Quips, Questions, Quotes . . . and Highly Selected Aphorisms

Volume Two Reflections on six decades of life experience

I have always taken special note of birthdays on decades. Before I turned 20, I savored my last days as a teenager. At 30, I noted with some anxiety how fleeting time is, when I still had so many goals. By forty, my life had changed, and I basked in the feelings of “being mature”. Then, at 50, I decided to celebrate by writing Volume 1 of “Quips, Questions, Quotes . . . Reflections on a half-century of life experience” and sending it to my friends. This volume was written as I approached 60. (February, 1999)

Thoughts about legacy seem to increase with age—how do I really want to be remembered? It’s such a great question, we should think about it earlier in life.

Legacy is like a spiral—a great intergenerational gift: what we are is a gift from our elders; we shape and mold it, and leave it as a gift for our families.

Life seems to go better when I remember not to should on myself. It can lead to “ought-ism”, hardening of the “oughteries”, who knows what else?

I went to my 40th high school reunion—my first. It was fascinating to share memories, to see how differently we remembered our shared experiences, and to note how the years have changed —and not changed—each of us. Reunions are like good fertilizer: they stimulate root growth.

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” — Micah

One of the great things about doing difficult and risky things (like wilderness trekking) is that you sometimes exhaust your physical and emotional resources; that’s when you learn how to reach down and get more.

“Everybody gets into situations where we don’t know what to do. The difference between strong people and weak people is that strong people can figure out what to do when they don’t know what to do.” — William Glasser.

I used to think there would be a time in my life when I would be all grown up. Now I realize that being grown up is knowing that I will never be all grown up.

“There is no order of difficulty in miracles.” — A Course in Miracles

It makes a big difference in your life whether you experience the universe as a friendly or an unfriendly place. To what extent do we have a choice in this?

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” — Isaiah

Do You Use Celebration Thinking?

Here is another answer to the seminal question: "How do you figure out what to do when you don't know what to do?"

I am fascinated watching how energy flows in groups. Working with a wide variety of groups for many years, I started paying attention to the things that seem to energize a group, and things that drain energy. I think of groups as having an energy account, with energizing things as credits and energy drains as debits. Groups (and relationships) have a kind of running energy balance, and effective ones keep a positive balance. Talking about problems seems to drain energy, while discussing strengths adds energy to a group. If this is true, we should talk about the positive aspects of our group or relationship – thus adding energy – before talking about our problems. It isn’t that we ignore the problems, just that we discuss the strengths first. Otherwise, it is somewhat like writing the check before making the deposit. So I invented the term celebration thinking – thinking about what we have before thinking about what we don’t have.

A cross functional team at a plastics manufacturing company was working to build employee involvement to help the company be more competitive in a global market. The team included members of management, union leaders, and workers, from all areas of the factory. After four months, the team had tried quite a few things. As he walked in for a team meeting, a fork lift driver commented: “I don’t know why we keep meeting. We haven’t accomplished a thing!” Hearing this, I walked to the flip chart, wrote “Signs of Progress”, and asked: “Does anyone see any signs that we are making progress?” The team members starting talking, almost faster than I could write, until we had four large chart sheets filled with signs of progress!

If we mainly focus on the negatives, or if we focus on the problems first, we sacrifice the great potential of group energy, insight, and initiative.
This is a little different from a “half-full” or “half empty” perspective. Here, we are looking at both problems and possibilities, but we are doing it in an intentional order. We are talking about what we have before talking about what we don’t have.

This approach is sometimes called “appreciative inquiry”; it focuses on cultivating our appreciation – of small and every day things – as well as big things.

Michael Groh, Jim Mallard, and I were working on a contract with the state of Kansas, implementing prevention programs in communities throughout the state. When we had been writing the proposal, Jim (who lived in Montana) was not very enthusiastic. “Kansas”, he scoffed, “That’s the most boring place in the country. Why would we want to work in Kansas?” Later, after the Kansas project had started, Michael and I were driving one afternoon down the Salmon River valley in Idaho. We drove along the river beneath the Sawtooth Range, through narrow gorges, past hot springs turning to steam as they flowed into the cold river; it was a breathtaking drive. Michael turned to me and said: “Well, this isn’t Kansas, but for what it is, it’s pretty nice.” That comment reframed Kansas, and we started getting into Kansas on its own terms. We found that to understand Kansas, you need to slow down. Beauty in the Idaho mountains hits you in the face. Beauty in Kansas is more subtle – no less complex or interesting – but more subtle. There is no place on earth that could do a better job of being Kansas. It is perfect for the part!

Lessons From the Farm

There is an old saying that “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy”. Having grown up on a Virginia dairy farm, at times in my life – trying to “escape” – I have regretted the truth of this saying. Many twists and turns of awareness later, I realize that I could never escape my farm roots, and have come to value and appreciate this six-generation family heritage. I now see that farming provides such an extensive, varied, and rich framework for learning that I think of farming as a kind of university – a Farm University. It requires careful observation, theory formation, rigorous experimentation, detailed analysis, and integrative thinking. The curriculum includes ecology, meteorology, animal science, soil biology, emergency management, mechanical engineering, crop management – as well as anthropology, psychology, ethics, business, and organizational culture. I have come to see the farm as a powerful teacher – a seemingly endless supply of lessons from the farm.

After leaving the farm for college, I spent a quarter century worlds away from the farm, living in urban Minnesota, Chicago, and Baltimore, as well as coastal California and the Colorado Rockies. Then, in my forties, my off-farm sojourn ended when Susan and I purchased a small olive grove in California; my life revolved increasingly around farm activities; my acquaintances and clients were increasingly involved in farming. I was once again a “farm boy”.

Now, living on “Tall Grass Farm”, on the edge of the tall grass prairie in southern Wisconsin, my life expresses the time-honored activities of the farm: tending goats, making hay, hauling manure, disking, planting, harvesting. Life on the farm takes on the rhythms of nature: daylight and dark, the seasons, birth and death, the weather . . .

In many ways farm life is a solitary existence. Much work is done alone. Even in group activities, the sound of machinery often precludes conversation. One has a lot of time to observe and reflect – endless opportunity for lessons from the farm. I have come to see the farm as a powerful teacher – education that affords meaning, purpose, and perspective to life.

I learned early to do solitary reflection while farming. Learning to disc at age ten, I soon realized that you can do an excellent job of discing with perhaps 2% of your attention. That left a lot of mental capacity available for observation, thinking, and speculation about how the world works – reflection only limited by one’s imagination and ability to obsere from different levels and perspectives. I think of it as the Tao of discing. It has produced many interesting lessons from the farm.

Do You EIAG?

EIAG – A Simple Method for Turning Experiences into Insight

While it is often said that we learn from our experiences, it doesn’t necessarily happen. It is all too common to observe people making the same mistake repeatedly, with problem consequences every time. Turning our experiences into insight which leads to better outcomes is something that must be learned. One easy way to gain useful insight from experience is a proven training tool – the EIAG process, named for the steps in the learning process: Experience, Identify, Analyze, Generalize.

To use the EIAG method, ask “what”, “why”, and “how” questions to think through what happened, compare your view with someone else's, realize the importance of what happened, the causes, the effects, and what can be learned for the future.

·The “E” in EIAG stands for the experience itself. This can be any experience, with either a positive or negative outcome.

·“I” is the identification step. This is where we identify what happened. Ask:
“What happened?”
“What did I see?”
“What was important?”
“What was the sequence of events?”
In the “I” step you begin to understand the experienced and what was important about it. Avoid the temptation to make judgments about why it happened or what it means. Approach it like an anthropologist, seeking to identify behaviors, feelings, and reactions.

·In the “A” step we analyze the causal factors. If the experiment failed, we want to know what caused the failure. Same thing if it succeeded. Either way, we need to know what caused the results. Knowing why something happened the way it did is a necessary step if we are to learn from it. Ask questions like:
“Why was that important?”
“Why did it happen?”
“What does it mean?”
“What caused the results?”

·The final step is crucial, but often ignored: “G” – generalize. It is in the generalization that we name the learnings. We take a single experience and derive a learning that can be used in other similar situations. Without the generalization step, we do not improve our competence to understand, control, or alter a situation when it arises again. Ask:
“How can I use this?”
“How could I do it differently next time?”
“If I wanted to achieve a different result (or the same result) next time, what would I do?”

This process may seem awkward at first; it may surprise you how natural it can become. In fact, if you focus on this skill, you will find yourself using it over and over in a variety of situations.

What Is a Seminal Question?

I think of a seminal question as one that offers possibility and depth - that points to enduring reality, and suggests a range of options. I have collected some interesting questions, and am looking for more.
Questions like these form the basis for our Fireside Musings, diverse gatherings of clever people to pursue thoughtful abstractions about a seminal question. One of these discussions is documented in the essay: How do you figure out what to do when you don’t know what to do?

· How do you figure out what to do when you don’t know what to do? (William Glasser)
· Why do things get in a muddle? (Gregory Bateson)
· Where is the place of understanding? (Job)
· What are the patterns that connect? (Gregory Bateson)
· How do you know what rules to break? (Susan Miller)
· Where shall wisdom be found? (Job)
· If you don’t know what it is you don’t know, how can you know what you need to learn?
· How do you know if you are making progress? (Bert Phillips)
· Are the self and the universe eternal? Transient? (Tibetan Buddhist)
· How do you turn experiences into insight?

What are your ideas for seminal questions?

On Building Ownership

On my May 12 posting, I told a story of how my father helped me understand ownership by figuring out how to feed a pig. This posting expands on those lessons and shows how they work in many situations.

Teaching me how to feed a pig embodies some of my favorite images of my father. In more than 3 decades of professional work to help people become empowered, I have not encountered a better example of building ownership. He not only got me to willingly participate in the family economic system, but he also made me in investor; now I had a visible stake in the farm's overall success. This, I deem, is the key to developing people’s ownership for a goal or a project, and I have applied it over and over in working with communities, organizations, and businesses.

Freedom Fest ’76 was a sterling example of the ownership principle at work. It was part of the United States bicentennial in 1976. While the nation was celebrating 200 years of political and individual liberty, Minnesota would honor freedom from bondage to alcohol and other drugs. It was to be a celebration of sobriety. Working with the planners, I was asked to help build an event that would fill Metropolitan Stadium with thousands of Minnesotans and others to celebrate recovery — no small undertaking in light of the strong emphasis of many recovering people on anonymity. We called a meeting of influential recovering people throughout the state — a kind of summit meeting of the recovering community. We asked for help in shaping an event that would accomplish these goals. They agreed that this should be a public festival to honor chemical freedom; we would take the anonymous out of recovery.

In June, ’76, people thronged to the Met for Freedom Fest. There were activities all day, in the hockey stadium and parking lot: seminars, films, games, treatment center reunions, food, fun . . . culminating in a baseball stadium gala, with 30 thousand participants — despite a tornado warning — joining Dick Van Dyke, Gary Moore, Art Linkletter, Hubert Humphrey, Virginia Satir, Swami Rama, Senator Harold Hughs and others in a celebration of sobriety.

Many were wary that we would be able to attract a large attendance for Freedom Fest, but the ownership principle played a vital role in our success: momentum for the event was built by inviting treatment centers, substance abuse agencies, recovering groups — everyone with a stake in recovery — to host their own event in connection with Freedom Fest. Treatment programs invited their alumni to reunions; agencies publicized their seminars; recovery groups sponsored activities. It was a diverse collection of activities and participants. Each group contributed to the total event by sponsoring their own activity.

Wheelock Whitney, Minnesota philanthropist who exhibited his mastery of ownership principles as leader of Freedom Fest, tells a story about baseball man Branch Rickey, celebrated owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the heyday of New York baseball. Mr. Rickey received a lot of (often unsolicited) advice regarding his handling of the team, and he had a policy of always expressing appreciation for the advice. He resisted the temptation to respond that he had gotten the same suggestion many times, or that it had already been tried, or wouldn’t work. A result was that, for almost any decision he made, there might be dozens or hundreds of fans who could tell their friends: “I gave Mr. Rickey that idea”. This may help explain the legendary loyalty of Brooklyn Dodgers fans.
In 40 years of working with groups and organizations, I have seen hundreds of examples where a focus on building ownership by aligning individual and organizational self interests can produce amazing results. A recent global survey of employee engagement found that organizations with high levels of employee engagement show 52% greater operating income and 5.7% improved operating profit (Compared to organizations with low employee engagement. Towers Perrin, 2008). Watch for more examples of this in coming postings.
For me, it started as a lesson from the farm.

How You Going To Feed That Pig?

How you going to feed that pig?
My father’s question struck me dumb, though I was seldom at a loss for words. That day – my sixth birthday – I got my first memorable lesson about building ownership. We had a lot of baby pigs on the farm, and I had been yearning for a pig of my own. The price of a pig was five dollars, and I had saved for months to have enough money to buy one. I had accumulated $4. Then someone gave me a dollar for my birthday. This was it! I could buy my pig!

I rushed to dad to make my purchase. After the “ata boy!”, he asked me to take a seat. We had some figuring to do. “How you going to feed that pig?”, he asked. The question had never occurred to me, and after a seemingly eternal silence, he said: “I have a deal for you. I’ll furnish the feed for your pig, and you can furnish the labor to feed the pigs — all the pigs. Then, when your pig grows up and has pigs of her own, we can split the litter, each of us will get half”.

He had me! With a few minutes of inspired conversation — which remains etched crystal clear in my memory more than six decades later — he had used my self interest to get me to buy into the family’s farm economics, and I felt like a real partner. That pig, “Snoog”, did grow up and have many litters, which I was able to sell at weaning. The money went into my bank account, which I always knew was a college fund, though it was drawn on at various times: to purchase my first calf, to buy a trombone, and other such “responsible” uses.

My first calf’s name was Spotty. I used some of my pig money to buy her, and the purchase occasioned another of those sit-down, figuring talks with dad. This time, I wasn’t struck quite so dumb by the “How you going to feed her?” question. I reckoned that I could use some pig money to feed her, but dad had another deal for me. He offered to provide feed for my calf, and I would be responsible for feeding all the calves every day. Then, when she grew up and had calves of her own, she would join the milking herd. I would get the calf, and dad would get the milk. Bingo! He had me again!

Watch for more postings on the seminal question: How do you figure out what to do when you don't know what to do. For an essay on this question, contact wemiller@idcnet.com