Globond prides ourselves on having Serendipity, Synergy and Synchronicity as the 3 main drivers for our business. Today we found another validation of that model when we went for our daily reading on www.slate.com and found the following article by Daniel Gross: "Davos Man, Confused... Why the world's economic leaders blame the catastrophe on the system instead of on themselves." The entire article is a must-read for Globonders (http://www.slate.com/id/2210081/). Gross discusses this year's World Economic Forum, where the world's "great men and women" traditionally gather once a year to discuss and solve the world's biggest problems. Gross says that this year the elephant in the room is the global meltdown and simultaneous failure of so many systems and sectors. Somehow, though, he comments, the WEF attendees, used to "imposing themselves on history" are not wanting to discuss their role in the crisis. He says, "Success is the work of Great Men and Great Women, while failure can be pinned on the system."
The serendipity is that we had just picked Slate.com as our choice of media partner for the Tectonic Leadership Summit to be held for the first time in DC this April. The synergy is that Gross wrote this article without even knowing anything (yet) about what Globond is working on: The issue we have been discussing is the dysfunctional pattern in which we routinely hold up individual leaders as superstars and/or monsters, lionized one day as the solution to the world's problems, and demonized the next when things don't work out as planned. We then replace them with the next super leader. The root issue is far deeper than one of accountability.
In fact, Globond has learned from our own deep thinkers that great leaders need to learn that their biggest responsibilities are to empower those under them and to embrace the paradoxes. Furthermore, leaders need to understand that they do not have to shoulder all of the responsibility themselves, and that they too can sometimes be followers, learners, listeners. In fact, yesterday I listened to a presentation at the Boston CEO Club given by Alan Gregerman, CEO of Ventureworks and a successful author. He told us that rubber boots were first invented by the Mayans 900 years before an American inventor figured it out and commercialized them. Likewise, Indians in the Brazilian Amazon were swimming the freestyle stroke thousands of years before the Europeans "caught on" and learned it....before that, they only knew how to do the breast stroke. Gregerman's point is that the solutions were there all along but were overlooked by the so-called powerful.
In fact, the solutions to many of our current problems are all around us but our leaders, for the most part, are not looking or listening. They are too busy trying to figure it out for themselves. And getting sick in the process. Oprah Winfrey, God's gift to so many people, for example, is out of shape and depressed because there is no "Oprah" for her: the people who solve her problems are paid by her to do so. Oprah should have a shoulder to cry on and be able to just be a real person, but we put her on this pedestal too high for her to jump down.
Going back to the serendipity, last week I happened upon Slate.com's Change-o-meter after someone connected to me on LinkedIn and asked us what we thought of it. Change-0-Meter turned out to be the daily score that Slate's Chris Williams and others give to the Obama Administration for how much change they are actually doing rather than discussing. I had stopped reading Slate but now realized that Slate is not drinking the Kool-Aid and is the most objective, savvy, sage voice out there right now. They are keeping it real and keeping it honest. And it dawned on me that Slate and its sister companies Washington Post and Newsweek would be the perfect media partners for our summit.. Today Daniel Gross's article articulates what it is Globond wants to accomplish in those three days, and then on a regular basis.
The Tectonic Leadership Summit will be the place where people used to having answers will go to ask the questions. Rather than getting paid huge sums to speak, they will be the paying attendees. The answers to the big questions will be provided by Globonders, people from all over the world and every walk of life, who have been working on these problems and questions for decades. One is a Brazilian Amazonian Chief; another is a Kenyan Masaai Warrior; a third is a tennis coach and author in LA who taught tennis to Oprah Winfrey. Still another is a Lebanese woman born in Senegal who was a pioneer in telecom and is now one of the world's foremost authorities on fiber optics but who is also into Physics and Philosophy and especially paradox. And we have others from a variety of cultures and backgrounds but each one is a different piece of the puzzle we have decided to call Tectonic Leadership. Tectonic Leadership means Benevolent Intent (Etsko Schuitema), Stepping Into the Crack (Samia Bahsoun), "eating the Zebra alive" (Yusuf Ole Petenya) and using the "precision principle" (Al Secunda). It is "The Me I Couldn't See"TM (Elyce Monet)And many other ideas woven together into a methodology and set of strategies that will allow these great men and women attendees to go back out into the world as an army of Tectonic Leaders to fight the good fight and have a normal life at the same time. Alongside President Obama who is in fact a Tectonic Leader already. Most of all, however, Tectonic Leadership means getting out of the trap we are all in which divides the speakers from the listeners, the learners from the teachers.
One Tectonic Leader is too young and too besieged at the moment to even realize that she is one. Her name is Masuda Sultan and to read her memoir:
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3 comments:
I like the idea business based on Serendipity, Synchronicity and Synergy. It would be cool to make a serendipity meter. Serendipity (I just like that word) I would guess waxes to assist efforts that can cause mutual benefit, and wanes where selfishness and short-sightedness are on the ascendant.
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