THE PLEDGE[1]

 I believe in myself,

and that the future can be shaped and directed by the values I live by.

I have a dream where all people will live with dignity and freedom:

where a sense of belonging and civic pride will

replace the pain, suffering and alienation of people who have

been affected by the HIV/AIDS experience today.

I promise to be true to the morals and teaching of my faith:

to act responsibly and respect my body.

I commit myself to get involved with my community in acts

of kindness and service so that my society will reflect

the true meaning of ubuntu.

I pledge to be part of transforming our society in the battle against AIDS.

This I promise.

[1]This Pledge is made by the girls of St Cyprian’s School, Cape Town, South Africa at their annual Youth Aids Day Service. Written by The Revd. Vivien Harber, the former School Chaplain

Surrender means accepting this moment, this body, and this life with open arms.  Surrender involves getting out of our own way and living in accord with a higher will, expressed as the wisdom of the heart.  Far more than passive acceptance, surrender uses every challenge as a means of spiritual growth and extended awareness.[2]

In the book, Millman describes encounter he as the writer has with an (imaginary) mountain Sage in which the Sage teaches him several significant if not vital spiritual lessons or laws, one of which is The Law of Surrender.  At one point, the Sage says to him:

Although The Law of Surrender means accepting whatever happens in your life, it does not mean passive toleration for what you don’t like, or ignoring in justice, or allowing yourself to be victimised or controlled. True surrender is active, positive, assertive — a creative commitment to make use of your situation, in a spirit of appreciation.[3]

What the Sage is teaching is that surrendering helps us to understand the power that is unleashed by the act of acceptance.  Surrendering allows us as human beings to come to terms with accepting.  And in life there is much that requires acceptance.  And certainly nothing can be transformed before it has been accepted.  Surrendering, says the Sage, means accepting not only life’s ups and downs, but also accepting yourself — your body, your thoughts, and your feelings.

In another episode the Sage reminds Millman of the power of water.  While appearing soft and malleable water of course is the most penetrating, the most purposeful of substances.  While yielding, it is forceful and flexible, it surrenders to gravity without resistance, adapting to the shape of any container and so it reveals the most intelligent and powerful response any of us can make in any circumstance which is, to practice surrendering. Surrendering, she says is like having power like that of water in one’s life.  Surrendering enables one patiently to reach our goal when even the odds are against us.  Again, to practice this form of surrender is not an act of weakness.  Rather, the Sage reminds us, this form of surrender is what sets the masters of the martial arts apart as true masters.  How? The highest martial arts, like water, are flowing and flexible, responsive rather than rigid or reactive.  Such arts teach as to pull when pushed and to push when pulled – to blend with life’s forces rather than wasting energy struggling against them.[4] Again using the analogy of the martial arts Millman has the Sage tell us that the true warrior needs to surrender any attachments he or she may have two victory if they are going to achieve their goal. 

Only the warrior who lets go of the smaller self with its desires, fears, and attachments would remain relaxed and focused.  In a dual, surrendering to death means survival: clinging to life means losing it!

The single most important thing happening in the innovation and design space is the recession. Inside companies, dealing with the impending recession is the conversation of the day. The latest statistics are increasingly gloomy and the only question is “how bad.”
Innovation and design thinking can play significant roles in getting through this recession.

Here are five ideas to innovate in a recession:

1- Go Social. Companies are sure to cut back on ad spending as the economy slows (they always do) but blogs and social networking (FaceBook, YouTube,) in general can spread the message at less cost and perhaps even more effectively. And collaborative innovation using networks of engineers, scientists and other “creative” types around the world can cut costs and boost the chances of successful product development.

2- Go Medical. The market space that is most ripe for innovation and most likely to keep growing through a recession is medical care. Get into it if you are not already there. Look at these stats: In 07, medical care consumption accounted for a record 20% of disposable personal income. That’s up from 8% at the start of the 1970s. In current dollars, per capita spending on health care soared to a record high $6,797 (saar) in December. Hospital costs climbed to $2,210, while doctors’ bills hit $1,332 per person.

3- Go Anthro. Getting close to customers is always important but never more so than in an economic slowdown. Using design tools that get you deep into customer cultures (whether they are online or in Africa) cuts down the risk of launching new products and services. And it raises the possibilities of coming out with something really want in a recession. The IIT Institute of Design has sophisticated software to help companies do detailed anthropology inexpensively. Call Patrick Whitney and check it out.

4- Go Global. All the companies so far that have weathered the downturn to some degree has truly global operations. Being global means being plugged into all the markets of the world (India and China are still expanding rapidly as US economic growth stops). It means tapping into the lowest-cost talent and capital in the world. It means knowing the cheapest ways of innovating–because you are innovating for the Bottom of the Pyramid. And being global means having revenue denominated in currencies that are not dollars–and that are rising as the dollar falls. Dig deep into the good results of GE and other global corporations for the most recent quarter and it is this factor–doing business in other currencies–that is most imporant.

5–Go Cloud. Nothing works if you don’t have the right IT platform. You can’t go social, global, anthro, medical or anything else if you don’t have the right technology. But if you do invest in the right kind of technology, the gains can be huge. Productivity growth has been incredibly strong in recent years (contributing to strong corporate profits even as the economy slows) because of smart spending on IT.

And we’re not talking bureaucratic systems integration but cloud computing, agile, apps-focused IT. If corporations really want to save money in this recession, they might consider leaving the top-down, centralized, Microsoft-driven PC world of the office which is very costly and shift to the distributed, agile, Web 2.0 just-download-what-you-need IT world of Google.

You’ve got the brainstorming group organized, ready to tackle problems that your management team has decided are troubling the company — worrying indicators that market shares are dropping along with profits.You’ll get together and come up with a bunch of ideas about how to staunch the decline. Nothing complicated about that.

Here’s where creativity can be used, that magical quality to help you find solutions to your problems.
Not so fast. Creativity means a lot more than coming up with ideas, says consultant Robert Paris.

“First, you’ve got to understand the problem,” said Paris, a 15-year veteran in the management consulting business. “Then, you go on to generate ideas. Then, to implement those ideas.”

A few years back, the Montreal-area consultant was working with 18 senior executives in a company that was not doing well financially. When asked what their major problem was, they all described how their market profit was dropping.

“They wanted to brainstorm about this, and came up with ideas like increasing advertising, cutting prices, creating a website and so on.”

But Paris knew they could actually be moving in the wrong direction, so the executives were put in a room where the walls were papered with flip-chart paper.

“In the centre we included what we call ‘the fuzzy situation,’ which is what they call the problem.

“Then, we started to take them though a series of exercises, asking them questions and challenging them.

“Someone said, ‘The marketing’s all wrong.’ Someone else said, ‘We’re working in silos and not talking to sales.’

“After a while, they came up with issues like: ‘We’re not trusting each other, not communicating.’ We ended up with dozens and dozens of problems.

Then, using a “decision tree” that indicates all of the problems, each executive was given five stickers and asked to mark the most important problems.

“And it turned out that their problem was really a lack of trust. There were executives not talking to each other, keeping information from each other.”

That was a far cry from sales and profits. Had the team members focused only there, they would have continued to have the trust problem no matter how many solutions they found for what was actually a symptom of their difficulties.

“You’ve got to identify the right issues and start working on those,” said Paris.

Although it’s no surprise to Paris, team members are often amazed that they haven’t identified the main issues.

This, he said, is true creative problem solving, and it can apply to any group of people working together.

Remember, “everyone comes with their own agenda and perspective,” he said. “And there are typically fundamental issues people might recognize, but don’t talk about.”

It is these problems that need solutions. But that’s not all. Once the problem has been identified and solutions have been found, the last part of this exercise it to make sure they can be implemented.

There’s a creative solution to this as well.

“You’ve got to figure out the potential issues that will get in the way of the action plan, and rather than sweep them under the carpet, figure out how to avoid blocking the plan.”

In other words, see it through from beginning to end.

 Nelson Mandela

 ”If you want to build a ship, do not drum up people together to collect the wood or assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

 Antoine de Saint Exupery

 Two great quotes from two great people, each of whom understood that the mixture of ‘a longing for the immensity of the sea’ (vision) and ‘assuming people are good’ (ascribing to people their human dignity) are explosive, are revolutionary, can shift us from, as Zander says, ‘conversations of the downward spiral’ to seeing ‘endless creative possibilities’. These are not simply philosophical promises – they are real, life-changing possibilities. Today Zimbabweans have the opportunity to experience the power of mixing vision with human dignity. Today, in China, athletes are doing the impossible, against all odds, showing us clearly what happens when people mix passionate vision with the capacity to love themselves (never to lose their innate human dignity, even in the face of suffering). Today, in South Africa, we have the opportunity – even in the face of confusion and the leadership struggles – to hold onto and hold out to (the world) the founding vision of this new South Africa which does ascribe to each of us an irrevocable human dignity.

Passionate vision and ascribing to everyone their human dignity – powerful alchemy for everyday living, for changing the world, creating possibilities everywhere… 

chris

In another life, Benjamin Zander might have been a salesman. The US-basedcon ductor and music teacher – who links this work to providing “transformational training” to company executives – is giving two concerts in the UK this weekend. But, in a highly unusual move, Mr Zander has promised to refund the ticket price to any member of the audience who fails to be emotionally stirred.

The performances* of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra, will give the British public a chance to see in action a conductor who has won laudatory reviews from the music press and has also gained worldwide renown in the past decade as a “corporate motivator”.

Mr Zander dislikes this phrase, however. “Being a motivator gives the impression you are boosting people’s morale under stress. Like eating Chinese food, it’s never enough – you are always coming back for more. My real interest is transforming people, opening them up to a new way of looking at life.”

These are heady claims. The British-born 63-year-old realises that such talk pushes him perilously close to the world of fringe “management gurus”, who make sometimes dubious assertions about their ability to influence people. When asked about the tradition of “transformation” – the term he uses to describe his activities – Mr Zander says he is following a rich tradition that goes back to Buddha and Christ. He retracts the assertion almost immediately, once he realises it makes him sound arrogant.

Against any idea that people might take him for a charlatan, Mr Zander says his deep roots in music give him a strong basis for conveying messages. He has conducted the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, or its predecessor groups, for 30 years, has made guest appearances with other orchestras such as the Philharmonia and has built up a solid list of recordings. “You can’t conduct an orchestra in a woolly or ineffectual way. Orchestral musicians – along with children – are unusual in being virtually impossible to con.”

Furthermore, Mr Zander is careful about how he presents himself. “I have been called a business guru but that’s absurd. I don’t know anything about business.” Indeed, his operations are run by a small staff in Boston and he has few of the normal trappings associated with big-name management experts.

Since he started giving lectures to corporate employees 15 years ago, Mr Zander estimates some 250,000 people have attended his talks, from senior executives at companies such as Compaq, British Airways and Glaxo-SmithKline, to groups of schoolchildren or priests. Last summer, he gave a four-hour presentation to 6,000 school teachers in Singapore. He has also addressed three meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the global gathering for top people from business and government

In conversation, Mr Zander radiates enthusiasm and energy, combined with a remarkable serenity. Such qualities are evident in his lectures to business leaders, as well as in the 45-minute talks he invariably gives to concert audiences before each performance.

His pitch to the business world is that listening and understanding music can energise people and release new thinking that would otherwise be suppressed. Some of these ideas are expressed in a book, The Art of Possibility, that Mr Zander worked on with his wife Rosamund Zander , a therapist from whom he is separated but with whom he still has a close working and emotional partnership. The book has appeared in nine languages and has sold 200,000 copies. “Note the word ‘possibility’,” says Mr Zander . “Possibilities are options. Possibility is open-ended and infinite.”

In his lectures, Mr Zander provides ideas and advice and often plays musical fragments on the piano or cello, or sometimes with a full orchestra. He has honed these musical skills in his academic base at the New England Conservatory, a leading music college in Boston where he has taught since the 1960s.

Mr Zander asserts that opening the mind to the wide range of ideas conveyed in an orchestral symphony can have an immense effect. This, he says, is illustrated in the work of the 19th-century composer Gustav Mahler, one of his favourites, and specifically in the 90-minute third symphony. Its opening passages are marked by brutality, coarseness and anger. “This piece is like a journey, which is not all smooth. But when you get to the final movement, you are dealing with an anthem that is all about humanity coming together to celebrate the universal force of overwhelming love. I don’t think that anyone, from the poorest child to the most sophisticated philosopher to the chief executive of a multinational corporation, would be resistant to having his or her life enriched by this experience.”

In the business world, says Mr Zander , companies are increasingly finding that employees perform better if they are able to recognise such emotions and act in harmony with them. “Each of us has a package of attributes to live our lives; they include education, stamina, intellectual capability. If people can add to this an ability to unlock the emotions inside them, they will make themselves more completely human. Everything they do will be enhanced.”

Mr Zander says he has had “thousands” of letters and confidences from people who say their lives have been altered by such a transforming process.”People who have been through this, and keep practising it . . .will keep inventing and creating and resist the fall into the downward spiral that affects many people. You become tougher, clearer and more flexible.”

The trend in business to companies being more interested in how their employees think and feel about events – rather than just telling them what to do – fits in with his approach, says Mr Zander . “I could not have done what I do (with companies) 25 years ago, given the ‘command-and-control’ way in which a lot of companies were then run. It’s odd that an approach which would have been considered quirky or extreme has now become part of the mainstream.” Another change is that many companies have welcomed the notion of using metaphors from music to get across messages about “empowerment” and “growing employees” that are part of a lot of recent management thinking. “A lot of companies are tired of using images from war and sport to convey impressions that they think are useful. It’s delightful to think you can use some of the most glorious music ever written to draw parallels that are helpful in a business setting.”

Chris