I’ve written recently about the convergence of dualities that’s happening all across the world, and this understanding is profound and huge and important.

But I’ve come to believe the ability to hold a paradoxical tension in our minds is just as important as recognizing it at a macro scale.

The best (or we could say most helpful) behaviors seem to stem from an inclusive perspective.

Not either/or, but both/and.

The examples I gave in the dualities post apply here as well. An individual mindset which can bring together what seems like polarizing viewpoints (Eastern/Western, masculine/feminine, individualistic/familial, left brain/right brain) actually performs better, particularly in the world that is emerging.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” I’ll take it a step further: I am claiming that this ability actually makes an individual more valuable in the new economy.

Because of the ways in which the world is changing, if we wish to thrive — or even just compete — in the new economy, our mindset must evolve as well.

Here are a few more practical examples of paradoxical thinking.

Everyone is unusual (we all have utterly unique strengths), but at the same time we are all the same (we are all human beings). The truth is in the tension. It’s not either/or. When managers begin to grasp this, they quickly become the type of leader people want to follow.

Something like “impact” doesn’t even occur in pure dualities. We can’t have the impact we want on anything — there are many things outside of our control — but at the same time we truly can impact the world around us. We don’t have complete control over what happens, but we do have power over certain things which lie within our sphere of influence. The most helpful perspective lies in being able to retain both thoughts, not one or the other. When we begin to understand this, we gain a sense of freedom and power in our ability to make choices.

The truths of the world around us lie somewhere within these paradoxes. It will benefit us greatly if we can find a way to embrace the tension.

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There’s a cottage industry called “coaching” that’s sprung up over the last few decades (it’s quite a large cottage, but still).

On the surface there’s nothing wrong with this.

But I have come to believe that the fact this industry exists at all is an indication of a dirty and not-so-little business secret…

READ THE REST ON THE LEADCHANGE BLOG>>

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P.S. We’ve got the beginnings of a great dialogue in the comments section — come and add your thoughts!

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Something I love about artists is that they recognize the power of choice.

Whether the art is writing, painting, music, filmmaking, visual, or otherwise, there is a power inherent in designing something, and that power can be summed up in that the artist has deliberately made a decision to choose one thing over another.

A book title lists “13 things one needs to know” instead of 12.

A song lyric uses the word “like” instead of “love.”

A painter picks red instead of blue.

From an outsider’s view, these things may seem trivial. But from an artist’s perspective, these choices are incredibly meaningful. In fact, they may actually be the most important thing, because without the power of choice, an artist wouldn’t be able to make art at all.

And so it is with all of us. We are all artists, painting our life’s canvas with the colors we choose. It’s just that we often think we’re not choosing, though we always are.

Sometimes we even believe we’re not true artists… which is perhaps the biggest lie of all.

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There are a whole bunch of folks talking about how the world is changing. It’s easy to miss this conversation, because like most things in our increasingly fragmented/niched world, certain realities are only evident when we look for them. (I’m sure you’ve noticed that the information deluge makes it easier for us to “hide” in whatever circle we travel in.) But whether we’re looking or not, there truly is something happening.

As a wise guy once said, the times they are a-changin’.

And they’re a-changin’ in ways we’ve never experienced before.

Life is faster, more unpredictable.
Business models are less stable.
Communication is always on, and is coming from 360 degrees.
Power structures have flattened.
Consumers are more powerful, CEOs are less powerful.

As human beings, we’ve never felt quite this connected before. At the same time, we’ve perhaps never felt quite this vulnerable, either.

To a large degree we’re headed into uncharted territory, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a few reasonable understandings about what’s ahead.

In the interest of helping to make a bit of sense about the future, I wanted to share an insight about this transition with you.

So much of where we are coming from is dualistic, in the classic sense. We’ve got a number of dichotomies we cling to: Eastern/Western, masculine/feminine, individualistic/familial, left brain/right brain. But the new world that is emerging is connecting everything. It’s colliding forces that used to be separate. (Even old, polarizing enemies like capitalism/communism are finding a new smashed-together life in places like China.)

What’s the implication here?

The things that used to be separate will not be much longer.

Soon — probably much sooner than we think (i.e. now) — we will be navigating gray areas which used to be black and white. A strange new world where left and right brain thinking are equally important, or where a feminine approach is more effective than the traditional patriarchal one, is an environment that operates with completely different rules.

This means the people who can ask the right questions, easily let go of old assumptions, and bring fresh critical thinking to steer through gray areas are the ones who will thrive.

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P.S. The other implication is that we — all of us — have many important choices to make in the coming years. When dichotomies collide, some things will stay and other things will go. We must commit to taking the best of both worlds, not the worst.

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Last year I started what I think will be a yearly tradition for me — taking a moment to both review the past year’s accomplishments and to also set goals for the year ahead.

My notable achievements for last year:

• Kept my commitment to write a blog post every week, writing 51 new blog entries. (I only missed a couple last January — obviously I have trouble being on time in the first weeks of the year… for example, this post is two days late. Apologies.)
• Pitched my book to a number of big, traditional publishers including Harper Collins, McGraw-Hill, Simon and Schuster, Random House, Farrar-Straus-Giroux, Harvard, Berrett-Koehler, Hyperion & Penguin. (If you’re curious, they all “passed.” I still view this as an achievement, however, as it’s not all that easy to get an agent who can get one’s work in front of all these folks.)
• Performed in 12 more Group productions: 9 in January & 3 in June.
• Celebrated the Chinese New Year in Chinatown, LA. (A truly fun, amazing experience!)
• Attended the 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards.
• Spoke @ ICF-Los Angeles, Career Synergy, ASTD-Westside, ASTD-Los Angeles, Mount St. Mary’s College Leadership Institute, Circle of Change Leadership Conference, ISPI, and the La Cañada Flintridge Kiwanis Chapter. (At 8 events, this isn’t too far off of my goal of averaging one per month.)
• Renamed my blog “The Work Revolution.” (I’ve searched for a long time to find a title which encapsulates everything I write about here.)
• Contributed to the MIX Hackathon “Communities Of Passion” report (check out the 3 categories I suggested on Page 10 and “Build A Strengths-Based Culture” on page 25).
• Joined the Young Entrepreneur Council.
• Turned 30. (Holy s#*t, how did that happen?)
• Went to Disneyland 6 times. (Not bad since we just got our passes in June!)
• Visited Charleston, South Carolina. (I had never been to that part of the country before.)
• Upgraded my phone from an iPhone 3G to an iPhone 4S. (May sound trite, but this is essentially like trading in one’s horse and buggy for the Starship frickin’ Enterprise.)
• Became the 3rd (or 2nd, depending on how you look at it) Strengthscope USA Business Development Partner.
• Met a whole bunch of crazy-awesome people. (I’d start listing them here, but this post would become far too long.)

My goals for 2012:

1. Publish and release my book.
2. Travel outside of the US at least once.
3. Increase Strengths Doctors revenues and client list.
4. Speak more targeted gigs (corporations, conferences, leadership institutes, etc.) and get paid regularly for them.
5. Do yoga and floss every day (hey, I like my teeth).

For me, the holidays are about rituals. For my family growing up, these were snow and lights and kringla and tons of relatives and artificial trees (hey, we have allergies). December 25 would come, always accompanied by a trip to church, a nice dinner, and presents around the tree. While the order of events would shuffle from year to year, these were the anchors which held us in place, reminding us about the season we were experiencing.

As the years have gone by these rituals have slowly dissolved, replaced by the logistical difficulties which prevent them. My wife’s family has become almost like my own, which is wonderful from a love perspective, but further compounds the difficulties around holidays. (Between my family and  hers, we live in three different states and two different continents — if we were to take a round trip to see everyone in only our immediate families, it would cover over 20,000 miles.) The ritual activities that have made the holidays feel like a holiday have been crumbling for years now, and I feel the pent up urgency of something new coming more poignantly than ever before.

I suppose life is like this, as seasons change and customs shift. Life contracts and expands, and our experiences cover the gamut of life, some of which are disorienting and off-kilter and some equalizing and balancing.

The older I get, the more I grasp the cycles of life. Like waves that gather, crest, break, and repeat, most things in life seem to have a natural beginning and ending. Summer gives way to winter. Flowers bloom then wilt. Day gives way to night.

Perhaps finding a way to make peace with the endings is what allows us to really celebrate a new beginning. Perhaps it is our acceptance of the calm of darkness which makes the freshness of a sunrise so wildly invigorating.

So in the interest of that, I wish you all a truly good night.

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Today, I have one question I’d like to ask you.

It’s just going to take a bit of setup to get there.

Recently I’ve begun doing some research into the works of Max Weber. Though you may not know his name, he is widely considered to be “one of the three principal architects of modern social science” (to quote Wikipedia), along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim.

What’s most interesting to me about Weber’s work is his focus on bureaucracy. While this certainly isn’t a sexy topic, it’s pretty safe to say that it’s a subject which affects both me and you on a daily basis. From classic examples like the DMV (*collective sigh of exasperation*), to elected or campaigning politicians (*collective eye roll*), to the TSA line at the airport (*collective groan*) to the dreaded yearly performance review at work (*one more sigh*), we are all regular victims of these systems.

This is where our friend Max comes in. He says there are three ways to organize the power/authority in a society:

1. Charismatic,
2. Traditional , and
3. Legal-Rational.

They’re pretty much exactly what you think. Charismatic leaders get to lead because they are seen as charismatic or gifted. Traditional leaders are put in place because of a cultural tradition — think monarchies. Legal-Rational leaders are seen as authorities because the legal/bureaucratic system in place gives them the power and permission to do so. (For a bit more on these levels go here.) Weber saw these stages as a hierarchy of sorts, a kind of “tribe evolution”– an inevitable social growth pattern. Cultures that evolve will naturally advance from a Charismatic model towards a Legal-Rational one.

He also foresaw the negative effects of this growth: something he called “the shell as hard as steel.” A Legal-Rational model of power naturally creates something called bureaucracy, which in turn delivers an oligarchy where a few rule over the many. As this happens, it systematically generates a confining, dehumanizing society. (Sound like anything else I write about?) Also translated as “the iron cage,” this is the inescapable result of a Legal-Rational system.*

So, at long last, here’s the question:

What if there’s a #4…?

What if there’s something that’s more evolved than Legal-Rational?

I think there is, and I also think it’s on the way.

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*Read more about the “iron cage” here. It’s worth your time.

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We are quickly moving into a world that is filled to the brim with ideas, information, and knowledge. There has been talk for many years about “knowledge workers” and a “knowledge economy,” but as we can clearly see (and maybe even more importantly, feel, through the overwhelming information deluge which floods us daily), there is no simply no shortage of ideas anymore. If anything, we are approaching the point where it’s simply too much for most of us.

This is why your great idea doesn’t matter.

To be fair, my great idea doesn’t matter, either. (As an “idea guy,” this is quite painful to admit.)

The marketplace is saturated with ideas, information, and knowledge. In economic terms, the supply is beginning to outstrip the demand — and as we know, this simple equation determines what is valuable.

So in a world that couldn’t care less about “another great idea,” what actually matters?

In a word: execution.

In this kind of world, the right questions are things like:

• What can you do to bring your great idea to life… in the real world, helping real people?
• Is your great idea practical, tangible, and actionable?
• Does your great idea actually solve a problem that needs solving?

If not, we just don’t care.

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There is a natural tension between the proponents of “experience” and those who tout “innovation.”

Experience sees the value in leveraging wisdom gained through years of learning and doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes.

Innovation recognizes the world isn’t the same as it used to be and therefore will require fresh, new solutions.

These things often feel like they are mutually exclusive, particularly in our companies.* Organizations are often good at one at the cost of the other — and generally our businesses tilt hard in favor of experience. Almost everything we measure (and measurement is a big freakin’ deal) slants the scales this direction, from our hiring requirements (“Must have… 9 years!“) to financial reports which compare to years past.

The problem is that experience just doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

In a world that moves as quickly as ours, we shouldn’t be afraid of the “next thing,” the incremental thing. We should be afraid of the other thing — the thing which completely disrupts the market and renders our product or service irrelevant.

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*Of course, the thoughtful leader isn’t sucked into this false dichotomy, but sees value in both of these perspectives. They recognize that it’s not either/or, but both/and. The hard part is in resolving the tension. And that, of course, is a big part of why leaders make more money.

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It’s becoming increasingly important for us to be able to stand out as individuals in the marketplace. Whether we work alone as a solopreneur or as an employee in an enormous organization, it’s crucial for us to find ways to differentiate and display our value.

The best way to do this is by building a personal leadership brand.

But how do we do this? There are many ways to perform the steps of creating a personal brand (building websites, designing a social media strategy, etc.) and you can find tons of resources for that online.

But there’s something we must do before those things, and it is the most important step of all.

Before we can tell the world who we are, we need to know who we are. While this seems obvious, it turns out to be much more difficult to do than it is to read. Fortunately, there are 3 easy-to-understand parts to making this happen, and following them will help you build your personal leadership brand. These three steps are:

1. Strengths (Know ‘Em)
2. Space (Carve It Out)
3. Sensei (Get One)

Now at this point, at the risk of being a big tease, I must confess I already wrote about this in great detail in another post. For the full article on this process, visit the LeadChange blog.

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P.S. Bonus reading — I provide a free download link to two phenomenal articles about building a great personal brand in this article.

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