Week 21.40 Bewilderment
Perspective and understanding can change in a moment. I thought I knew what that meant, and had experienced these kinds of changes many times. Going to college, learning about the world of professional photography, traveling to places I could not have imagined, having children, falling in love are good candidates. Teachers moved my mind (I'm thinking of you Dr Rao.) My life had not prepared me for the seismic shift in thinking that came from, of all places, a podcast. Ezra Klein interviewing Richard Powers about what we can learn from trees, and his new book, Bewilderment.
I'm a big fan of Power's previous book. The Overstory is the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning book about trees that changed the way people see the trees, nature, and the earth and our relationship to it. It changed me and I opened up a sense of wonder and appreciation for nature that I had previously respected but not really understood. I recommend that book to everyone who has not yet read it. It is magical. While it may have opened me up to what came next, it did not prepare me. After listening to the podcast and then reading the book, I see the world differently. It is all alive, has meaning, and is important. It is also aligned with new thinking in leadership with the growing recognition of the value of all parts of the business ecosystem.
We are all living together on a planet that is small and large, abundant and scarce, flourishing and dying all at the same time. Our world is filled with equally important all kinds of life and needs to co-exist in order for us to exist. Human beings have done amazing things by seeing ourselves as the top of a hierarchy but that system that sees the world as a resource for our use is coming to the end of its useful life, even if some entities can extract surplus for a little while longer. Businesses and the leading business thinkers are quickly moving away from a model of hierarchical leadership to one of unity through diversity and interdependence. It is a model that values the employees more than leaders did in the past. It recognizes that these new values increase productivity, profits, and happiness, which is critical for employee retention.
These evolutions in business thinking mirror startling advances that Powers cites that the sciences have made in recent years. Darwin's model of survival of the fittest is no longer the only game in town. There are new observations of how cooperation and hybrids of competition and cooperation are winning models. Ecologist Suzanne Simard, author of Finding The Mother Tree, discovered that trees communicate and share resources, a true interdependence among living things. Symbiosis is everywhere. We have to look no further than to marvel at the majesty of how the internal parts of our own body get along. If we really recognized all of the organisms that keep us alive within our bodies, we would be amazed and grateful for them all. As amazing as our internal world is, our external world is also an intricate world of diversity, interdependence, and cooperation.
Diversity ignites wonder, growth, and stability. Klein and Powers trigger my mind to explore the world in which the focus is on maximizing the system, not the output. Considering all things valuable creates a more complex system, and I think that is the point. The system is more complex. Leading in a world in which all players have a voice and externalizing cost is more difficult requires leading and living with wonder. Thriving in this world will require leaders who are willing to lead us into the wild, the new unexplored territory of collaboration, uncertainty, and connectedness. Leading, and following, into the unknown is called Bewilderment. It is where we start and where we end, and our way forward.
Week 44 of 52 Weeks of Giving: World Wildlife Fund
WWF protects wildlife for many reasons. It is a source of inspiration. It nurtures a sense of wonder. It is integral to the balance of nature. WWF focuses on saving populations of the most ecologically, economically, and culturally important species in the wild. Ultimately, by protecting species, we save this beautiful, vulnerable, and utterly irreplaceable planet we call home. Over the last few decades, conservationists have come to understand just how central community involvement is to wildlife conservation success—and how important it is for communities to actively steward the natural resources around them to improve economic and social well-being. WWF’s community-based conservation work today reflects this fundamental reality. They work across a variety of communities and customize their work based on the specific needs and interests of a given place, taking into consideration each region’s particular set of conservation assets and challenges.
Linkage’s Women in Leadership Institute Nov 2-5
With gratitude for you all, please receive a complimentary virtual keynote pass at Linkage’s Women in Leadership Institute Nov 2-5, now in its 22nd year and available for the first time both in-person and virtually. The faculty includes best-selling author Erica Dhawan, in addition to Founder and CEO of Care.com Sheila Marcelo, Philanthropist and NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, Wall Street star Carla Harris, trailblazing sports agent Molly Fletcher, and Bev Wright facilitating an important women’s diversity panel. Linkage aspires to change the face of leadership, by helping advance women and other underrepresented populations and by accelerating inclusion in leaders and organizations. Now in this second year of a difficult pandemic, this mission is more important than ever. Please join the 2500 people who have already registered for the largest conference in Linkage history!
What Matters: Ayse Birsel On Devouring Crabs and Using Pen and Paper To Remember
Debbie Millman has an ongoing project at PRINT titled “What Matters.” This is an effort to understand the interior life of artists, designers, and creative thinkers. This facet of the project is a request of each invited respondent to answer ten identical questions and submit a nonprofessional photograph. Ayse (pronounced Eye-Shay) Birsel is the co-founder of the award-winning design and innovation studio, Birsel+Seck, in New York. She is one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People In Business and Interior Design Magazine’s Best Of Year Product Designer 2020. Ayse is the author of Design the Life You Love, A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future. What Matters: Ayse Birsel On Devouring Crabs and Using Pen and Paper To Remember – PRINT Magazine
From Start-Up to Grown-Up by Alisa Cohn launches October 26th
From Start-Up to Grown-Up gives founders and CEOs of a great start-up, the knowledge, and experience that executive coach Alisa Cohn has gained from helping companies such as Etsy, Foursquare, InVision, and The Wirecutter become headline names. Growth of your company begins with growth within you. The book provides you with effective and practical ways of maximizing your strengths, defusing your triggers, controlling your self-doubt, and building on your motivators. With these self-management tools, you can then turn your attention to managing your team by ensuring the flow of communication and finding the joy of delegation and the soul in meetings. Finally, you gain practical tools for managing the company and ensuring the overall effectiveness of your team and strategy, using specific scripts you need to have delicate or difficult conversations. GET THE BOOK HERE
When Good Work Is Rewarded With More Work by Ruth Gotian
I’ve often been told that if you want something done, you give it to a busy person to do. That might work in the short term but will quickly cause an imbalance in the workload. The risk is burning out your top performers. When you are good at something and show you are responsible, hard-working and a high achiever, the reward for great work is often...more work.
Managers might be viewing it differently. They might see it as giving their top employees more opportunities. The high achievers see it as poor performers getting away with less work. They feel they are being penalized for being good workers. This double bind can be a cause for friction yet is avoidable. Laine Joelson Cohen, Pamay Bassey and Darek Lenart are all featured in this article. When Good Work Is Rewarded With More Work (forbes.com)
And, as always, thank you, Marshall, for making all of this possible.
With love and gratitude
Scott