Common Sense is not what is needed, Mr. President.

Common Sense isn’t what’s needed, Mr. President

If you listened to Mr. Obama’s interview on 60 Minutes, did you hear the phrase? Yes, that phrase. Personally, I listened until I heard the phrase “common sense”, after which I turned the Tube off. What calls for thinking in this present-Time, Mr. President, is not common sense. At one time, I had a Chinese employee who loved to repeat “common sense isn’t so common is it?” when client discussions became mired in details that clouded the bigger picture. Clients loved it; it simplified life for them. That is not what we need from our leaders, our friends, family members, or ourselves! Mr. President, I want to share this little paragraph with you, because I was disappointed when you called for “common sense” in a time that calls for thinking.

“That sound common sense which is so often ‘cited’ in such attempts” ascertain facts, by appealing to particulars> “is not as sound and natural as it pretends. It is above all not as absolute as it acts, but rather the shallow product of that manner of forming ideas which is the final fruit of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century (emphasis mine). Sound common sense is always trimmed to fit a certain conception of what is and ought to be and may be. The power of this curious understanding extends into our own age; but it is no longer adequate.
The organizations of social life, rearmament in moral matters, the grease paint of the culture enterprise – none of them any longer reach what is. With all the good intentions and all the ceaseless effort, these attempts are no more than makeshift patchwork, expedients for the moment. And why? Because the ideas of aims, purposes, and means, of effects and causes, from which all those attempts arise – because these ideas are from the start incapable of holding themselves open to what is.”


Instead of common sense, Mr. President, we need to think and to think differently from those ways we have allowed ourselves, or been allowed, to think. Certainly - if we are honest with ourselves - each of us already has some sense that we no longer truly engage with life and think. Television, cable news, the internet, Facebook, Twitter, radio pundits pushing a message supportive of one platform or another: each of these “channels” through which we are bombarded daily, deliver messaging that merely distract us from, allowing us to avoid, thinking. There are, in all likelihood for most of you, actual human beings sitting next to or across from you right now from you; and yet, in many instances, you are not connected, you have not come together, no thought is taking place.

Several avenues of help are available. Psychiatry, Religion, gatherings, engaging with thought, engaging and building with Others: these all seem to be better for us and for our times than staying plugged in and not thinking. In other words, there are multiple “Tubal-detox programs” available to any one willing to unplug, to engage, to recognize, as well as to accept the fact of their own Being-in-the-world and the Being of others. Such engagement brings with it awesome responsibilities, responsibilities which if accepted can negate both “common sense” and the failure to think so prevalent at present. It is hoped that we thus could find a path along which we could co-create a sustainable future, inclusive in nature, characterized by it ability to allow all to flourish. We need to repair and to re-weave the world and local tapestries. Common sense will never achieve either of those two goals.

Was heist Denken? was written by Heidegger nearly 50 years ago; and yet, its message is more relevant to our present-Now than any earlier time. Thinking is not “common sense”! At our most Sacred time of the Year, what greater gift could we give our friends, families, partners, lovers, employees and employers than to engage as humans, as thinking humans? Thinking requires that we unconceal that which has been hidden; it requires, in Heideggerian-speak that we come together to gather; that we no longer accept the concealed as truth.

Let me leave you, Mr. President, with Heidegger’s conclusion to this portion of his lecture. It applies in today’s Flat World more than in 1954.

“There is the danger that the thought of man today will fall short of the decisions that are coming, decisions of whose specific historical shape we can know nothing – that the man of today will look for these decisions where they can never be made.”

Mr. President, you have demonstrated that you understand and have internalized Michael Porter’s admonition: “strategy is choice”. We need you to choose to lead us out from tubal-land’s morass of conflicting utterances of concealment. Currently it seems as though the Sybil of Cumae is allowing leaves to blow, leaves that portend disaster, leaves inspiring fear. Mr. President, make the concealment stop. We need you to eschew common sense and to set the standard for thinking in America. Help us see that “common sense” is not the way.

Thanksgiving reflections: Principled negotiations with no absolutisms

Principled negotiations with no absolutisms

Was Heisst Denken? Thinking.

At Thanksgiving we all are wont to pause and give thanks. Turkey and Packers have, for decades, brought laughter, excitement, and joy along with calories galore to Wisconsin tables. This year, let us tie that thanks to a new thoughtfulness, a thoughtfulness that then extends outward into all that we do and are, both for this present Holiday season and into our everyday lives. What calls for thinking? What is thinking? About what are we to think? And, why might it be more essential to our future than ever in our lifetimes?

Heidegger, in addition to challenging us with this intensely profound question, is justly famous for two oft-quoted statements: “Language is the house of Being” and “Language creates world.” He often uses philology and etymology to search for ways by which to ascertain the meaning behind the meaning, that which is concealed. In honor of our Thanksgiving Day celebrations, let me offer a glimpse at his thinking about “thanks”.

“The Old English, thencan, to think, and thancian, to thank, are closely related; the Old English noun for thought is thanc or thonc – a thought, a grateful thought, and the expression of such a thought; today it survives in the plural thanks.”

Did you pause and take notice of the final words? There is truly a deep-seated connection in our native language, a connection that links thought-thanks-thinking-memory together. “Language creates world.” Can we find the time to hear what the assertion reveals? Does that simple statement mean something to us; or, are we so distracted by our always on, 24/7 whirlwind of activities, and thus prevented from reading deeply? Do we see these words in much the same way we internalize an internal memo via email? Thanksgiving Day. A day of re-remembering; a day when we can gather, and in that gathering recognize that we do have a commonality, an obligation to listen authentically to one another, an obligation to come together and create world, an obligation which must be honored in this present now, if we wish to co-create a sustainable future, inclusive of all, demanding that all might flourish.

Heidegger is asking us to re-remember the power of thought, the power of language. It is not a new, or novel, concept. Take the Gospel of John. The Gospels, in our age of inclusion and cultural diversity, remain one cultural touchstone that many of us still share. Grab your Bible; open to the Gospel according to John. Read the opening verses about creation. Holding in our thoughts the fact that when John wrote, the opening of John is a Gnostic hymn: Language is in the presence of Being [God], and Language is Being: world was made through the power of thought and naming. Heidegger’s assertions about language and its power are based upon John, our cultural “locus classicus” pertaining to the creation of world.

So too each of us can create world, construct that House of Being in which we most want to exist, through Language. We live in a passionate, divisive time. We need passions now, perhaps more than ever. Our nation is in decline; politically and culturally we seem paralyzed by our partisan divide and our several fears.
It is time to set aside our fears. It is time to participate in this new social revolution, embracing the change it portends, shaping the change through our language and openness.
Our governors, city officials, and national politicians have failed in there tasks. Now it is our turn to solve the problems of our present-, and future-, nows. Ken Chenault from AmEx offered this advice: we need principled negotiations with out any absolutism. So as you sit down to dinner this week with family and friends, please take time to give thanks, to think, and to begin the healing process of coming together.

Then, take a new look at Heidegger. Begin your day with a short thought from his work on language and thinking. Holding thought, revealing that which has been concealed and hidden, are two challenges we all face. Together, however, having gathered and listened authentically, we than will be able to move forward together. We still can co-create a world for our children and grandchildren.

“Is thinking a giving of thanks? What do thanks mean here? Or do thanks consist in thinking? What does thinking mean here? Is memory no more than a container for the thoughts of thinking, or does thinking itself reside in memory?”

What are we to do with this? For many of us, it is easy simply to either dismiss, or acknowledge, and then to “walk away” from the thinking. Let us stay in the clearing, out of the darkness of media pundits and talking heads: let us use language to create, to heal, to fabricate a new house of Being for all.

Diagnostics and Strategy: getting from Here to There

Going from Here to There: using Diagnostics, Facilitation, and Coaching to lay out your roadmap.

As I walked in this morning, I saw a large horse fly resting on the sidewalk. Huge, not particularly attractive: it couldn’t possibly fly. When She (sic!) created flying creatures, people asked what God had been thinking to design the horse fly or the bumblebee. After all we know that God has a grand design and all creation fits into the plan according to Her design. In truth, however, God’s design of bumblebees and horse flies has come under question for centuries. As in: what was She thinking? Or, nothing designed that way can fly. Yet, we know that both creatures do fly and do so well. What works so easily for God does not work as well for humans when it comes to successful planning on how to get to there from here.

Getting from here-to-there is always on everybody’s minds; and, getting from here-to- there is always already a clearly visible destination. Truth is, however: often we get lost on the way. [And, no! I really do not just mean driving directions]. I’m thinking more along the lines of the transformation the US now faces as the Tea Party tries to hold the nation hostage and take its citizens back to the 1787-9 period; or, a lot more simple to solve, how to transform a business into a customer-centered, customer-based business.
The challenges are so immense as to risk hyperbole. The missteps made happen so frequently and predictably that there must be a better way.

We no longer can afford missteps in today’s hyper-competitive, always-on, flat world. No, what we need is a way to assure breakthrough performance and to assure creation of a roadmap that outlines our best chance to arrive at the destination, the desired end-state.
And it really is quite simple to effect best-planning and execution of these crucial transformations. The keys are diagnostics, facilitation, and coaching.

Plans, lucid, readable and comprehensible roadmaps are important, nay vital to success: whether it is a “simple” exercise, such as taking your family of 5 to [you fill-in-the-blanks] for a mini-summer vacation, or (more) complex such as planning for your 24 year old daughter’s dream wedding, or compound-complex as in establishing your firm’s new customer centered and customer focused strategy. (Thinking of plans as a type of sentence construction may be a helpful metaphor).

Distractions, unanticipated events, setbacks, life: all these “things” happen and so our best laid plans somehow end up producing horse flies rather than hummingbirds. Problem is our horse flies don’t fly. Our “success” at planning, unfortunately, does not translate into successful implementation and operational effectiveness.

And, so what?! What now? How can your B2B CRM & CEM strategy be implemented successfully, without a hitch? How do we plan for life to happen and keep on the path. As I began to write this paragraph these 2 phrases surfaced: “Seek first to understand.” “Start with the end in mind.” And, yes, both pieces of advice are apropos of this discussion. Do they give a way to find planning and implementation success? I think they do. And, I think they do because they un-conceal what has been hidden or that which may distract.

What is needed is diagnostics, facilitation, and coaching. The process will clearly define 3 critical areas: 1. Where you are starting from: the point of departure or your “Current State”; 2., Where you intend to end up: your destination or “Desired End-State”; and, 3., the stuff that has to be done, accomplished, solved, etc. so that you can, in fact, get from here to there: “the bridging tasks”.

Unterwegs zu…

Blink or Think: Be Here now

Be Here Now: Blink or Think

A decade ago, while still consulting heavily, I entered the office of the President of a Billion $ business. The brass-plated desk-ornament in the middle of his desk gave one simple admonition: “Be Here Now!” This leader wanted everyone to be present. When I ask myself or you “Was heisst Denken?” I am, to begin with, asking myself to be here now, to be present. I am asking myself, and I am asking each of you as well, to locate that way, that path on the way to; and, to be here now, to be present and accounted for.

Our current situation is one that calls for thinking; it is one that calls for each of us to be fully present, to be engaged to be here now. If we believe Thomas Friedman’s presentation in That Used to be Us, we are a divided nation in decline, one that has brought itself to this precipitous predicament. We have failed our country, our citizen, our nation’s children - our own gift to the future - in that we have failed to invest in our future. We see it now in our dearth, in our unemployment; in our inability to generate meaningful, fully engaging work; in the homeless, the under-employed. We see it in this State’s decision to cut back on education; its decision not to invest in much-needed infrastructure and renewal efforts; in our ever-widening gap between those who have and those who have not. Rather than attend to the now, we turn away. We choose not to attend to what calls for thinking; instead we blink and we turn away.

It is not unexpected that we blink; that we turn our backs on what calls for thinking; that we turn back to our comfortable lives; turn on the Tube, and plug in un-thinkingly to what Thomas Pynchon referred to as “mindless pleasure”. In fact, a highly popular “pundit”, Malcolm Gladwell incites us to blink. His book Blink: the power of thinking without thinking admonishes us to “blink – don’t think”.

Whereas by contrast, in his 5th lecture, Heidegger begins: “What is called thinking? We must guard against the blind urge to snatch at a quick answer in the form of a formula. We must stay with the question. We must pay attention to the way in which the question asks: what is called thinking, what does call for thinking?” Our present now calls for thinking. We turn away, however. We blink.

“What does that mean? Blink is related to Middle English blenchen, which means deceive, and to blenken, blinken, which means gleam or glitter. To blink – that means to play up and set up a glittering deception which is then agreed upon as true and valid –with the mutual tacit understanding not to question…”(lecture VII).

While I see many of us trying to solve the issues of today, I see equal or greater numbers who turn away. Regardless of party affiliation, we no longer can turn away. We cannot, however, solve any of the current problems by blind adherence to party lines. Nor can we solve today’s issues neither through rancorous argument nor partisan paralysis. We cannot take Gladstone’s advice and decide what is important based on 2 seconds of ephemerality and what we knew to be true in that present-now, now long past. We must be present; we must be here now. We must understand and act knowing that “what is most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking age is that we are still not thinking.” We need to, we can and we must, get underway, unterwegs zu.