What
does it feel like when effort invested in vain?
I
will speak for me; I am frustrated, annoyed, hurt, disappointed. If there is
seriously good reason then I can reconcile myself to the circumstance, actually,
I usually do reconcile myself to reality since to do otherwise is to encourage ongoing
depression and loss of fulfillment from life and with us only having one try at
this trip we call life, I see no point in persisting with that level of
self-destruction.
A
significant aspect of the issue is our selection of the challenge we set for
ourselves. It is one thing to take up a shovel and dig a swimming pool in our
backyard and something very different to personally and only with a shovel to
set out to shift Mount Everest six feet to the
left.
This
raises a common irritation of mine, the saying to pursue our dreams… I can
dream of moving Mount Everest with a shovel,
but it is fully beyond me. Hence our dreams need be in relation to our
capacities and to the price we are prepared to pay. I think we instinctively do
make that exact judgment call when we do set ourselves to dream and act to
pursue that dream. When we do not, our friends look about for the strait jacket
and nice men and woman in white coats.
Immediately
we are scoping the question of when and under what circumstances do we give up?
Clichés abound … quitters never win and winners never quit … and we return to
the challenge of using a shovel to shift Mount Everest
six feet to the left.
Judgment:
But more, since the reality of our judgment embraces deep emotional choices of
what we want for ourselves and how we seek to have our life express something
more than the fact that we passed by, a fact rapidly dispersed by the multitude
of spirits existing with us and following behind our existence all clamoring
for recognition and self expression, circumstances where very quickly we shrink
to a neural trace in mind of those to whom we were close, and then to less as
the next generation merely notes our existence, if we are lucky, as a name on
the family tree.
My path: Was pressed hard on me many years ago, 1978, I was in New York on business.
During the weekend I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. It had a
display of artifacts from Thrace,
an ancient society in the mountains to the east above Greece, today
again a nation.
The
artifacts were remarkable, dating back to 1400BC (or BCE to be politically
correct). Exquisite worked gold and other metal and wood utensils, jewelry, and
ornaments. One however, caused me to stand for many, many minutes transfixed.
It was a rhyton, a drinking vessel, in the form of a rearing stag; the wine was
drunk from the mouth, the vessel filled from behind the neck. It was only a few
inches tall, but was solid gold. The detail was remarkable; the eyes seemed to
glow with life. It was from around 400 BCE.
Some
unknown craftsman reached through time and touched me 2500 years later; an
incredible legacy. They did not intend to, they merely did to the very best of their ability that which was in them to do.
What
was I doing with my life that had the slightest chance of reaching through time
to just the generation after next, never mind 100 generations?
Life
can turn tiny moments that can define us.
My
only skill lies in ideas.
I
had just six years earlier completed my PhD in chemistry, and joined Shell Oil
as a chemical sales representative. To Shell’s surprise and mine, I was good at
it. They then opened up a position in their Head Office Personnel, as it was
known then, as Training and Recruitment Officer. Again, to Shell’s surprise and
mine I was a very good trainer. But during this stage, my scientific background
generated questions on psychology, and human development and training etc. I
had begun an extensive reading program five years earlier, and had begun the
first steps at an extensive research plan in theoretical social science
(although I did not think of it as that then, merely questions I was aiming to
answer).
My
chemistry PhD had given me an intellectual orientation toward precision. I was
then offended in my reading in psychology, epistemology, social philosophy, and
sociology by the lack of conceptual precision and had a sense that it did not
have to be all so statistical and conceptually loose.
I
had framed four questions in my notes:
§
If
we had a complete and apt general theory of knowledge what would it tell us of
knowledge and relationship knowledge makes with the objects of that knowledge?
§
If
we had a complete and apt general theory of psychology what would it tell us of
two people interacting?
§
If
we had a complete and apt general theory of sociology what would it tell us of
society and the development of society?
§
Given
there is only one actor, people, what then are the necessary links between the
first three questions?
As
I stood, for a long time, the curator approached me to ask if I was alright. I
said no, and spoke to him for some length. He nodded, smiled, touched my on the
arm and said ‘good luck son’.
In
the moment in that museum I committed to my path.
The
questions were vastly more complex than I realized then.
I
had a number of self-statements I used to guide my efforts.
§
I would not give a fig for
simplicity this side of complexity but give my right arm for simplicity the
other side of complexity. Oliver Wendell
Holmes. The final intellectual target, to have simplicity on the other side of
complexity, but first need to define the nature of the complexity.
§
The answer lies in
knowledge, wisdom in the next question. Myself; used to ensure I always uncovered the next
question so reinforced the demand for ongoing intellectual intensity.
§
Never did it for the
money, only ever did it for challenge, the money just proves you got it right. LJ Fisher, NZ entrepreneur.
The final standard, get it right.
In
1998 I had invested 20 years in researching and thinking and conceptualizing
the issues embedded in the questions. I had read extensively, stretched myself
to what I thought was my limits. I had fully defined the complexity that needed
a solution but solutions that embodied simplicity, that bridged complexity,
that I felt and sensed were ‘right’, eluded me.
I
took a long holiday, during which I decided to give up on my quest, after 20
years, this was in 1998, that I could not solve the complexity I had defined, I
could not find the singularity, the simplicity. I then returned home and
started to write a book on management, I already had five in the market… and
early one morning a few weeks after returning from holiday, as my then partner
lay in bed and I was writing on my desk by my bedroom window, I wrote down a
theory of psychology I did not actually realize I understood and had developed,
it just came out of my fingers, I can still see and feel the moment when I
realized what I had just written down and it included a general theory of
knowledge and causality. My relief was overwhelming. It was so emotional I let
it sit on my desk for several months, I would pick it up and look at it, and
put it down, still frightened of it. Going to extensive efforts to define
questions that chart and illuminate a complexity then the dreadful realization
that the answers to those questions are beyond you, this was perhaps one of the
worst moments of my life.
Solutions
were not beyond me, they were however beyond my understanding of me. I lost faith in me, I gave up, or at least I
think I did … but serendipity gave me back to me.
Finally
I refined and formalized the ideas, drafting the ideas into papers at my web
site www.grlphilosophy.co.nz. Although
reading them today, them are often crude in relation to the insight I have now
and to my skill at presenting these often quite complex ideas in an easily read
form, that is not accident, since I have for the last five or seven years been
working hard at the skill of presenting complex ideas into simple readable form
able to be read with ease and engagement by anyone interested, and moving
beyond that, even making the ideas interesting and engaging to read.
It
was only when I begun to formalize the ideas that I grasped fully the extent of
them. It was in effect a redesign of social science itself with core tenets,
tools and processes all intertwined arising from key attitudes I had held and
worked with for 20 years. The theories of psychology, knowledge and cause were
emergent from the fundamental intellectual structure in a quite direct manner.
OPD theory[1]:
winning
1.
Leadership judgment.
a.
Build clear effective team game plan.
b.
Integrate the individual game plans with the team game plan.
2.
Leadership effectiveness:
a.
Ask every person to make the choice to ‘turn up’ and do
their bit as in their personal game plan, so contribute to the team success.
|
The
chief issues of giving purpose to our passion are now sketched clear; they are
largely emotional, related more to self-esteem and spiritual purpose than to
rational strategic direction which can only give clarity to the deeper issues
and provide articulation so that action can then follow with some precision.
Let
us assume the deeper issues are clear and settled in your heart. What then?
Think
in terms of a ‘game plan’. A clear summary of what you need to do to achieve
the ambition that rests in your heart. The detail will depend on the exact
nature of the aim, it can be detailed or simple, but should be detailed enough
to offer clearly defined easily understood steps.
If
you are part of a team and most of us are, then a personal game plan is derived
from the expected performance in the team.
The
term ‘game plan’ is drawn from sport, where we all know and agree these steps
and this reasoned clarity in advance is useful even crucial.
Of
course you need the skills to be able to do it. That goes without saying, and
no point bluffing, if you do then very likely, if you are in a team someone
else will need to cover your butt.
The
next thing is to ‘turn up’. In sport, we all know and understand exactly what
this means. It is much, much more than just physically being there. It is being
there with intent and purpose focused on the game plan. It is delivery of the
action in the game plan with commitment. The game plan is the skeleton, the
bones of the task with the task itself being our best judgment of how to get
the greatest success. But it is us ‘turning up’ that gives energy to the bones,
brings the skeleton alive.
It
is turning up that gives passion to purpose.
We
do need to understand about bringing passion to our purpose; are the moments of
truth, the moments where success is gained or lost, are they for brief weekly
moments as in sport, or are they daily, six hours each day five and on half
days each week? Or are they a few hours each week, where it is crucial to have
good records of tasks, progresses and notes on the stage where one is at, and
where discipline and patience needs support intensity and passion for a twenty
year graft to get it right? And even
more subtle, are we clear on when to push and when to wait, when to walk away
and leave it and when to return, in these questions there is seldom a clear
reasoned answer, only experience can guide us, so if you do not have it, then
seek it and listen.
May
passion ever move me but reason be my guide.
Passion
is our driver, find yours. It will lie beyond thought in the center of your
spirit. Draw from it the clear aim for you, judgment so you pit yourself
against realistic dreams for you.
Don
Quixote had the right spirit, but poor judgment.
You
and only you can make your life meaningful for you. And the only meaning that
will touch your heart is the one that you find and draw from your heart and
make it real.
[1] OPD is
the organization theory that emerges from applying the social science tools and
fundamental theories of cause and knowledge and psychology to the question: How
exactly is staff behavior linked to organization strategy? OPD is application
of a fundamentally different social science to practical social question of how
we make our organizations more effective in supporting community wealth and
health.
