–Makes an ASS of U and ME. When I mentioned strategic planning in the Working Hard Ground workshop a couple weeks ago, about half the participants groaned. I’ve been there –blinking through the onslaught of virtual meetings that results in a document that is less a strategy than a work-plan tainted by hope. More on how to make that process more engaging and effective some other time. Before we can even begin effective strategic planning, we need to take an honest look at o

-Of Communication Information can overwhelm us. The increasing volume makes it hard to sift out what we actually need to know. How well we communicate inside our organization determines how well we work with each other to serve our clients or customers and, ultimately, reach our team’s goals. Here’s a simple mantra that I learned almost three decades ago as a lieutenant: What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I ensured that they understand? Simple, right? It can be. Once

Over-focusing on the near Threat blinds us to its Message. When I went back to Iraq the for second time in 2007, the DOD had focused tremendous effort on mitigating the IED (improvised explosive device, a.k.a “roadside bombs”) threat. Depending on what source you reference, between 63 and 80 percent of coalition forces casualties in Iraq came from IEDs. Every vehicle had upgraded armor kits. We put rollers in front of lead convoy trucks to detonate the devices ahead of us.

-There’s a Rationale Behind Our Irrationality. In Newsletter 6 (Knowledge is Power But Relationships are the Wheels) I wrote about a dairy farmer who went out of business in the early 90’s because he refused to entertain organic transition as an option. I got a few responses to that story, which centered on farmers' stubbornly doing what they have always done. From the outside, we see it as a tragic and irrational decision to choose failure over change. But his decision ma

-Blinds Us to What Is. Last month (Newsletter 5), I talked about letting go. One exercise for learning what you may need to let go is to list the things you think you should have accomplished by now or that you should be doing regularly. What are your shoulds? The problem with should is that it primes us for guilt and creates stress around outcomes that don't synch with reality– I should be farther in my career, I should be in better shape, I should… We spin the internal

–But Relationships are the Wheels. It’s human to believe that if someone else has the same information we have, then they will see things the same way. As individuals and organizations, we promote information we believe that others need to make a change (that we would like them to make). In government and non-profit, it’s education and outreach. In business, it’s marketing. Earlier, we covered the “Iceberg” systems model and how our mental models drive the rest of the syst

-Is the Way Forward. Our hyper-consumerist, hyper-scheduled, hyper-curated-on-the-web world bombards us with subtle and overt messages that we don’t have enough, that we aren’t doing enough, that we aren’t enough. While it’s difficult to ignore, it’s possible to pivot away. During a breakout in a farmer “town hall” that I attended last week, one farmer mentioned not having enough hours in the day -and night- to do it all. You could feel the group consensus. There’s always

–Goes as Deep as You Think. Complex systems aren’t easily changed, but that doesn’t keep us from trying. All our expertise and efforts are often stymied by forces we can’t see. A good model tells us where to look. The simplest model of complex systems is the Iceberg Model below. According to George Box, a British statistician, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. I find the iceberg really useful. The system’s results -ALL of THEM- tell us what the system actually

–It’s Actually Complex. Western culture often models our understanding of the world in mechanical cause-and-effect frameworks. Issac Newton and the Industrial Revolution influenced us to see our minds and organizations like so many machines -a series of parts working together to create a result. That thinking has helped us overcome enormous challenges. Generally, we can comfortably concentrate large numbers of people in urban and suburban areas, provide them ready access to

-Just not the way we intended. “The system is broken,” is a misunderstanding. It may not be creating the outcomes we intended but if it’s creating outcomes, then the system is functioning. Forget the intentions for the moment. Getting hung up in “should” blinds us to what is. Rule number one of systems thinking: The results tell you what the system actually does. Take a snapshot of the current results of Wisconsin’s food and agricultural system for a moment: -Wisconsin ex

The Practice Pause: Humor me. It’s Monday morning. This short note is one email of a dozen or dozens already staring at you from the unread inbox. Two, maybe three things have already annoyed you this morning. You have a ton of work to do and I’m asking you to put the world on pause for one minute. If I could take a second to shove in earplugs when we started trading gunshots in Iraq (I’m sensitive to loud noises, what can I say), you can give yourself a minute for th

I recently attended an invitational, farmers-only discussion on organic practices. Ten farmers in the room represented farms from 32 to over 4,000 acres. Post-collegiate farm experience ranged from 3 to 60 years with the group’s total farming experience exceeding 250 years. Organic farming experience totaled about 150 years. All ten had grown up in farming. If you calculated that farm kids used to start raking hay by age 8, then this group had almost 450 years of lifetime

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It’s lonely at the top. Depending on your organization’s structure and culture, it’s often lonely in the middle. If you run your own business, well, you know the deal. The past two years have delivered regular upheaval, challenges, and opportunities in our work and personal lives. At a time when we need to adapt to changes more than ever, peer interaction–even with one peer–can be key to your own processing and wellbeing. We usually begin our working lives grouped with peers.

I often spend a few days in a “woodshop retreat” between Christmas and New Years. I do respectable “square” work, but I’ve wanted to...

That's the headline of a recent Forbes article. In my ten years as an active-duty Marine infantry officer, empathy was not my strong...