s falling to inflexibility and fragility. People no longer need a metropolis to thrive–yet there’s a difference in a city like San Francisco that thrives and a city like Detroit as it cries. That difference is the power of resilience.
We’ve become lulled into being happy with paying the rent–and maybe getting a little more to make it through. But that’s not true happiness–happiness is about being able to shift when the storms around us change everything. Happiness is not living a life with an unhealthy attachment on a single meaning. We see the hyperbole in our media–Office Space and Wolf of Wall Street expose us to the hyperbole when we put all our life, all our heart, into work that has no meaning.
The Industrial Age lulled us into a false belief we could abdicate our spirit for 20-40 years until we reached that valhalla of retirement–when we can buy an RV and do whatever we want. But we get there broken, empty, tired, and exasperated. What value is a life where all we’ve done is pay the rent?
You Can’t Build Resilience on Short Orders (Photo by Andy/@atmtx via Flickr)
My art, my challenge, is in inspiring others to seek resilience. Not rent–to seek a sense of scale in their lives they can use to make themselves and their closest better. Resilience isn’t a bank you can save for later–it’s a mindset and state you always keep oriented towards.
4: Leadership is a Space
People expand or expire based on the space given to them to exceed or extinguish expectations.
Great leaders provide the context and space to let others grow around them. This is challenging–because growth means eventually the leader will not be the smartest, the strongest, the quickest, or the best. It’s about helping people grow into bigger and broader spaces for them to succeed. And yes, sometimes fail. And it’s not just leadership that’s a space–so is family. Great families grow through the space they give everyone to find what makes them unique. What makes them strong.
Walking The Path Towards Growth (photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simões/@pedrosimoes7 via Flickr)
Just as we create and inspire space in others–we need to do the same for ourselves. It’s easy to go through the entire day and not realize we have any space left for ourselves. Between TV, email, social media, work, calls, obligations, reminders, and calendars–we can go entire days without a waking moment to truly rest. And we’re not built for this frequency of content or contact. Self-leadership and self-awareness is as much about holding space as anything else we can do.
Where space was something we strove to get away from–now it’s something we have to consciously move towards. As leaders–that means giving space for our people to lead themselves. Which may help them become better than we could ever be. And within ourselves–cultivating a unique space for our own growth and recovery.
5: 5 Ways Social Media is Like Boxing
When you step into the ring–expect to get whacked.
Gary Vaynerchuk did a great job through his book and extended metaphor linking marketing and media to boxing. Especially when he talks about playing both the long and short game simultaneously. Only someone like Mike Tyson in his prime can box with the thought they can take someone’s head off in the first or second round. Great boxers play for the knockout–they fight for the kill–but they also position themselves for conquest throughout the fight.
They rely on their strengths as much as possible–regardless if it’s strength against strength or strength against weakness. They rely on resilience based on mastering the basics.
Position, Perform, Persevere (photo by Alexandre Hervaud/@Hervaud via Flickr)
Just like boxers–marketers and artists do the same thing. Seth Godin and other bloggers write daily–those are their jabs. Other writers write two or three times a week. Filmmakers have to make a movie every other year–they have to expand into other media forms to keep their punches going. Musicians have to constantly play and practice their scales to improve and gauge their skill.
This post reminds me to not get frustrated in the short term, to understand we have a longer term than we realize–so keep moving. To keep pivoting–to keep believing in myself and my strengths. Because if I don’t believe–my “opponent” definitely won’t believe. It’s bad enough to have one person in the ring throwing blows at you–it’s worse to have two.
To 2014
This year is almost half over–but looking over my best posts from last year has helped reignite me. Especially as I face a future this year I never imagined before. And next year–I promise to get this out sooner.
