Carlos Escobar

Here are five articles that have had me thinking over the last few weeks:

Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate

Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in your direction it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult. For organizations seeking to become more adaptive and innovative, culture change is often th…

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hbr.org

Stifle or Inspire: How to Unlock Employee Confidence

Organizations have employees with untapped potential. But many companies are failing to build workers’ confidence to unlock that potential.

Your personal brand is crucial for your next promotion and raise. Here’s how to create one

“Be intentional and consistent with what you want to be known for.”

How to Get the Most Happiness From Your Social Life

Simply seeking out people who are different from you will make you smarter and more contented.

IBM says 40% of the global workforce will have to learn new skills over next three years due to AI implementation

The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) looked at two prior surveys for its study: one involved 3,000 C-level executives from 28 countries; the other questioned 21,000 workers in 21 nations.

Create and nurture processes where all voices can be heard, and decisions are made based on clear criteria.

Counter the assumption that “this isn’t always possible” with the assertion that time spent involving people in the decisions that impact them will yield better, more effective solutions and save time and resources in the long run.

MULTIPLY people’s contributions. Don’t inadvertently diminish them.

“The devil never sleeps. But he only wins if we don’t do better next time.” – Juliette Kayyem

Today, I finished the book The Devil Never Sleeps: Managing Disasters in an Age of Catastrophes, and it was…. dare I say it…comforting???

We live in a rolling boil of catastrophe (gestures vaguely at everything), and there is a case to be made for accepting that as fact so we can be as prepared as possible. This is NOT a book about digging bunkers or prepper extremism; it’s about the mindsets that help us manage disasters WHEN they are visited upon us.

There is comfort in thinking these things through, even if only for the mental exercise that empowers us to respond, not react, when bad things happen. Because they WILL happen, and just as certain, we can choose to make things a little less awful for ourselves and others when they do.

Publisher’s Summary:

An urgent, transformative guide to dealing with disasters from one of today’s foremost thinkers in crisis management.

The future may still be unpredictable, but nowadays, disasters are not. We live in a time of constant, consistent catastrophe, where things more often go wrong than they go right. So why do we still fumble when disaster hits? Why are we always one step behind?

In The Devil Never Sleeps, Juliette Kayyem lays the groundwork for a new approach to dealing with disasters. Presenting the basic themes of crisis management, Kayyem amends the principles we rely on far too easily. Instead, she offers us a new framework to anticipate the “devil’s” inevitable return, highlighting the leadership deficiencies we need to overcome and the forward thinking we need to harness. It’s no longer about preventing a disaster from occurring, but learning how to use the tools at our disposal to minimize the consequences when it does.

Filled with personal anecdotes and real-life examples from natural disasters like the California wildfires to man-made ones like the Boeing 737 MAX crisis, The Devil Never Sleeps is a guide for governments, businesses, and individuals alike on how to alter our thinking so that we can develop effective strategies in the face of perpetual catastrophe. 

Source: goodreads

“Sisu requires a positive exercise of will; it’s a muscle you exercise” – Katja Pantzar

I finished the book “The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Wellness, and Happiness Through the Power of Sisu”. Sisu is a concept I learned about at the 3M half marathon in January (h/t @lruettimann), but it’s something I’m just getting around to reading more about.

This book is about getting back to basics. A reminder that as our lives get ever more complex, the solutions are relatively simple: move, spend time in nature, eat healthily, and have the courage to do hard things. As always, these reminders are often said easy and done hard (which is why we need to read about them all the time!)

Publisher’s Summary:

“An engaging and practical guided tour of the simple and nature-inspired ways that Finns stay happy and healthy–including the powerful concept of sisu, or everyday courage.

Forget hygge–it’s time to blow out the candles and get out into the world! Journalist Katja Pantzar did just that, taking the huge leap to move to the remote Nordic country of Finland. What she discovered there transformed her body, mind and spirit. In this engaging and practical guide, she shows readers how to embrace the “keep it simple and sensible” daily practices that make Finns one of the happiest populations in the world, year after year.

Topics include:

• Movement as medicine: How walking, biking and swimming every day are good for what ails us–and best done outside the confines of a gym
• Natural mood boosters: Cold water swimming, steamy saunas, and other ways to alleviate stress, anxiety, insomnia, and depression
• Forest therapy: Why there’s no substitute for getting out into nature on a regular basis
• Healthy eating: What the Nordic diet can teach us all about feeding body, mind and soul
• The gift of sisu: Why Finns embrace a special form of courage, grit and determination as a national virtue – and how anyone can dig deeper to survive and thrive through tough times

If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a better, simpler way to find happiness and good health, look no further. The Finns have a word for that, and this empowering book shows us how to achieve it.”

Penguin Random House

Here are five articles that made me think over the last few weeks…

Josh Bersin:

Building A Skills-Based Organization: The Exciting But Sober Reality

The Skills-Based Organization is coming, but it’s not as simple or technologically easy as vendors may let you think. Here’s what’s going on.

Prosci Change Management:

Infographic: Data on How the ADKAR Model Drives Change

Explore our infographic to understand how change professionals apply the Prosci ADKAR Model in unique ways.

Harvard Business Review:

Leaders Focus Too Much on Changing Policies, and Not Enough on Changing Minds

So why is business transformation so difficult to achieve? One reason is the invisible fears and insecurities that keep us locked into behaviors even when we know rationally that they don’t serve us well.

The Atlantic:

The GOP’s Lurch Toward Extremism Comes for the Border

Republican states are maneuvering to seize control from President Joe Biden’s administration over immigration.

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http://www.theatlantic.com

Vox:

Why you (probably) won’t finish reading this story

We live in the most distracted time in human history. Can we reclaim our attention spans?

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http://www.vox.com

Where do good ideas come from? Connected minds.

And connected minds are fueled by a lifelong commitment to learning in formal environments, through experiences, and from the perspectives of others.

Stay open to new ways of looking at the world. Seek opportunities to bring people and ideas together. And never stop learning.

I took a few days off this week.

It was the first time in 2023 that I took a true break, and I definitely needed it. During this time I caught up on some of life’s minor administrative tasks, read, napped, ate poorly (magnificently), napped some more, and then took one drive out to the Texas Hill country to snap some photos.

I was a bit out of practice, and it was depressingly hot, so my trip was short. But a few phantom storms in the area made for some nice clouds and just enough sunshine to take one decent photo (out of many).

The photo below is a wide shot, so you’ll need to scroll to see the whole image

Focus on what you can control. Ignore the rest.

I’ve long been a proponent of this philosophy. I fully believe that to make an impact, we have to focus on where we can make a difference. BUT…

And this is a big one…

We can’t use this approach as an excuse to be passive.

If we choose to be passive, we’ll never know what we’re capable of. If we choose to be passive, we can justify walking away from almost any situation that makes us uncomfortable. And then the burden (and the opportunity) falls to other people.

Don’t be passive.

This means that there will be times when things are beyond our control when we ALSO have a duty to push hard against the boundaries of that control to see what’s possible. We have an obligation on matters big and small to test the scope of our influence continually. Because right at the edge of our influence lies the opportunity to expand our capabilities.

The people who make a difference don’t resign themselves to defeat when they encounter a situation that is beyond their control. They think about how they can make a difference within that control, and they figure out how to test where that control ends.

That’s when they discover opportunities to put their unique strengths, skills, and experience to use.

That’s where the good stuff happens.

I finished the book “Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955” recently. “Aftermath” is about history but also human nature, the good, the bad, and all the infuriatingly murky areas in between.

Publisher’s Summary:
“How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust. The years 1945 to 1955 were a raw, wild decade that found many Germans politically, economically, and morally bankrupt. Victorious Allied forces occupied the four zones that make up present-day Germany. More than half the population was displaced; 10 million newly released forced laborers and several million prisoners of war returned to an uncertain existence. Cities lay in ruins – no mail, no trains, no traffic – with bodies yet to be found beneath the towering rubble.”

Audible

The question of how a society comes to terms with its actions and how it rebuilds when its very foundation has been left in ruins (socially, structurally, economically, totally) is one that I find parallels to in today’s world.

Are we in post-World War II Germany levels of tumult? Not even close. (At least not yet)
But we have work to do.

It will take a concerted effort to regain international trust and our own faith in democracy after the Trump years and through whoever rises to take his place. It will mean finding the courage to acknowledge our history of racism, oppression, hate, and violence when we are doing our best to erase it. It will take total commitment to address the surging human and economic cost of climate change when right now, the most common action is inaction. It will mean addressing the incentives and means for misinformation to flourish. AND perhaps most importantly, it means overcoming the mindset that says “we’re all in this together” while acting out “like hell, we’re all in this together” during times of crisis.

We may not be living through a post-World War age, but it will take a similar effort to rebuild (and, in most cases, build for the first time) the kind of society that thrives in the future.