I lost my friend Peter Lytle this weekend

I was suppose to have lunch with Peter today. When he didn't call. I simply thought well he must have gotten caught up in one of his many and varied projects. He does that from time to time and it is perfectly OK with me. It worked both ways with Peter - he called me late one Friday afternoon last fall and said, "What are you doing?" The next thing I know we are heading for his Island up in northern Wisconsin. The next day he said lets go for a drive and off we went to Madeline Island to go scootering the rest of the day. He and I would talk about how we want to change the world - with Peter he wanted to teach the world about how we are destroying the environment. He was not one to simply proselytize uninterested people he would do things that would draw you in and then you would be hooked. He built one of the worlds greenest houses and lived in it. Then he would take everyone who wanted to tour it through it. It never seemed to bother him giving tours of his home - I think it was because he was changing the world one person at a time. And then he built his portal Livegreenlivesmart.com to let people self discover how they can do what he did. He seemed to always be writing and doing research.

Peter and I shared a passion for business, the environment, behaviorial economics, a thirst for education of ourselves and others, and mostly we cared about people. Because of what we had in common our conversations would take us in every direction imaginable - And the depth of our conversation was grand.

Peter would tell me how friends would call with problems and he would help them even when it was clear he had enough on his plate. He valued his friends and his family and just loved speaking of them. He loved life and he packed things in - he was not one for stillness.

Peter Lytle was more than a friend he was a mentor. I will miss him dearly. I would stop by his office and interrupt him all the time - he always welcomed my spontaneous interruptions - I loved him for that....

Who are you going to have lunch with tomorrow - celebrate your time together it is short!

Mary Oliver is a favorite poet of mine and I thought this was very fitting of Peter's passing..


When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Leadership is about understand the human condition?

We know from the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (TED Talk) that leaders find Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience when they maximize their skill against the most challenging of situations. This happens for the best leaders when they maximize how to help those they lead. They let go of their own need or satisfy their needs by satisfying the needs of others. When you cross this with how we know the world around you it begins to shed light further insight that may help you explore your own leadership understanding.

Leadership and Executive Coaching is all about understanding the human condition and helping our clients’ understand it for themselves. To do this effectively we use different mental models that help facilitate this development. One that you may consider is that we must know ourselves first before we can know another. Once we learn about others we are capable of hearing about ourselves and finally we are able to begin to understand the rest of the world around us according to E. F. Schumacher from The Guide For The Perplexed. This is a reasoned view of how we best obtain knowledge. If you begin to examine this framework it make so much sense. How can you possibly understand anything until you understand yourself? You are the compass, the meaning maker from all the sensory data you bring in. Until you know what are your drivers, what is important to you, what you believe in, what yours value are, what emotions cause what reactions how can you possibly understand what drives someone else. As you begin to explore others and see how they are similar and different from you, your experience will deeply inform you of the richness of the human life. It is only then that you will begin to accept how others see you. It is this point that could be interpreted at a more simplistic view of being able to see your blind spots, find your humility and avoid the all to conspicuous issues around narcissism.

The poet Shelly in provides deeper insight into exploring this by asking the question, what is it that others are needing from you? How is it the world presents itself to you? What does the world need from you? You bring uniqueness to the world. As you learn to understand this uniqueness you begin to see others and then you open yourself up to hearing what they need of you.

“There are no passengers on spaceship earth there are only crew,” said Buckminster Fuller. As leaders we must understand this role for ourselves by knowing what is needed of us. 

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What is your killer experiment

Last night Jim McCarter, President and CSO of Divergence, a company that is solving major issues in the agriculture world by eliminating nematodes from our food supply, and I went to a fundraiser at Bill Danforth’s home in St. Louis. We were there to meet Secretary of State Robin Carnahan who is running for the US Senate seat in Missouri, following a long tradition in her family. Carnahan was sworn in as Missouri’s 38th Secretary of State in January 2005. “Carnahan’s family has a lengthy history of devotion to public service. Her father, Mel Carnahan, served as Missouri’s State Treasurer, Lt. Governor and Governor, and her mother, Jean Carnahan, was the first woman to serve Missouri in the U.S. Senate. Her grandfather, A.S.J. Carnahan, a congressman from south-central Missouri for fourteen years, was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to be U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone in West Africa.” According to her website.

What was a treat for me was that Dr. Bill Danforth, one of St. Louis’ most distinguished academic leaders and philanthropists, had invited what seemed like the hall of fame of the medical community. Jim and I started up a conversation with Dr. Phil Needleman, a former professor at Washington University School of Medicine where Jim’s had gone to school. Dr. Needleman made the difficult leap from academia into industry by becoming a top pharmaceutical R & D executive. This career led him to become a key developer of Celebrex helping 10s of millions of patients gain critical relief from pain.

“Philip Needleman spent 25 years at Washington University School of Medicine, where he was professor and chairman of the department of pharmacology. In 1989 he moved to industry, becoming senior vice president of Monsanto. In 1993 he became president of Searle Research and Development. He was also senior executive vice president and chief scientist of Pharmacia from 2000 to 2003.” According to the National Academy of Sciences.

Standing back and listening to Phil and Jim discuss Divergence latest findings was like watching a laser cut through ice. Dr. Needleman went right to the heart of Jim’s research and ascertained exactly what the next steps were and what progress would be made over the coming months. When we stepped away Jim explained to me that Dr. Needleman has a reputation for solving scientific problems in a rapid-fire manner. Meaning that when he looks at all the many issues associated with development of a drug, he determines which experiments could prove in the near-term that a project is headed for failure versus other experiments that just fill in the blanks but aren’t likely to doom the project. He is famous for saying, “What is your killer experiment to prove your point?” In other words what is the experiment that will validate or invalidate your point of view? When we spoke he was very clear, “I don’t go for the jugular (vein). I go for the carotid (artery) - it kills you faster.”

Many researchers don’t want to tackle the killer experiment because they are afraid of the answer. Not Dr. Needleman. He goes after the ones that will put him out of business first rather than getting stuck at the end of the development cycle only to find out it does not work and will never work.

In manufacturing this would be what is know as the theory of constraints where we attack the biggest bottleneck first, apply all resource against that issue and then and only then do we move to the next bottleneck. The difference is, in R&D all these are mental bottlenecks because the invention is still in progress. Dr. Needleman said to us time is much more important than other resources. You are in a competition for a new drug that will help people and build your company. You have a 70 month time horizon from start to trials and if you can identify early if the experiment is going to fail and learn your search will not bear fruit, you will save the organization both lives, time and money. He suggests that leaders in these organization need to have a great deal of courage because the bets our big and if enough of them don’t work then your position needs to be eliminated.

What is your killer experiment?

Independence Day Teaches Us About Leadership

We have more individual choices than ever. We can choose from sixteen movies at a mega-plex, eight different kinds of orange juice (low acid, some pulp, not from concentrate, etc.), and countless shoe brands and styles. Is it any surprise that we want to be free to make choices in our jobs as well? If you grew up with only four TV channels to choose from, you might believe the command-style leadership is still viable. You might believe in shared values and needs, the way we did in the ‘60’s. Unfortunately, centralized leadership does not work with this new generation. They want to work their way, not your way. They know what motivates them, how they best achieve results and obtain information, and they want to receive full credit for their efforts. If you try to steamroll their Independence, you will wind up with flattened cartoon characters, not productive employees. As a leader today, you must decentralize the power and authority. With leadership opportunities, your employees will find personal meaning in the work they do. And they will do it well, provided you meet their needs. Your challenge—accommodating leaders on all levels of the organization—is daunting, maybe even terrifying. How do you align each employee’s needs with the needs of the organization? With so many leaders, so much independence, will chaos be far behind? Not necessarily. Not if you build in some safeguards. It’s important to understand that total independence is often desired, but not always healthy. Individualism can lead to a sense of helplessness, and this helplessness can lead to depression. Despite fiercely independent childhood heroes like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, we want and need to be part of something greater than ourselves. We want the support of a community. We want to feel like the work we do has meaning not only to ourselves, but to others. Chances are, this meaning has already been established—in the form of your organization’s founding mission, vision, goals, and values. These pillars were originally set by the founder and then enhanced through time by the organization’s leadership teams. As a leader, you can bring this meaning to your employees by frequently asking how their needs and goals match the organization’s. In doing so, you give them the respect they want and need, as well as communicate a sense of belonging to a larger community. Do you believe in your organization’s mission, vision, goals, and values? If so, you will be able to impart this sense of togetherness to your charges. If not, you will be herding cats. Authentic leadership requires allowing everyone to lead at times, but to instill one cohesive purpose, so that these leaders will work together and move in one overarching direction. For each and every project, ask yourself, “How does this contribute to our organization’s mission, vision, goals, and values?” Ask the same of your direct reports. And have them ask the same of their direct reports.

Coaching: The Fad that Won't Go Away

By: Jim BoltTue Jul 8, 2008 at 5:47 PM

Five suggestions for getting the most out of a coach.

I ended my last column noting that we would examine three very popular leadership development methods (Action Learning, Coaching, and Leader-Led Learning) in more depth. So let’s start with executive coaching, which is now a billion-dollar industry experiencing explosive growth. Frankly, it wasn’t very long ago that having coach was sort of a dirty little secret -- you kept it to yourself. It meant you were in trouble and probably on the way out. Now it seems everybody has a coach. It means we’ve arrived, that were a rising star, someone our organization is investing in for the future. Wow, what a turnaround!

Our findings in my firm's executive development surveys (mentioned in the last column) indicated a dramatic increase in the use of coaching: In 2004, 56% of the companies said that executive coaching would be a major learning method they would emphasize. Then in a 2006 follow-up survey, 51% said the use of coaching had actually increased. Given this nearly miraculous change in the status of coaching we recently decided, along with our research partner, Dr. Brian Underhill of CoachSource, to conduct a major research project to explore the murky world of executive coaching in depth.

Our study, High-Impact Executive Coaching, was unique in that it examined the topic in a 3-D manner, i.e., through the eyes of coaches, organizations that retain them, and leaders being coached. The study included 48 organizations and 86 leaders being coached. In this column I want to focus mostly on what we learned from the leaders being coached since it’s highly relevant for anyone interested in either providing coaches to leaders or in being coached. (Read Full Article at Fastcompany)