Leadership

In this week's podcast we discuss James Cameron's new movie, Avatar - the most expensive movie to produce of all time at $300 million.

We also discuss Leadership.

Here's the podcast file:

• 09-12-19 Red Hill Podcast - Avatar 3d and Leadership

Here are my free ebooks on Leadership that I mention in the podcast:

• Bhagavad-gita Small Group Resource
• On Leadership
• Leadership Lessons From Bhagavad-gita

Yo, chekkit. I'm going to the Maximum Impact Simulcast 2009 here in Brisbane on Thursday 20th August. It's an all day event, and you can see the session listing/speaker line up here.

There are no leap out "I have to see that!" sessions for me this year, but I am looking forward to spending a day hearing about leadership, to give myself more input and inspiration.

It costs $145 for the day, but there is a discount for groups - so if you're interested in coming along, get in touch and we'll hook it up.

The problem with "institutionalizing" something is that it marks the first step on a road to deviation.

Institutionalizing is where you abstract roles from people in order to make something reproducible. So you go from having a person who does something (guna and karma in Sanskrit - a person with specific qualities and activities that lead to their having a certain role in society) to having a position (varna, or "color", in Sanskrit).

So you go from having a charismatic leader (from Greek charisma meaning "gifted") to having a leadership position.

The problem is that now that there is a position that is separate from the person, the person who inhabits the position may not have the necessary qualifications to do so.

There is a good example in the first episode of the WWII miniseries Band of Brothers [wikipedia plot summary]. The company Captain, Cpt. Herbert Sobel, is inept as a combat officer, and yet due to his rank and position the soldiers in his unit are expected to follow him into battle.

It's a classic case of a mismatch between the person and the role - something which only becomes possible when roles have been abstracted from persons and an organizational structure created to encapsulate and instantiate those roles.

This leads to the perennial necessity of reform. It is human nature to create a form - an organization apart from the persons, with roles such as Captain, Manager, Guru, or President.

After time there is drift between role and person. It may happen over generations of participants, or immediately. From the moment of creation of roles corruption begins, because the abstract ideal of the organization and its actual composition no longer match 100%.

Any organization with abstracted roles must actively deal with corruption, for corruption is an unavoidable side effect of institutionalization.

After dealing with humans for some time, I find that most people do not have the mental power to analyze or assess things over and over again. They require mental shorthand that enables them to deal with a situation quickly and easily, with a minimum amount of mental effort.

Questions such as "who is in charge?" need to be answered in a succinct and easy fashion in order for organized effort to go on in a big way. By adopting the exo-skeleton of institutionalized roles organizations are able to begin to scale their activity massively.

At the same time they must do the work to ensure that role and person remain tightly coupled. This is meta-work. It is not the actual mission of the organization, but without doing this meta-work on the structure that is used to facilitate the actual activity of the organization over time the organization will become corrupt and unable to fulfill its original mission.

One of the symptoms of this malaise in a pathological state is where the energy of the persons involved in the organization is more directed to achieving and holding positions within the organization than to fulfilling the actual mission objectives of the organization. In this case the structure has become a hindrance to furthering the mission, rather than a facilitation.

This is simply human nature, and it is universal.

Addendum: institutionalizing opposition to corruption in an organization suffers from exactly the same problem. Every incumbent corrupt organization started out as a revolution against another incumbent corrupt organization before it...

If you really want to make a difference, don't join a team that defines itself as "the guys who are against these other guys..." Define a positive agenda, and pursue that mission in cooperation with others.

An interesting piece in the NY Times from April this year - "Facebook Tests the Power of Democracy"

Companies usually set the terms under which they provide their service and you have to take it or leave it. Frankly, Facebook did too, until changes it quietly made to its contract with site users sparked loud protests from users and online privacy advocates.

But to its credit, as Facebook retreated from the ill-received rules changes, it also stepped up. It invited its community to help devise better rules by submitting suggestions and then asked it to declare its support for them -– or lack thereof. (A caveat: The choice of voters will stand only if 30 percent of active Facebook users vote, and few people expect a turnout as big as 60 million or thereabouts.)

Could this be a sign of more online democracy to come? “I think consumers are getting power,” said Rena Mears, a partner at consulting firm Deloitte & Touche. More companies interact directly and in real time with their customers and find themselves having to respond to customers’ wishes and concerns. “This is a negotiation.”

I found this very interesting when it occurred. In a blog post that showed a remarkable degree of perception and situational awareness the CEO of Facebook explained that with 60 million constituents Facebook was effectively a large country, more so than simply a corporation providing a service to customers. The dynamics that were needed to manage the situation were more those of governance than corporate bureaucracy.

By engaging with the constituency in this way Facebook must invest more energy and time in making changes, and those changes will be a compromise on what Facebook want, because they must incorporate the needs, desires, interests and concerns of the Facebook users. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it will tend to mitigate any extreme positions, and will also enable Facebook to change gradually while taking everyone with them.

I would have liked to have seen a similar realization from the GBC, the governing body of ISKCON, after the abortive Resolution 311 of last year. However, I was disappointed to see no public discussion or reflection on the dynamics of the resolution and how that could be changed.

My own attempt to introduce a more participatory dynamic to the ISKCON Constitution project ground to a halt with my disillusionment at the lack of interest in opening a dialogue and engaging with ISKCON's constituents.

Anyway, no sense in wasting time lamenting over things. I've put my energy into chanting and kirtan and you know what, I don't really care anymore, except in a (dis)interested observer kind of way.

I will say this though - organizations that engage with their constituents will be more successful than those that don't.

Graph from Tech is too cheap to meter: It's time to manage for abundance, not scarcity

Which mentality is prevalent in your organisation?

Some examples I can think of in ISKCON:

• Dandavats.com editorial policy vs Planet ISKCON editorial policy
• The title of the book "According to Religious Principles" vs the Gita verse "Not contrary to religious principles"
• The communication policy of the ISKCON Constitution Committee (or practically any GBC subcommittee)

Putting on my political pundit hat for a moment:

I think that the GBC is likely to adopt a "middle path" approach, if any, in response to Hrdayananda das Goswami's recent public blessing of a gay union, and Krishna Kirti das' polarizing response.

The GBC are aware that, as with the wider Western public, ISKCON contains people with strong opinions either way on the issue of gay unions / gay rights. As the recent experience .of the Episcopal church demonstrated, when a church hierarchy takes a hard stance on the issue, it can lead to a schism.

ISKCON is hardly of the size where it can afford such a schism.

Also, it is a social and political issue, rather than a spiritual one. History shows that the tendency is towards social "liberalization" - black people have been given freedom, women have the vote - both social realities that ISKCON has been able to accommodate spiritually. It seems clear that history will side with gay social rights. Gay unions belong to the social background that ISKCON's mission takes place against. Some will argue that the core Gaudiya doctrines of sambandha, abhideya, and prayojana and ISKCON's particular instantiation of them are threatened by this, but I don't think that the GBC will agree, especially given that many members will recognize the historical inevitability of this social force in the outside world.

As a result of these factors the GBC is likely to adopt a "no official stance" stance - one that leaves this issue as an individual conscience, local matter.

The actions of HH Hrdayananda das Goswami may be disavowed as representing official ISKCON policy or institutional approval, but it is unlikely that the GBC will come out with an official position on the wider issue.

Krishna Kirti's letter to the GBC treats the body as a homogeneous whole. However, it is is composed of a number of individuals, each with their own particular perspective, shared by a demographic portion of the wider organisation. The GBC members realize that in order to remain together, in areas where there is significant disagreement they must tacitly agree to disagree.

It is unlikely that they will allow the issue to turn into the lightening rod that will polarize ISKCON and cause it to splinter apart, mirroring the microcosm of the situation that Krishna Kirti has created by taking a public stance and rejecting Hrdayananda das Goswami as his initiating guru.

By doing this Krishna Kirti has placed himself in a position where either he is outside the tradition or Hrdayananda das Goswami is outside the tradition, and he is asking the GBC to make the pronouncement.

The GBC is likely to deal with this by treating it as a local, individual matter, rather than allowing it to escalate to an institutional one.

More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.

- Mark Zuckerburg, Update on Terms

Wow.

Facebook are not trying to steal people's information and capitalise on it. That's not their business model, and if they tried to change to that as a business model it would collapse, because people would stop participating - and it's through participation that they make money.

People use Facebook, and Facebook sells advertising targeted at the "passing traffic". The content on Facebook, and the social network functionality, attracts people to it.

Facebook are navigating uncharted territory here. People are scared because they still think in terms of old business models where you copyright and make money by controlling access and reproduction of material. Facebook are in a new world where you make money by making content freely available.

Facebook are trying to write terms of use that allow them to socially network your material, but don't set off false alarms, which is what the recent terms of use update did.

Good on them for revisiting their process, and realizing that what they are doing is more like governing a country than running a corporation.

While on the yoga retreat this past weekend, between astanga yoga workouts and loading on carbs, I read a few books. One of them was Ian Cohen's autobiography / history of Australian Green Activism book: "Green Fire".

Sean Marler, Greens candidate for Moorooka in the last local elections, brought a bunch of nature books along, and I found it among them.

From the back of the book:

Ian Cohen, the Greens member of the NSW Upper House, has worked for the green movement since 1980. His primary focus has been the refinement of direct action tactics and the consolidation of a broad-based people's movement for social change. He is a founding member of several environmental protest groups, including the Broken Head Protection Committee, Stop the Ocean Pollution, Nightcap Action Group and the Clean Seas Coalition, and has campaigned electorally for the Greens since 1984.

At the end of the book he includes an appendix examining the concept of NVA, Non Violent Action. He closes with these two paragraphs, which I think apply to any revolutionary movement that seeks to foment change in the social status quo:

The understanding of issues comes with continuing debate. When a theory translates into a mass movement it can become a dogma. This packaging simplifies its complexity. It assumes that people cannot understand the nuances of the broader philosophy thus disseminating a rigid set of ideas. This leads to a limited form of radicalism which is either blindly adopted or rejected. Reactionary forces either radical or conservative will not further any cause.

In a truly revolutionary movement a society can grow from the unexpected, evolve from processes rather than try to control them. Participants in change must accept that the movement cannot unfold exactly as pre-planned. Respect for the diversity of ideas and actions of individuals is what makes the movement powerful.

The book is interesting for a grounding on environmental issues in Australia, and a history of direct action. Parallels can be drawn between the direct actions of Australian environmentalists and Australian Hare Krishnas, their civil disobedience and a change in the social status quo as a result. There are important lessons in this book for the future for both environmentalists and Hare Krishnas.

After reading it I got a renewed sense that we are only on the face of the planet for a few short years, and our role is to responsibly steward it. The same mentality that leads someone to say: "God gave man dominion over the Earth, that's why we eat the animals" leads to exploitation and pollution of the environment. Our sacred duty is the protection of the water, the soil, the forests, and the animals.

You can download a pdf of Green Fire from Ian's website for free.

People will criticize you no matter what you do, so better to be criticized for doing The Right Thing than for doing the expedient thing.

And the role of those in administration is to make The Right Thing the expedient thing to do. That's why we have fines, prison, and other punitive measures. They are meant to act as a deterrent to make it easier to Do The Right Thing than not.

Yogas citta nivrtti virodhah

Yoga is the inhibition of the modifications of the mind.

- Patanjali Yoga-sutra I.2

The master strategist is not one who creates reality, but one who recognises reality.

Dharma is "what is" - things as they are. The universe exists, and it exists in a certain way.

Intuitively understanding this, superior generals do not win through tactical dexterity, but rather through strategic dominance. They read the map and win the battlefield through positioning before the battle even begins, rather than seeking to win a battle through maneuver.

Although others consider him skillful, the truly skillful man realises that in reality he does nothing except to understand and accept his destiny, rather than to work against it.

Many swimmers in a river may have great dexterity of stroke, but it is the one who reads the current and flows with it who achieves the superior result, effortlessly.

By aligning herself with dharma, "things as they are", the skillful person aligns herself with the structure of the universe and anchors herself in the fabric of existence that underlies it. Thus she becomes simultaneously immovable and unstoppable.

She is a "seer of the truth" (tattva-darsi), not a creator of truth.

The essence of leadership is to understand who you are and be more that, and help others to do the same.

In this way the movement of the mind is stopped, and although he appears to be doing so many things, while it happens the skillful person realises that he in fact does nothing.

A person in the divine consciousness, although engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving about, sleeping and breathing, always knows within himself that he actually does nothing at all. Because while speaking, evacuating, receiving, or opening or closing his eyes, he always knows that only the material senses are engaged with their objects and that he is aloof from them.

- Bhagavad-gita 5.8