Latest Posts

Change is the Only Constant

Published by

BaseballMarch is one of my favorite times of the year.  The longest month—February—is past. Winter is nearing an end here in DC. Baseball players have reported to spring training camps. Hope springs eternal.

Speaking of baseball, I have my own spring training ritual every year. Up first is a viewing of Bull Durham—the best baseball movie ever—followed by reading a new baseball book.  Together the two get me in the mood for the season.  I can report checking off both of those training regimens this year well before Opening Day.

I actually read two baseball books recently, although one may not count because it is entitled The Is Not Baseball Book.  You have to love a book which begins with a first chapter of “Sports Is Not a Metaphor.  It’s a Symbol.”  Afterwards it jumps into all matter of things, including pataphysical management systems leading to “self-learning” teams.  That’s for another time.

It is the second book, Smart Baseball:  The Story Behind the Old Stats that are Ruining the Game, The New Ones that are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball by Keith Law, that took me into thoughts about change.  Baseball, that most tradition-bound and statistically-drenched of sports, has undergone a fundamental change over the past two decades in how the game is understood, played, and coached. That happened because a few people had the insight to challenge the conventional wisdom about the game.  Baseball has so many statistics going back over a hundred years that it is possible to model what happens in thousands of situations (such as when a runner tries to steal a base) and know the (statistical) outcome. The insights turned basic baseball knowledge on its head.  Part One of the book takes on some of the sacred statistics of baseball and shows why they are firmly rooted in “baseball’s irrational adherence to tradition.”  Law begins with that old standby, the batting average*, and uses a close-to-home example to demonstrate why the holder of the league’s highest batting average in 2015 (the Marlins’ Dee Gordon) was not the “batting champion” as these players are generally identified. Looking at performance through all manner of new metrics, Gordon—even though his average was three points higher—didn’t come close to being as effective with the bat that year as then-Nationals player Bryce Harper.  Baseball got it partially right in that Gordon was dubbed the “batting champion” but Harper was the unanimous choice for Most Valuable Player.

Baseball is only one area where change is afoot. Change in any situation can be difficult to handle, but I believe in the old axiom that “change is the only constant.”  We all have to adapt to change. As I leave my position at the National Trust at the end of this month, change will occur for many of you as well as for me.  Other transitions are underway in the organization and in the preservation field as well.  But as I noted in a recent presentation to our board of trustees,

“For a movement that appears resistance to change, the way we save places keeps changing—and that’s a good thing. The Main Street program began in the 1970s as a push against both modern mall development AND traditional preservation practice.  As an example of the latter, Main Street buildings like the Franklin Theatre in my parents’ hometown weren’t the crown jewels of American architecture—but they were places that mattered to the local community in ways that went well beyond their architectural style.”

To help focus my mind on change, I’ve had the following quote from management guru Peter F. Drucker as my computer screen saver for years:

“People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete – the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.”

We need the past to ground us in memory, continuity, and identity.  We need to accept change as a constant in our lives.  And yes, that’s a paradox. But as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “There is nothing like paradox to take the scum off your mind.”

Have a good week, and more to come…

DJB

*Batting average in baseball is derived by taking a player’s hits, dividing them by that player’s at bats, and rounding it to three digits.  In the modern era, batting averages have typically fallen in the .200 to .400 range

Self-Sacrifice

Published by
Stephane Audran

Stephane Audran (credit: The Oscars In Memoriam)

When watching the In Memoriam segment of the Oscars last month, I learned that the French actress Stéphane Audran, who played the title role in the Danish film Babette’s Feast, passed away in 2018.  Babette’s Feast—and Audran’s performance as the chef who moves from Paris to the desolate, western coast of Jutland in 19th century Denmark—are among my all-time favorites.  (Babette’s Feast also ranks as Pope Francis’ favorite movie, but I’ll bet he hasn’t watched Bull Durham.*)

Here is a short synopsis (spoiler alert:  you will find out all the basics, but none of the real nuance that makes this such a wonderful film):

The movie begins in a small Protestant village that has been led for many years by a very rigid pastor. The beliefs of the congregation are extremely Puritan, making the village a drab, grey place where there is hardly any joy. After the pastor has died, his two elderly daughters are forced into leading the older, dwindling congregation. They had hoped to marry when they were young and beautiful, but their father was staunchly against marriage and turned away all suitors.

One day a French woman, Babette, comes to the village as a refugee with a letter of introduction from one of the long-ago suitors, now a famous opera singer.  When the sisters say they cannot afford to pay her, Babette says she will work for free. Over the course of 14 years she cooks for them, improves their bland meals, and earns their respect.  One day Babette discovers that she won a Parisian lottery worth 10,000 francs.  Instead of using the money to return to her lost lifestyle, she decides to spend it preparing a delicious dinner for the sisters and their small congregation on the occasion of the founding pastor’s hundredth birthday. More than just a feast, the meal is an outpouring of Babette’s appreciation, an act of self-sacrifice. Babette tells no one that she is spending her entire winnings on the meal.

There are twists and turns (and more beautiful shots of food than you can imagine). Eventually the congregations’ vow to eat but not comment on the joy of this “sinful” feast is broken.  “Old wrongs are forgotten, ancient loves are rekindled and a mystical redemption of the human spirit settles over the table.”  Upon learning that Babette has spent the entire lottery winnings on the meal, one of the sisters says to her that she will be poor the rest of her life. Babette simply replies, “An artist is never poor.”

Many commentators have spoken to the power of Babette’s Feast, which won the 1987 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. While some see it very much in religious terms, it moves me because of the sense of self-sacrifice, outside of any one set of religious beliefs, that leads to that “mystical redemption of the human spirit” in others. Self-sacrifice is often scorned in today’s world; it is for “suckers.” Most of us don’t regularly face situations that call for self-sacrifice.  The last time we responded to such a situation as a nation, some 400,000 U.S. service men and women died in WWII. I believe we are rapidly facing a time where, in response to climate change, society will have to face decisions that call for individual and national self-sacrifice.

But there are situations when we give up what we may want for the larger community. Parents regularly sacrifice for the good of their children.  Exceptional leaders, writes Erika Anderson in Forbes, “do things that are personally uncomfortable or even risky for the good of the enterprise, or to protect the people who follow them. . . . They often make decisions they know will put an extra burden on them—emotionally or in terms of time and energy—in order to benefit their followers or their customers. And most important, they make ethical choices that may not be comfortable or lucrative—but are the right thing to do.”  The author Stephen Carter speaks to something similar, writing about the loss of “the language of community, of sharing, of fairness, of riding politely alongside our fellow citizens.…”  Self-sacrifice moves us past our own ego and self-absorption into the language, and life, of community.

At the end of the movie, one of the sisters says to Babette, “Oh, how you will enchant the angels!”  Rest in peace, Stéphane Audran. Your performance showing a way to reclaim and redeem the human spirit, remains.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

*Bull Durham is my favorite movie, and not only because it is (somewhat) about baseball.  With that recommendation, I’d be surprised to find out that you care what I thought of the 2018 Best Picture nominees, but if you are so inclined, feel free to click through and take a look.

Humility Is the New Smart

Humility is the new smart

Published by

Research shows that “more than 85 percent of a message we communicate to others is conveyed not in the words but in the tone and manner in which they are delivered.”  I saw this first hand in a recent meeting when one of the participants made it very clear—in body language, tone, and language—that she was going to be disagreeable.  Arms crossed, with no attempt to bring others into her point of view other than by sheer force and with every sentence beginning with a negative, she ensured that her point of view was going to be heard.  It was tiring and not very satisfying for others trying to participate in the conversation.

This non-approach to communication was highlighted in a book I’ve been reading entitled Humility Is the New Smart:  Rethinking Human Excellence In the Smart Machine Age.  In an era when the best research indicates that 47 percent of U.S. jobs will be replaced by technology within the next ten to twenty years, authors Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig make the case that humans must change how we think, work, and communicate to survive and thrive. McKinsey & Company research suggests that not even the highly skilled/highly paid are immune, as current technology could be adapted to replace at least 20 percent of a CEO’s work activities. Smart machines will have “no biases (except through human design), no egos, no emotional defensiveness, and no fears of making mistakes or looking stupid or not being liked.”  In order to compete effectively and complement these smart machines, humans will need to overcome our “cocoon of self-absorption.”

Humility is often confused with modesty. Humility is not being meek, subdued, or thinking that you are not a worthy person. In fact, someone who is self-deprecating is often making a show on the surface of modesty while in reality their statements are hyper-focused on themselves. In place of that approach, the authors define humility as “a mindset about oneself that is open-minded, self-accurate, and ‘not all about me,’ and that enables one to embrace the world as it ‘is’ in the pursuit of human excellence.”  Interestingly, the idea of humility as a key to continuous learning is an old one, going back at least to the philosophers of ancient Greece.

To excel in areas such as critical and innovative thinking, creativity, and high emotional engagement with others—skills that are not (yet) among the things technology does well—we need to move beyond a response to the outward world that is inwardly focused and self-protective. The authors note that humans often “operate more like a defensive closed system than a system open to disconfirming information, differing opinions, or new information.” One way to move beyond this defensive posture is by quieting our ego.  Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, explains how that innovative company deals with ego and self-absorption:

“You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged. . . (Likewise) our mental models aren’t reality. They are tools, like the models weather forecasters use to predict the weather.  But, as we know all too well, sometimes the forecast says rain and, boom, the sun comes out. The tool is not reality.”

Quieting your ego, managing your thinking and emotions, reflective listening, and emotionally connecting and relating to others are all keys to a humble approach to learning—an approach that in the words of the book’s authors, increases the quality of our thinking and learning, decouples our beliefs (not values) from our ego, opens us up to continually testing our beliefs about how the world works, and learns from our mistakes as we try out new ideas and approaches to problem solving.

As I face milestones in my life, this book has me thinking a great deal about my approach to learning and communication. Continuous learning and insatiable curiosity seem to be critical to ongoing growth and engagement with the world around us.  We can get there by quieting our ego and letting humility take over.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

No Fear

Failing forward

Published by

We all fail. Even those who go to great lengths to demonstrate that they are always right, never are.

Rather than fear failure, what if we accepted failure’s inevitability yet used the outcomes to our advantage? Marcel Schwantes, Founder and Chief Human Officer at Leadership From the Core, wrote the following to encourage the “practice of failing forward”:

“If you’re the type of person who gives up too soon after failing and you just can’t bounce back from a setback, you’re missing one of the greatest lessons of every successful person: Failing is part of the journey that will lead to success. Accept this fact early on so that when failure comes knocking and tries to scare you away, you stare it down with confidence and embrace it, learn from your mistakes, and try again a different way.”

Schwantes’ comment struck me in two ways. First, I believe he’s right about learning from setbacks. It isn’t that we should try to fail, but rather that we should recognize — and build upon — the inevitable. More importantly, this is an attitude that one should try and adopt early in life. Once you have decades of life experiences, you’ll come to recognize that we all fail and that we should learn from that failure. But Schwantes is suggesting that we accept this point of view early in life, when we have the most time to take advantage of the lessons learned. Historian (and National Trust Honorary Trustee) David McCullough has written that when we look back at the nation’s past, failing and learning from that failure has been a very American approach to problem solving.

I was fortunate to learn the value of failing forward early in my professional life. It was painful at the time, but in retrospect I see how it shaped me going forward. As the executive director of a statewide preservation organization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was trying to lead our alliance in a fight against development interests with deep pockets. Battlefield preservation was a hot topic in Virginia, and developers created a well-funded property rights-based “grassroots” campaign aimed at the General Assembly and designed to weaken preservation protections. If you drive today from Washington to Culpeper (or Manassas to Brandy Station in Civil War battlefield terms), you will see what has become of a historic cultural landscape and once-beautiful Virginia countryside. The development interests succeeded. We were outgunned, certainly, but more importantly the coalition I led was out-smarted in terms of tactics and messaging. Several years later we wanted to go back to the General Assembly to enact a state historic rehabilitation tax credit. This time our coalition was prepared with a two-year plan, media strategies, targeted messaging, an economic study, better lobbyists, and high-level legislative sponsors. The bill passed overwhelmingly. Now if you drive through many Virginia cities and towns you can see how some of the approximately 2,400 historic properties rehabilitated since the program’s inception in 1997 are centerpieces of successful revitalization efforts. I do not know if we would have succeeded in gaining a state tax credit without learning the lessons of the failure of the property rights/battlefield protection campaign. And those lessons about long-term vision and preparation helped me at the Trust as we began work on saving the federal Historic Tax Credits a full five years before an actual tax bill passed Congress.

There are many reasons we may not want to embrace failing forward, with fear and worry sitting right at the top of that list. They are debilitating traits.  To get around that challenge, the software company Intuit has built a learn-by-experimentation culture that encourages failures as pathways to ultimate success. In fact, they avoid using the word mistakes so that employees won’t fear making them. In its place, Intuit refers to the unexpected results as surprises.

Think about how you would approach your work differently if you began to “fail forward.” How would you approach your life differently if your mistakes became surprises?

Sometimes old wisdom is the best. If at first you don’t succeed, follow your grandmother’s advice and “try, try again.”

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

The Deep Rhythms of Life

Published by

If you are a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

I try and remember that old adage when I consider things I read or hear.  Given my career, training and perspective, I often see historical overtones, even—perhaps—when they don’t exist.  So with that grain of salt, I’ll note that over the course of a recent weekend, I took part in three conversations that all struck me as narratives somehow important and related.

The first was not really a conversation. But it felt as if I was on the listening end of one as I went on a Friday night to hear Lucinda Williams and the Drive By Truckers in concert.  Both were great, but it was the music and between-songs patter of Lucinda Williams—her stories, if you will—that made me think about the way in which we can break out of our pasts and stand out from what is expected. Williams has been writing and performing emotionally devastating lyrics for four decades. But she also takes courageous stands against racism, sexism, and hate in the context of a history (Southern) and a musical genre (country) where such political points-of-view can get you ostracized. The next afternoon, I was at Politics & Prose, our local independent bookstore, to hear Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr.  Pitts is a powerful writer who regularly calls on history—and our willful ignorance of much of that history—in both his novels and his weekly columns for the Miami Herald.  He did so recently when noting that a willful ignorance of black history is directly responsible for some of the recent headlines coming out of Virginia.  I had a conversation with Pitts after his talk, and we discussed the challenges and benefits of writing for different genres while still rooting his work in history and story. Understanding history, deeply and fully, is critical to Pitts for an understanding of life today.

It was the conversation held between these two encounters that I found most intriguing. I was in a Takoma Park coffee shop for our regular Saturday morning family coffee/catch-up.  We sat at the common table and soon a young woman in her early 30s sat across from us.  In the course of conversation we learned that Brittany was a Unitarian Universalist chaplain for Hospice.  In response, I told her what hospice had meant to our family when my mother passed away, in her own home, after a two-year battle with cancer.  Sitting at that common table, we had a long conversation that ranged across millennials’ spiritual practices, living in community, and the changes over time in how society treats sickness and death.

When describing her past, Brittany mentioned that her family’s home in Rockford, Illinois, had been a type of hospice, as both her great-grandmothers, her grandmother, and her great aunt all died there.  Brittany fully expected to follow the same course, but another aunt sold the house and it went out of the family’s hands.  That aunt remained active as a local hospice volunteer, and was surprised one day when a 16-year-old came to her office. This teenager was the youngest volunteer, by far, in the local hospice chapter.  When asked what led her to step forward, the young girl said she had always felt a special calling to this work.  As the girl’s mother was paying for a training course, Brittany’s aunt happened to look at the address on the check.

It was their old family home.

When Brittany told this story, I immediately said, “place matters.”  I fully believe that in this particular case, the love and care that permeated the home—the fullness of life—carried forward to a new family and new generations. Writing in Two-Part Invention, author Madeleine L’Engle speaks of such an attachment to place when she says, “I get to Crosswicks (her country home) whenever I can, to relax in the deep rhythm of the house, filled with the living of over two centuries.  That richness of experience permeates the rooms, life lived to the utmost, birth and death, joy and grief, laughter and tears.” And even when death arrives, none of the fullness of life is lost.  It simply becomes part of the rhythm of the house.  Emotions flow through places, and saving those places is a little understood key to our emotional health as individuals, as communities, and as a nation.

Northern Ireland Farm

The Rhythm of Life (credit: Claire Brown)

A Southern country singer with a history and a strong literary bent* that leads her to call out our transgressions as a nation. An  African American writer who calls on history to remind us that in troubled times—as theologian and rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel notes—“Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”  And a young hospice chaplain who calls on a personal story of the power of place and people to heal even in the face of death.  All three are saying, in different ways, that places from our past—and the stories they tell—matter.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

*Lucinda Williams’ father, Miller Williams, was an American poet who passed away in 2015.  One of his poems was read at Bill Clinton’s second inauguration.  Throughout that Friday evening concert there was a conversation ongoing about the connection between history, what we’ve been given, and how we chose to take that past and live our lives today.  Storytelling is clearly in her genes.  You have to love a performer who, playing before a huge crowd of millennials (and the occasional out-of-pocket fan like me), takes the time in an introduction to a song to riff at length on Flannery O’Connor and give a shout out for Wise Blood—O’Connor’s first novel which was turned into an eccentric and acclaimed (yet seldom seen) film by John Huston.  Enjoy this video of Lucinda’s classic Drunken Angel.

Film Reel

Quest for the Best (Picture), Once Again

Published by

Has it really been eight years since we decided to try to catch the Best Picture nominees before the Academy Awards show?  Indeed it has. Truth be told, this has been an up-and-down process.  There are years when I’ll see 7 of the 8 or 9 films nominated.  Then, there are times such as last year when we took in four on one weekend…and that was it.

This year was really different, in that I’ve seen all 8 of the films nominated, plus a few more that could have been in the running. 100 percent!  That’s a first.

As in years past, I’ll provide the caveat that I’m no movie critic, so these are totally personal views without any understanding of the nuances of filmmaking. I’ll also list these in the order I ranked them, which is where I get the most comments.

So, my best picture award would go to If Beale Street Could Talk.  Wait, you say, it wasn’t nominated!  Well, that’s not my fault; it should have been.  This was a beautiful and powerful movie, with incredible cinematography.  It is based on a strong story by one of America’s great writers, James Baldwin. Barry Jenkins won the Best Picture Oscar two years ago for Moonlight—another powerful film—and this one is just as good in my estimation. The theme—loving while black—is incredibly relevant today.  If you haven’t seen this movie, go.

Now, for the films that actually were nominated, my top choice is Roma. Set in Mexico and focusing on one family and a young indigenous woman who works for them, this movie has a majestic scale while featuring an intimacy that captures the viewer’s attention from the beginning and never lets go.  I found the pace worked well, and the story had depth and meaning.  I don’t care if the Academy is mad that Netflix plays with their business model . . . I don’t know enough about that to have a meaningful opinion, so I’ll just stick to the film.  I’d watch this one again.

BlacKkKlansman surprised me.  The premise—a black undercover cop infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan—seemed so outrageous that even though it was true, it couldn’t be serious.  However Spike Lee’s movie, from my point of view, was terrific.  Very original, with a great deal of heft to make the viewer think.  And goodness, the ties to life today are too close for comfort (and Lee makes them clear at movie’s end).  This is another one on the list I’d go see again.

Black Panther was the last one of the eight I saw, and frankly I didn’t know what to expect.  I’m not a fan of superhero or sci-fi movies, but I knew this film was somehow more than that.  In the end, I loved it. The characters are strong and the production values are amazing.  I came away understanding more of why this movie is a defining moment for black Americans.  Leonard Pitts, Jr. was singing the praises of Black Panther at his book talk at Politics & Prose last week, and his point of view is one I admire.  Again, I’m not sure I can see a superhero movie as Best Picture, but this was darn close.

Fourth on my list is The Favourite, a dark comedy set in the court of Queen Anne (circa 1710). I very much enjoyed this movie, and as everyone says the acting, costumes, and script are all wonderful.  Emma Stone, Olivia Colman, and Rachel Weisz are terrific in their roles…which, unfortunately come off as an 18th century version of Mean Girls.  Best picture?  It doesn’t quite get there for me.  Would I see it again?  Definitely.

I fully expected to rank A Star is Born before Bohemian Rhapsody, but when I saw the Queen biopic earlier this weekend, I had such a good time that I couldn’t push it further down the list.  Rami Malek, as the dynamic lead singer Freddie Mercury, was incredible, and is very deserving on a Best Actor award. The movie’s pace and energy held up throughout the full show, ending—as most everyone knows—with the band’s breathtaking Live Aid performance.  There are quibbles (such as the fact that Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis is moved to a more dramatic point in the story from real life), but hey, if you get your history from movies you get what you deserve!  Others have complained about the director’s personal life (a real issue) and the soft-peddling of the gay story line (some people will complain about anything.)  I’d definitely go see this one again…and that’s saying something from a person who gave up listening to rock and pop in the early 1970s.

So I’ll put A Star is Born next.  I loved Lady Gaga in this picture. Bradley Cooper was good as her musical and love partner.  Shallow is a terrific song that I hope wins Best Song this year.  But the movie drags in the middle, and you almost lose interest until it picks up again near the end. I enjoyed it, but not sure I’d go see it again.

Green Book was a disappointment to me.  I went in expecting to see a film with some serious civil rights and social justice commentary, and instead got a buddy road trip between two guys without a touch of nuance (to quote one reviewer).  If I want buddy road trips, I’ll go watch Thelma and Louise. And seriously, the fried chicken-eating scene was one step too far.  I know it ended on a happy note and everyone melts with all the feel good stuff at the end (beginning with the cop pulling them over in the snow), but it didn’t make up for this movie’s sins for me.

Finally, my vote for least appealing Best Picture nominee goes to Vice.  Yes, Christian Bale in the title role and Amy Adams (I love her) as Lynne Cheney are terrific.  But who the hell wants to see a dark comedy about one of the worst Vice Presidents in history who helped lead us to our current political polarization?  Not me.  The filmmaker has all sorts of gimmicks and techniques that he clearly thinks are very clever.  They aren’t, and they don’t help in making the (obvious) point that Dick Cheney is a heartless individual who has spent his entire life trying to amass power and take it away from anyone who doesn’t agree with him.  Let’s don’t celebrate that with comedy (even dark comedy).  Let’s take it for the tragedy we are living in here in 2019.

And that’s all folks.  Jump in with your favorites, argue with mine, and let’s enjoy the Oscars next Sunday evening.

More to come…

DJB

Let’s Do This

Published by

A friend, momentarily flummoxed by the varied scale and relative importance of several tasks to be completed over a recent weekend, struggled to develop a schedule.  I tried to be helpful and, as a result, our conversation soon led me to think more broadly about the well-known—and often dreaded—“To-Do” list.

I suspect that there are tens-of-thousands of articles and books on how to construct a useful To-Do list.  (Google says there are 10.6 billion!)  After reading dozens, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one way to organize your time effectively.  We are all so different—and the things we value are so different—that to simply proclaim one system the best is foolish.  My interest in this question has become much more relevant as I put together a list of tasks to be completed each day before I transition out of the job I’ve occupied here at the National Trust for more than two decades.

Let me begin with a couple of big-picture thoughts.  First, a significant step towards effectiveness and efficiency is to determine what you are going to stop doing.  That’s a longer term project, but it is worth the effort.  Second, understand that in the best of worlds, much of what you do today should be building blocks for weekly, quarterly, or life-time goals.  No one scales Mount Everest in a day.  Likewise, to achieve the larger things in life we want—writing a book, running a 10K, becoming a senior manager in your organization, starting your own business—requires that we take countless small steps to get there.  Robert Glazer writes,

“While one person contemplates all that they have going on in their life that’s preventing them from accomplishing their goal, another person just starts working toward it. It’s hard to underestimate the value that these small “deposits” of energy have, even over just 90 days. While one person gets on Facebook for 30 minutes a day, another chooses to invest that same time writing a book. At the end of three months, the first person is much wiser about their friends’ vacations and the food people are eating whereas the other person has drafted the first 30-40 pages of their book. . . .[F]or just five days, track how you spend your time every hour of the day. I’ve done this and I was very surprised to see where it really went. I had been telling myself seemingly harmless white lies that were hindering my ability to get what I wanted most out of my life.”

With that context, here is the DJB Method® of creating the daily To-Do list (number 10.6 billion + 1).

  • First, there is never enough time in the day, so plan accordingly — You cannot do 13 tasks a day, unless your list consists of brushing your teeth and lacing up your shoes.  I’ve begun limiting my tasks to 3-5 (at most) per day.  This was one challenge my friend—feeling overwhelmed with 8-9 tasks—faced.  We talked through which ones had to be done that day (more on that in a moment), and which ones could simply go on a separate list with less stringent time requirements.
  • Second, begin with the end in mind — A 2014 Harvard Business Review article by Ron Friedman suggests you take the first ten minutes of your day and ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: “The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?”  Do you really think you’ll feel that sense of accomplishment if you’ve spent most of the day checking emails or listening to voice mails?
  • Next, understand what matters the most, and know that all else is noise — President Eisenhower had a system (since duplicated by Stephen Covey) that put tasks in one of four categories or quadrants.
    • Urgent and Important: Things that are important to do and need to be done now.
    • Urgent and Not Important: Minor tasks that are time-sensitive. It feels good to check these off our lists, but they aren’t really critical.
    • Important and Not Urgent: Things that need to be done but don’t have to be done immediately.
    • Not Urgent and Not Important: These tasks are neither important nor time-sensitive.
    • Tackle the “Urgent and Important” tasks first.  Then before taking on other urgent tasks, focus on the “Important and Not Urgent” items.  Do everything in your power to stay out of the “Not Urgent and Not Important” quadrant.

Journals

Journals, which can be a key part of planning

  • Put your To-Do list on your calendar — If you keep a calendar or daily journal, figure out how long it will take to do the task and then schedule it.  Leave a little space on your calendar for the unexpected.  My experience is that calendars tend to get filled up with “Urgent and Not Important” items if you don’t set aside time for what matters to you.
  • Keep a longer list of things to do, but review it on a regular basis — Go back to point #1.  What happened to the other 4-5 things on my friend’s list?  When I’m faced with that problem, I put them on my task list in Outlook (and because I tend to be a “belt-and-suspenders” type of guy, they also end up in my bullet journal). Next, I give them a timeframe for completion.  Then I forget about them, because they are on my list. When setting up each day’s work, these items are where I turn for identifying my tasks.  However, if I have rescheduled something three times, I stop and have a conversation with myself about the relative importance of that task.  Is it a “Not Urgent and Not Important” task? Sometimes it becomes clear that I don’t really need to complete this one item, so I drop it.  Other times I realize that I do need to complete a task (say, get the piano tuned), but I can wait and do that when April arrives and I’m both literally and figuratively cleaning out my home and mental closets.
  • Finally, there is always more to do, so don’t beat yourself up if today doesn’t go quite according to plan — Life intervenes. Every single day. That’s especially true if you have children. Or you have a partner/parent who needs care. Or out-of-the-blue a great opportunity (or challenge) comes along that requires you to say Yes!  As I’ve said before, don’t let the dirty dishes in the sink get in the way of paradise.  Life’s a journey, not a destination.  Treat it that way.

That’s it.  Don’t plan to accomplish too much, but plan to accomplish the right things. So let’s do this…and have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

History is a teacher

Published by

Why do we care about history?

Writer and philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Mark Twain took a more humorous approach with, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”  Over the weekend, I saw a bumper sticker that read “Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.”  Yale historian Joanne B. Freeman — co-host of the history podcast BackStory and author of The Field of Blood:  Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War — says simply that “History doesn’t repeat, but it teaches.”

My executive assistant (a former Capitol guide) recommended The Field of Blood, and for the past week or more I have been absorbed in the riveting tales of mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests…and that’s just on the floor of Congress! During the turbulent and violent three decades leading up to the Civil War, bowie knives and pistols were regularly drawn on members by other members.  Duels happened with alarming frequency, including one that led to the death of one representative at the hand of another. All involved, with the exception of the poor victim, were handily re-elected.  Slavery, and its future in America, was the key issue that led to this bullying, fighting, and total breakdown of civil discourse.

Field of Blood
“The Field of Blood” by Joanne B. Freeman

In a delightful and raucous (for a history book) presentation at Politics and Prose, Freeman points to the modern echoes of our own time.  As she notes, the book tells the story of:

  • Extreme polarization
  • Fundamental disagreements about what kind of nation the United States would be
  • Splintering political parties
  • New technologies skewing and scattering the news, and complicating politics in the process
  • Conspiracy theories being spread, North and South, as the nation’s crisis unfolds
  • Panic about the impact of free speech in that fraught environment
  • Rampant distrust in national political institutions as well as rampant distrust of Americans in each other

If you agree that history is a good teacher, we can look at today’s environment in light of the decades from 1830 to 1860 and worry about our future.  No one is suggesting that we are moving towards a civil war; however, we are playing with figurative fire due to the extreme polarization of the electorate, the spread of conspiracy theories, the loss of trust in our national institutions, and the use of rapidly changing technology to transform the way news is spread. Freeman notes in her book that “Democracy is an ongoing conversation between the governed and their governors; it should come as no surprise that dramatic changes in the modes of conversation cause dramatic changes in democracies themselves.”

Conversations among our fellow citizens are critical to our civic health, which is why I so strongly support the work to tell the full history of the nation.  That work is part of this conversation.  In her epilogue, Freeman writes of the awful consequences of polarization and a lack of conversation,

“When the nation is polarized and civic commonality dwindles, Congress reflects that image back to the American people.  The give-and-take of deliberative politics breaks down, bringing accusations, personal abuse, and even violence in its wake. National political parties fracture.  Trust in the institution of Congress lapses, as does trust in national institutions of all kinds, and indeed, the trust of Americans in one another.  At such times they are forced to reckon with what their nation is, and what it should be.”

I agree with the author Lewis Lapham that “what joins Americans one to another is not a common nationality, language, race, or ancestry (all of which testify to the burdens of the past) but rather their complicity in a shared work of the imagination.”  We do that work through elections, through kitchen table conversations at the places where history happened, through historical scholarship, through civil discourse even when we strongly disagree with another’s position. Bullying and violence are — unfortunately — part of the American story and, shamefully, part of our character. Freeman shows in The Field of Blood, just as we see it in today’s news feeds, that it is only when we stand up to those who would divide us and push for a true reckoning of what we are as a nation, that we break through the polarization.

What happened more than 150 years ago may not repeat itself, but it can certainly teach us today, if we are willing to listen.  And that is one more reason to care about history.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image by forcal35 from Pixabay

Dome of San Carlo

Leadership

Published by

At a recent retreat, our divisional management team focused on the support and growth of leaders among our staff. Leadership comes in many forms.  We all know of the stereotypical alpha male, Type A personalities who have been celebrated as leaders on Wall Street as well as in the movies, the halls of Congress, business, the tech sector, and the military.  These are the types who bark out orders and expect others to follow.  These are the “born leaders.”  Or so they say.

But there is another type of leadership that is usually—in my experience—much more effective.  It generally comes from people who learn to be leaders, rather than assume they know it all from birth.  I put more stock in these types of leaders in part because I am reminded of the tale of a group of tourists visiting a rural, picturesque village.  They walked by an old man sitting beside a fence and in a rather patronizing way, one tourist asked, “Were any great men or women born in this village?”  “Nope” the old man replied.  “Only babies.”

This type of leadership is resolute, but not rude.  Humble, but not timid.  Proud, but not arrogant.  Humorous, but without folly.  Optimistic, but not reckless.

That last trait is one I personally cherish in leaders.  The good ones can look at any situation and, without being pollyannaish, find the path forward … the good in the person … the way to get everyone to make the right choice. All leaders face difficult obstacles, but the good ones handle them with grace and equanimity, showing all of us how leaders direct change.

Plus, true leaders don’t whine!  George Bernard Shaw said, “The true joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”  True leaders are a force of fortune.

Jim Collins, in his classic Good to Great:  Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t, took on this question of leadership in describing the Level 5 Executive—his term for those with the highest level of executive capabilities.  Collins notes that top leaders build greatness through a “paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”  They are ambitious, but their ambition is “first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.” In the social sector, Collins notes that power is often much more diffuse than in business, but the power to get things done exists nonetheless, if you know where to find it.  “There is the power of inclusion, and the power of language, and the power of shared interests, and the power of coalition.”

Some of the most powerful leaders I’ve known have unassuming exteriors and yet their interior lives and values are exemplary.  Let me anthropomorphize a building that I saw in Rome while on sabbatical in 2016 as an example:  San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (Saint Charles at the Four Fountains).  This church’s design – a masterpiece of architect Francesco Borramini – is both “extraordinary and complex.”  The exterior/interior relationship is best described by architect Daniel Solomon in his Bedside Essays for Lovers (of Cities):

“Borromini was eclipsed for much of his career by the flashier and more charismatic Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and his oeuvre are mostly second-tier commissions – smallish buildings on undistinguished city sites.  His greatness is built on surmounting the contradictory demands of these commissions – simultaneous city fabric and monument.  Second-tier commissions produced some of the most complex and subtle works of the Western canon…

Never have the ordinary and the extraordinary been reconciled with more sublime elegance than at San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane.  Its interior is nothing less than a three-dimensional cosmological map depicting in its intricate geometries and its filtration of light the relationship of heaven and earth.  But the sanctuary of San Carlo sits on an unremarkable street corner on the consistent street frontage of via Quirinale, leading to the magnificence of Palazzo Quirinale and Piazza Quirinale a couple of blocks up the street.  Mediating between the glories of the interior and the important but subservient role of the exterior is a subtly undulating wall, true to the demands of both inside and out.  In this most complex of mediations, Borromini leaves the enduring lesson of how to be both a humble city builder and an architect of thundering power.”

I have worked with individuals who eschew the flashy exterior, content to be seen as partners with others in a larger, complex whole.  But their work, values, and legacy show amazing interior depth.  Max DePree is the retired CEO of the furniture and design pacesetter Herman Miller, and through the years I’ve come to appreciate his definition of leadership.  DePree says:

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”

In almost every station of life, there exists a potential leadership component.  You may be leading an organization, a division, a department, an office, a project team, an intern, a business, a family, or a group of friends.  Whatever your role, leaders need to be good at recognizing and defining reality.  Saying thank you is acknowledgement that you don’t do these jobs alone.  A servant leadership suggests you are there to help others grow and realize their full potential.

Jim Collins says that great lives result from having meaningful work.  Real leaders can help us get there.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Dome of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (by DJB)

Clayborn Temple Memorial

History is not what happened two hundred years ago; It is a story about what happened two hundred years ago*

Published by

Last week, a colleague shared an article that pushed me to think about how different generations view the world. I come at this question from various perspectives—as a baby boomer responsible for staff from multiple generational groups, a father of two millennials, a son of parents of the “greatest generation,” and so on.  You get the point.

Since I’m in the history business, my thinking focused on the major episodes of the past that have influenced generations I’ve known.  Both my parents grew up in the Depression and were greatly affected by the New Deal, Pearl Harbor and WWII.  My generation grew up during the expanding economic cycles of the 1950s and 60s with the rise of the middle class, but also experienced the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, not to mention Vietnam.  Two of my siblings grew up in the Reagan era, with its attacks on the New Deal and government.  For my children, their early and teenage years were shaped in part by 9/11, rising economic inequality, and the Great Recession of 2008.

Understanding how each successive generation views the world raises questions around how the stories about the past change.  That includes identifying the sight lines that we have available to see and tell those stories. One way we can grow our understanding of generational perspectives is through seeing the places where history happened.  I was not alive during Pearl Harbor, but when I was privileged to take an early morning tour of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Hawaii one Memorial Day weekend, I began to truly grasp the enormity of the sacrifice on that December Sunday morning in 1941 and its impact on my parents’ generation.

U.S.S. Arizona in Pearl Harbor on Memorial Day Weekend
U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor

On this day when we’ve just completed our annual celebration of the life and work of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., there may be those not alive in the 1960s who wonder about his true impact.  Many younger generations know King only as a symbol or a type of civic deity.  Yet there are places, when paired with his writings, which demonstrate why he is so important today. Clayborn Temple is one such place.  When King came to Memphis in 1968 to support the sanitation workers—those African American men who went out on strike and walked the streets with their now famous “I Am a Man” signs—he was reviled by much of white America. Even those moderates who said they supported his work raised issues with his tactics.  (Think of his response to white pastors in Letters from Birmingham Jail.) That trip to Memphis, of course, ended in his assassination.

Clayborn Temple
Clayborn Temple (photo credit: Steve Jones)

Michael Eric Dyson’s book Tears We Cannot Stop:  A Sermon to White America, makes King’s status then and now abundantly clear. Dyson argues that America has “washed the grit from his rhetoric” in order to get to a place where he can be seen and admired by the country at large.  Yet it was King who said that the race problem “grows out of the . . . need that some people have to feel superior.  A need that some people have to feel . . . that their white skin ordained them to be first.”  King also said, “Our nation was born in genocide, when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.”  Difficult words for many to hear, yet, “This is why King is so important to this generation, to this time, to this nation, to our people,” Dyson writes. “He spoke the truth that we have yet to fully acknowledge.”

I Am A Man
Sanitation Workers in March 1968 outside Clayborn Temple (photo credit: Ernest C. Withers/Withers Family Trust)

King’s words are powerful, but they also grew out of a history. I’ve seen those antecedents most recently in the writings of Thomas Paine, “the incendiary voice of the American Revolution” as described by Lewis Lapham, and the first individual to write a denunciation of slavery in America. Read these words from Paine’s Rights of Man and see how they provide a prologue to King’s Poor People’s Campaign:

“When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive . . . when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we often obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

Understanding generational perspectives on the American story requires work, just as seeking the point of view of different communities of people can be hard.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the effort.  Only when we open our eyes, minds, and hearts to our fellow human beings and acknowledge truths that have remained hidden—only when “one’s fellow citizens are … held in honorable regard not because they are rich or notably generous, but because they are one’s fellow citizens”—will we be able to progress towards the aspirations of America’s founding documents.

With gratefulness for the life—and continuing impact—of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have a good week.

More to come…

DJB

*The title is adapted from a line in Lewis H. Lapham’s Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy

Image: “I Am a Man” Memorial at Clayborn Temple in Memphis by DJB