The Missing Years

  Almost a decade has passed since I first started writing for eyes other than my own.  Truth is I've felt compelled to write since I first learned how.  Putting pen to paper served as a release for the many thoughts running through my mind, a surrender of the strong emotions coursing through my body that refused to dissipate on their own.

   Although it has been nine years since I last posted to my blog I continued to write in the years in between. Not with conscious intent but as particular ideas or long forgotten memories bubbled to the surface I would scribble them on whatever was at hand - napkins, scraps of paper, on the back of envelopes or in the margins of a newspaper or magazine I meant to read later.  I write these things down simply because something inside me still compels me to do so.

    I have boxes full of the words I've written over decades now.  There is probably an even greater number that found their way into recycle bins or were buried underground at city dump sites.  Reminds of an old technology  saying "garbage in, garbage out." I can only imagine the content of all the words I let go, taking care to remember that words are only symbols for things and not the things themselves.

     So, what has happened in these intervening years?  I went to work in another corporate environment.  A global wine company with vineyards in dozens of countries and well known brands that strives to become Number One in the industry.  Like many large companies their mission statement contains all the right buzz words of the times (sustainable practices, community involvement, etc.) that sound good but have little in common with daily operations.  More on this topic later.

   On the personal side, sprinkled between the mundane were many large and significant events.  I saw my daughter married, the other engaged, lost my brother and gained a grand-daughter.

    On the world stage, regimes rose and fell, wars raged, the rich grew richer and the poor grew poorer.  Beyond a plethora of man-made tragedies there were also those caused by nature - raging fires, devastating earthquakes, massive flooding, and destructive hurricanes.  Time marches on.

Life is a tapestry with threads of every color woven iin.  There are many of us who still have the audacity to hope for a better, kinder world.  My goals today are much the same as those I articulated several years ago.  I hope to provide my readers with an interesting array of topics,inspirational quotes, an occasional poem, philosophical musings, intuitive insights and observations along with those things that arise in the heart before they come to mind.  Thanks for reading?

 
    

The Leadership Paradigm

Welcome to 2019.  It has been many years since my last post which was written at the height of the great recession.  Much has changed since then while much has also remained the same.

I had hoped that when I resumed writing that I would  write words that uplift, inspire, comfort, or calm.  Words that speak to our souls as well as our minds.  And yet, re-reading my prior posts there is still a need to address What Is in relation to a vision of what might be and to examine  the space between.  Why is there a sense of greater separation rather than evidence of a bridge between the divide?

 Sadly, there is still fear and uncertainty in our headlines exacerbated by those who profit from their perpetuation.  We have only gone further down the path of an economy of thought where communications are now condensed to a handful of characters on Twitter or hashtags on Instagram further demonstrating a lack of deep thought or original thinking. Global warming poses an ever-increasing threat to our very survival with today's profits taking priority over people and planet.  Income inequality across the globe has only grown worse since the so-called recovery and the middle class continues to dwindle in numbers. Can we hit the pause button long enough to question our collective reality?

  The Parliament of the World's Religions celebrated it's 125th anniversary last November, 2018. Thousands of people from 80 nations and more than 200 spiritual backgrounds gathered together in Toronto.  The common thread between them was action consistent with mutual love and respect for their fellow human beings, a moral principle considered superior to almost all others.  Some version of this Golden Rule is found in all major religions including Christianity,, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism,  and Taoism, among others. Treat others as we wish to be treated.  Why is this so hard for so many today?

  Today, we suffer from a lack of Enlightened Leadership.  This lack is evident in the leaders of nations, the leaders of governments, the captains of industry  and even within our houses of worship.  While many have risen to power and millions more have been compelled as adherents, there are few who are truly worthy of followers.

   James Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadship Challenge state that "Leadership is not an affair  of the head. Leadership is an affair of  the heart."

   I read somewhere long ago that the only voice worth listening to is the voice of our own heart. That voice is seldom heard nowadays  and its outward expression is often confined to our immediate friends and family but absent in the world at large. Many cannot differentiate soul-speak, the voice of our hearts, from mind speak. Reason replaces yet it is " the heart alone that knows what love is while the eye of reason has no power to behold it" (author unknown).

When we consider how our companies, institutions, governments, and even houses of worship function we recognize they are structured as top-down pyramids whose origins date back centuries in the form of dictatorships, monarchies and tribal warfare. If we want something new, something better, than we need to get creative and stop doing things that are centuries old.  We need new models that, much like old machinery and technology, make our existing models obsolete.

We must never lose sight of the reality that our humanity is the one thing we all have in common.  Enlightened Leadership, therefore, must be for the benefit of the followers and not to merely enrich
the leader.

Leadership: Economy of Thought Part 2

These are times unlike any other time I have witnessed in my life and I’ve been around long enough to bear witness to several decades. Aeon Alliance, my Consulting company, was so named to indicate the ability to see events within the context of time that spans eons rather than measuring time by months or by quarters. Aeons see the world, and themselves in relation to it, through the long term view, as well as the short term view. 

What is the long term, Aeon view? How does life change when we view events from a broader and more expansive context? I’ve specialized in Finance because it tells the story of what has been done over time and quantifies the results. Good results, however, don’t necessarily translate into “good practices” unless we are using a specific yardstick that measures but by one result – the amount of money we made. We have far less capable means of measuring the way we made it and whether we consider the trade-off as “fair”, or as equitable.

Financial reporting is bound by time – weeks, months, quarters and years. Monies in and monies out are tracked, item by item, followed by calculations that determine the difference between them. Each month the numbers totaling money in are analyzed to drive the numbers higher; the numbers totaling money out are also analyzed to drive the numbers lower. The combination of cost-cutting, while concurrently increasing sales, is considered the magic combination to increased profits. This strategy is nothing new – what is new is the attitude and beliefs surrounding cost cutting measures and the apparent “need” to show ever-increasing profits on a month to month basis. (If billions of dollars in profits aren’t enough to satisfy the greedy among us – what is?)

Today our headlines are filled with the news of increasing profits that are made in the billions of dollars; profits that were “earned” through cost-cutting measures that are more accurately described as eliminating the “expense” of the paychecks of millions of workers. We read these numbers daily – billions of dollars and millions of workers. We have grown so accustomed to hearing numbers reported that we tend to forget that one number is in reference to dollars (a thing) while the other number refers to the effects of those numbers on real human lives. The life of someone’s mother, father, son or daughter has been waylaid and thrown into uncertainty- in numbers beyond any the world has ever seen. 

In today’s economic world, people and persons have been reduced to just another commodity in plentiful supply – easily dispensable and easily disposable. How can money and the quest for ever-increasing profits be considered more important than the value we place on the vastly diminished quality of millions of human lives? It can – and it has. This misplaced value, a product of our thoughts, can only sustain as valid or “reasonable” when we economize ( isolate, restrict, and confine) our thinking and fail to see ourselves as belonging to something much larger and greater than ourselves – the whole of human kind.

From an Aeon perspective, we all share the same species identification. All of of our other identifications serve to classify variations within our species and to separately identify one member from the others. Does our thinking about our variations make us separate? No. Our personal identifications are conceptual and convenient but they cannot change what is real – our identifications can only alter our perception of what seems real.

A reduction in time spent on thinking as well as a reduction in the allowable content of thoughts (strictly business, nothing personal) has led us to focus on “individual” variations while overlooking and disregarding that the individual (or shareholder) is contained within the whole of humanity and is not an island unto himself/herself. We have collectively lost sight of the bigger, over-riding picture and no longer consider what is good for All but have limited our thinking to what is good for Me, not We.

The billions of dollars “earned” in profits and their corresponding toll on human lives can hardly be considered of comparative value by anyone with even the smallest sense of conscience. If we pause long enough to consider how the profit numbers and the numbers of unemployed are linked and interdependent, we might wish to re-evaluate the real life consequences of reductionist thinking. The numbers become more than just numbers and we begin to re-associate the symbols of language to the very real things that words merely symbolize, the things that words point to but can never replace . One of these numbers is a cause (cost-cutting as a billion dollar profit making strategy) and the other, it’s effect (millions of people suffering and struggling to survive). There is a direct and interdependent relationship between them.

Ignoring interdependency will not remove it’s existence. It will only ensure that the quality of life will continue to diminish for the vast majority of human beings. We need to more closely examine the relationship between profits and employee layoffs and whether we still wish to continue to view them as isolated economic events. We need to start doing so today.

The (nothing personal) persons that support business need to be factored back in to our economic equations. Not as disposable commodities but in terms of our collective human progress and development. We will see no such progress so long as millions and millions of hard-working people are still being thrown off company payrolls and thrown into despair, consumed with concern for their very survival.

Maybe we would find we have a different and more meaningful view of our world, and a more meaningful view of ourselves and each other, when we are less tied to an economy of thought that is centered on economics, rather than on people. We might find we share a deeper connection, enjoy an enhanced sense of community, or discover the depths of our own compassion and creativity.

There are few among us who cannot find some strength in softness or some softness in strength. There are also few among is who do not find some fear within their confidence or some confidence within their fear. All states of mind, by divine or evolutionary design, are transient and temporary. Fear comes and goes, much like confidence waxes and wanes. The reality is confidence and fear are indivisible and inter-twined, much like our hopes and fears are similarly bound together. What we most hope for is also what we most fear to lose. They are interdependent of each other and can’t be separately “contained” within our person/personality. But that does not seem to stop us from talking and acting about these things (and everything else) as if they could or should be separated. 

Reality is not bound or restricted by our thoughts – only the workings of our individual minds are “boxed in”. What IS reveals the results of boxing ourselves in. We are now experiencing some of the worst economic crises and ecological disasters the world has ever seen. How far will we go and how many millions more lives will be adversely affected before the conflict between what we think and what IS shatters our illusions surrounding the benefits of consistently fast or exclusively focused thinking – our present “economy of thought”?

We, the People of the United States, has evolved into thinking solely of Me and Mine. This represents Exclusivity of thought rather than Inclusivity or expansiveness. Thoughts surrounding We and Ours are gradually being eradicated from our thinking processes. Do we see this evolution in thought as some form of progress or do we see this as regressive, even primitive?

Reading the news one would surmise that we have become a nation of victims all around, with every one pointing fingers, but blameless themselves. Perhaps, in a way, we are all blameless, all victims. Maybe it is the way we have come to think of ourselves and the world around us that gives rise to many of our problems. Maybe we are victims of our own ways of thinking. 

What might happen if we lifted a few of our self-imposed restrictions and began to think of the world, and all things in it, in broader terms? What new solutions might we discover if we could expand the boundaries of thought to extend beyond the numbers themselves? Would the world come to a screeching halt around us if we paused long enough to consider that the numbers we use as the primary basis for decision-making are merely dollar signs and that these dollars have become more important symbols than the lives of real people?

Leadership: Economy of Thought Part 1

Language as the means of communication can be a powerful tool or a debilitating enemy. We think in pictures as children but are taught to use our words as we grow. Many adults eventually think only in words, while dreaming replaces “thinking in pictures”. When it comes to business affairs, Leaders are often required to think in terms of red or black ink; the bottom line is either positive or negative; decisions are made between this thing or that thing. Apparently, this often required line of thinking has become always required. And required for all things, required for every thing. We fail to see in the full colors of the spectrum nowadays, reducing all we see to shades of black or white. We are compelled by some need to speed up decision making. Have we gone too far with our economy of thought and thinking?

The world at large has followed the mindset and example of our Leaders and subsequently we have all been taught to think in similar decisive and numeric terms that extend well beyond the reach of the military or the stock market. Sons and daughters killed in action are referred to in the news as the number of casualties sustained, so named by willful design. Casualties sounds so, well, casual; like something easy or relaxed, that it’s hard to imagine we are referring to the death and dying of our youths.

The real meaning of what is being said is camouflaged and diluted, intended to breed a sense of complacency.  Casualties invokes a much lesser emotional charge than thoughts of death or dying. We tend to forget the casualties we are talking about were real living, breathing people who sacrificed their very lives for us. We forget that other real people around the world who are just like us are now mourning the loss of a father, mother, sister, brother, or friend. We isolate the pain of war to those who suffer a direct loss rather than sharing the loss between us, even though the sacrifice of life was made for all. Militaries around the world have their reasons for desensitizing us to the numbers of dead and dying, as well as plausible reasoning whereby some swift decisions are clearly essential and necessary.

The prevalent thinking today is that we should use this same restrictive, limited (and often misleading), thriftiness in thought to define ourselves and each other, and further, to allow these thrifty thoughts to govern all of our endeavors - not just wars. (Did we get what we paid for?) The dehumanization of our vocabulary , borrowed from the military and applied to economics (meaning the work place), has brought us daily estrangement from our emotions for most of our waking hours.  Worse yet, this constant estrangement eventually  supplants the voice of our conscience, the heart of our values. It needs to when we are required to kill our enemies in battle.  Does it also need to in our places of work or of leisure? Don't we also stifle creativity, strangle innovation, and diminish all joy, if we lose these vital connections within ourselves?

We are not free to be free-thinkers anymore. We are collectively imprisoned and confined to a very small thinking box consisting largely of active verbs and a hefty measure of numbers. What seems lacking in economic thinking is some evidence of any human virtues - particularly those that might be born of kindness or compassion. The pace at which we operate and move from thing to thing leaves little time to pause or to reflect. The application of Pace and Command leadership styles are also borrowed from the military. Are we, perhaps, causing ourselves greater harm, than greater good, with this militaristic economy of thought applied to the office and our business affairs?

Why would we want an economy of thought about anything we thought was important? Why not an abundance of thinking, expansive thinking, unlimited thinking? And particularly expansive for what is important? Are we so far removed from reality with our present way of thinking that the lost lively-hoods of millions of people now seems unimportant to all but those directly affected? Has our thinking “progressed” so that these hardworking mothers and fathers have merely become nameless and faceless "Ranks of the Unemployed"; our latest “casualties” of war? What is this new civil war and who’s on what side? And why?

Don't we all agree that unrestricted and thoughtful consideration, ensures a lesser likelihood that we have overlooked or disregarded relevant information (that might prove critical to our decisions) as we head on down these roads? Fail safe contingency plans, for example? How many things in life are really so important that the fast choice is better than the right choice, carefully considered, within a broader context? Is the entire world out there a battle-field where instant decisions spell the difference between life and death or are we simply thinking and acting “as if” they do? When should we stop pretending as if and collectively face some truths of the real world results of applying an economy of thought to all things?

Leadership: Fear and Uncertainty in the Headlines Today

We read a lot about fear these days. Fear of the growing deficit. Fear of new regulations. Fear of government interference. Fear of socialist policies. Each day we are introduced to something else that we should fear. Millions of unemployed Americans are told there are no new jobs being created in spite of renewed profitability because Business Leaders are fearful and uncertain. And we are told that the fears of these Leaders should be ours.

From the Main Street point of view, it seems only fitting, maybe karmic, that the perpetrators and perpetuators of widespread fear begin to taste the bitter fruits of their labors, as only they have enjoyed the sweet. Last week, during heated discussions surrounding 10 years of major Business tax cuts (that added billions to the deficit), news headlines across the country threatened that “The last thing we want is for the wealthy to feel fearful!“ Are the headlines true? Is that the last thing, or the first thing, that we want?

Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat. Wikipedia describes fear as “ a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger”. What is it that incites fear in the hearts of the wealthy – the millionaires and billionaires? How fearful could, or should, they be when they are sitting on $1.3 trillion dollars in profits to date (an amount that rivals our national deficit)? Are their fears surrounding deficits, new government regulations, an end to estate taxes, or an end to their last 10 years of tax cuts, threatening their personal survival? Definitely not.

Millions of Americans would love to tell these CEO’s and shareholders about the REAL feeling of fear . What it is to live moment to moment, hour by hour , with great uncertainty - about their ability to survive. Beginning with the day they lost their jobs and could not find another.

Fear , by biological design, is intended to be a very short term state, sending a powerful stream of signals to our brain, triggering a fight or flight response. Millions of Americans now live in a constant state of fear – an ongoing, never-ending, response to the struggle of the fight for their day to day survival. 4 million people in America lost their only source of income last June (UI) with another 50,000 more people added to their numbers every passing day – the long term unemployed.These numbers represent the previous wage earners(not dead-beats) for their families – mothers and fathers all across America, desperately trying to find ways to feed and shelter their children. Another 10 million previously hard-working Americans are barely scraping by, spending only on life’s necessities through a combination of Unemployment Insurance and the depletion of their life savings. Another 15 million people here find themselves under-employed – earning too much to be eligible for assistance but not enough to pay all their bills.

The real numbers of people affected by the loss of employment stretches far beyond the numbers of the Unemployed. If the average wage earner supports a family of 3, then the 4 million who were cut off from UI last June, has really left 12 million people facing the very real fears of homelessness and starvation.

Businesses have now amassed $1.3 trillion in profits. largely through cost-cutting measures. They appear to have no problem boasting about how they are increasing their incomes by reducing ours - through the conscious and deliberate elimination of the paychecks of millions of Americans.

Downsizing is no longer a necessary response to a poor economy as profits are being reported in billions of dollars and bonuses are paid in the millions. Yet downsizing continues with more planned for upcoming months. Essentially a sizable chunk of the current and projected profits and payouts, then, owe themselves to nothing more than the elimination of some persons, actually millions of persons, former paychecks – maybe our mothers, our brothers, our nieces, our friends or our neighbors . The suicide rate among the long-term unemployed is now reported as showing a 75% increase as more and more people continue to lose hope. Are we all OK with profits becoming just a new form of “blood money” ? Ironically, rather than feeling any shame or remorse concerning their strategies, these Business Leaders tout these lean, mean company machines as an example of the success of “strong Leadership”, one that their smaller competitors are soon likely to follow.

Over the last 10 years, Corporations have successfully slashed and outsourced workforces and have been handsomely rewarded with bulging corporate coffers and exceedingly decadent personal life styles. Officer and executive salaries jumped from 30 times to 300 times that of their average worker. 1500 times is not uncommon. (Whatever happened to piercing the Corporate veil/evil because a company was top-heavy? Is there anything but top-heavy anymore?)

But now the wealthy tell us they are fearful for tomorrow (not today) . They whine that the future is uncertain. They want Main Street to join them in repealing everything that’s new, everything that changes their present way of “doing business”. They sit on their fortunes because they say they are unclear about the direction our nation is moving. Somehow protecting their own asses and a trillion dollars in assets is viewed as the better choice between employing another million persons from the millions they unemployed. That’s the wealthy party line - even as they’re amassing billions more!

So why should our wealthy Business Leaders be spared feeling fear when millions of their former employees live in nothing but constant fear - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no hope in sight? Our Business Leaders do not live in fear as Main Street lives in fear but it is clear that their assets are being threatened. They are threatened because the profits they show today are simply not sustainable and so their future is uncertain too.

A major difference between the wealthy and Main Street however, is that much of their uncertainty comes by their own hands and because of their own strategies. You can only cut a workforce so far before it becomes largely dysfunctional or non-functioning. Like it or not, Business Leaders need employees to run their businesses and we are nearing the end of the line on just how much further they can reduce personnel. Largely diminished quality control (Toyota), diminished attention to safety (BP), and a marked decline in B2B and customer service – (everywhere), are already showing symptoms of the quickened pace, shortened work hours, and the “double duty-nose to the grindstone” now expected from their remaining employees. Cost-cutting strategies are limited in what can be cut and how deeply it can be cut. The strategy of cutting costs to increase profits is only sustainable so long as cost-cutting actively continues. So, what is the next cost-cutting/profit making strategy? Continue to aggressively outsource jobs to foreign countries offering cheaper labor.

Main Street - do you really think these Business Leaders are going to give you back your jobs when you give them carte blanche to do only one thing (make profits) and to do it however they want?
Should we be terribly concerned about this small percentage of people who are, directly or indirectly, busy throwing people off company payrolls and exploiting the remaining workforce just so they can stockpile another trillion dollars in profits? Or should we listen to their self-serving fears and then cast our votes against whatever they favor? And in favor of whatever they fail to support ?

Trust in Leadership

A favorite inspirational quote reads, "Be like the Moon. Come out from behind the clouds. And shine." It is hard to shine in the world nowadays when everywhere we turn we are surrounded by clouds of suspicion and mistrust - fear for what tomorrow may bring. Generally in times of fear we turn to our leaders for guidance through the storm but Trust in Leadership is in short supply today, the lowest in decades, and with good reason.

Although true Trust is not a matter of worthiness or unworthiness, the word is loosely used today to more closely describe a process of deductive reasoning that involves a judgment (concerning the truthfulness or honesty of others). We Trust those who are trustworthy. We don't trust those who are not. These labels, of course, are matters of opinion, when the actual meaning of Trust lies closer to that of faith (requiring we believe without real reason to believe). Essentially trusting in another is to have faith in them, to believe in them without relying on material evidence or logical proof. What happens to Trust, however, when material evidence and logical proof dispute what we want to believe?

Should we continue to Trust each other, our colleagues, or our leaders when material evidence indicates they can not be trusted? Is there any realm left within society where what is said and what is done are the same thing - where the "talk is walked"? We have seen cover-ups in the church, in the government, in business, and on Wall Street. "Houston - We seem to have a problem here."

I am deeply disturbed by the changes I have seen over the last 10 years. I feel less hopeful. I feel less hopeful because I have less trust. I don't like the feelings of doubt, suspicion, or mistrust. They make me want to climb outside my skin. How much more beautiful does our world seem when we can approach our neighbors, our colleagues, our spiritual advisers, our elected government officials, or our bosses/(clients) without feeling a need to question their intentions or integrity? A thousand times better, that's how.

I don't think that I'm alone in how I feel. I still have values I believe in. Values that guide my every day thoughts and my every day actions. I also believe that the vast majority of the world's people are no different than me and do their best to live "honestly" in spite of the leadership examples we often see today. Are we simply resistant to a changing world or are we resistant because we seem to be moving in an unstoppable direction that threatens what we truly value and that gives meaning to our lives? I prefer to think it is the latter. I'm wondering just how many of you agree?

Leadership: The Practical Power of Philosophy

I began my first entrepreneurial venture in the early 1980’s after having served many others as an employee and the experience I accumulated along the path served more as a guideline to what I would NOT do, than as a guide to what I should do, if I hoped to succeed as an entrepreneur and to create the life I dreamed about.

My initial capital investment in my business was only a few hundred dollars, a phone, a purchase order pad, a sales order pad, a few boxes of assorted industrial safety products, and most importantly, an investment in time beforehand - time to arrive at a well considered Philosophy. Why a Philosophy, you might ask, and not the 5 year business plan that everyone recommends? What is the practical relevancy of Philosophy when it comes to creating a successful business?

Simple observation led me to my conclusion. I had witnessed countless opportunities presented, while in the employ of others, that were often over-looked or disregarded owing to a narrow focus on “keeping with the plan”. Simply stated, most plans lacked flexibility and adaptability; they are concerned with mapping the active dynamic but typically fall short in the arena of effective and appropriate responsiveness. Why? A plan involves a time-line of static concepts that are to be applied within a context (business/economic) that is recognized by all to be at least fluid, and occasionally, even volatile.

The prevailing “locked in to the plan” approach to business ventures made small sense to me (then and now) and so it was that I was determined to pioneer another path that better suited the context and needs of an ever-changing economic and technological “playing field”. I chose the path that considers the fundamentals of human thoughts and actions - Philosophy. I wanted to understand what motivates us to think or to do anything beyond our basic survival needs, and particularly, what motivates us to think about or to do those things that we don't really enjoy?

Although I have said that plans have their flaws,that is not to say I had no plan. I had a relatively clear vision of where I wanted to go and several ideas of how I might get there – specific tasks I could perform that might facilitate “building a business from the ground up” that I had gathered from a variety of books as well as my direct experience from years spent in Management. It was, in fact, my experiences in Management, and particularly WITH Management, that compelled me to strike out my own. I was absolutely certain there were better ways to make fundamental choices and decisions that governed business operations than the statistical analysis many business owners had come to rely on, and to the exclusion of all else. While charts, graphs, and spreadsheets, have their place in business, the weight assigned to numbers had tipped the scales to such an extent that, even though they enjoyed material success, few owners I knew seemed truly happy and their employees seemed even less so. These businesses were soul-less; their employees, more robotic than apparently human.

Why such unhappiness in the workplace when we spend the majority of our lives engaged in earning our livelihoods? Most people, if asked to list the subjects that are of most practical significance to their careers might name computer courses, business science, economics, accounting, and so on. But most people, and particularly business people, tend to overlook that Philosophy is a subject of tremendous Practical Power. It is philosophy that studies the fundamentals of human thoughts and actions and it is human thoughts and actions that will contribute to either the success, or to the demise, of any entrepreneurial venture. I made the decision to focus my planning efforts for my business on the fundamentals of human thoughts and actions and how I might optimize the quality of those thoughts and actions to realize a greater potential, not only for myself, but for everyone involved. (Please note the word I used is quality, not quantity or speed.)

Every aspect of our life and every aspect of our culture are shaped by our philosophic ideas so I focused my Business Plan on outlining a Philosophy of “doing” Business more so than outlining any particular strategic plan. I began by listing the basic grievances I had shared with millions of others as a consumer and I also listed the grievances I shared with those who “served” someone else as an employee and resolved to try some opposite approaches – a turn-around of 180 degrees. Radical? Maybe.

I called this upside down view “backwards thinking” and applied it to many of the business premises that had been handed down to me and that I had accepted as having some factual basis. I had a strong and compelling need to know what was actually True and what was merely “conditioned” belief. Just as importantly, I needed to know if an alternate (or even opposite) approach to my experience could succeed or whether I was simply just another dreamer who was wandering this earth with impractical visions?

What are some of the ideas I experimented with and turned around in shaping a business philosophy? The first idea was that a business should be managed by the numbers (strictly business, nothing personal). I tried the opposite and I managed the business by Managing the people of the business. This too, I approached backwards. I managed the people by viewing myself as in their service rather than operating from the premise that they were there to serve mine (or that of an inanimate entity – the business itself.).

What were the results of this backwards approach? Tremendous and rapid success for everyone involved! The numbers for the business grew by leaps and bounds but not because we focused on the numbers. We focused on People – our customers and each other - and our numbers simply told the story of how well we did that.

What is really true is that Business decisions are not made by the numbers but are made by people (albeit people influenced by the numbers, many of whom have lost touch with their own humanity in the pursuit of material gains). What is also true is that the numbers in our business don’t cause or create our story, they merely reflect the results (or the symptoms) of our thoughts and our actions over time.

All things considered, isn’t it time we rethink our thinking and, at the very least, question some of the basic premises that businesses operate on today? Whether asking an employer or an employee, there are few within any organization who have been able to articulate their company's basic philosophy as well as they can recite last month's sales figures or next month's budget allocations. My own experience shows that we have all been misled by those "at the top"; that the way to sustainable success lies not in charts and numbers but through the embrace of humankind and humanity, itself. Isn't it time we explore the Practical Power of Philosophy?