Hasta La Gadget!

We all want to be happy, which, at the simplest level, means that we want our life to be filled with experiences that we like and enjoy. There is nothing more inborn to the human being than the desire to want what is happening to indeed be happening. In service to this basic drive, we do everything we can to create lives that contain experiences that we want. The drive to create a life we like is a most healthy drive.

When we get what we want in our lives, there isn’t much that needs to be said or done. We might want to learn how to more fully enjoy the desired experiences or be more present or grateful, but such changes are fun and relatively stress-free. We are working with life’s good stuff, trying to figure out how to feel the good a little more intensely, or make the good stuff into great stuff. But the question that every human being at some point in their lives needs to answer is not what to do with the experiences that they want, but rather what to do with the experiences that they don’t want. No matter how hard we try to create a life that contains only what we want, life always includes the full menu. The fact that our life contains undesirable aspects simply means that we are human.

The question is not whether we can prevent unwanted experiences, we can’t, but rather how to live and relate to the experiences that we consider unwanted or painful. Can we live those experiences, in a new way such that they are not so painful, scary and derailing?
We have been conditioned to view unwanted experiences as personal failings. We believe that there is always something that we could have done differently to make that experience not happen, and if we could have done that thing, we would be a better person with a better life. But what if you were to choose to relate to your unwanted experiences as nothing out of the ordinary, simply a normal part of every human life? Could you throw out all ideas of the unwanted as representing some personal failure or success? What if the undesired aspects of life could just be what they are and not about your personal worthiness? What if you were to choose to relate to difficult experiences as opportunities to embrace yourself in compassion instead of assaulting yourself with blame?

In addition, we relate to unwanted experiences as dangerous to our well-being. We believe that if we allow ourselves to accept or look into such experiences more deeply, we will be harmed. In truth, we have a choice as to what kind of relationship we want to conduct with our unwanted experiences, and ourselves when we are inside them. We can choose to turn towards the unwanted experiences, and get curious about the ways that our mind and body respond when in contact with the unwanted. As counterintuitive as it is to our conditioning, we can welcome unwanted experiences (when they have chosen to arrive despite our wishes) as fertile ground for discovery and enlightenment, a chance to get to know ourselves more deeply and truthfully, to honestly meet who we are. Could you get interested in whatever experience is arising in your awareness right now, to welcome the comfortable and the uncomfortable as equal opportunities for self-awareness and discovery? Could you decide to turn your attention to the thoughts, feelings and sensations that are happening inside you even if they are not what you normally consider pleasurable?

We have a lot more choice than we believe in how we live our individual experiences. While we are conditioned to believe that negative experiences must be experienced negatively and positive ones, positively, we can shift this belief with a different attitude towards the purpose and meaning of experiences and what, ultimately, they are here to offer us.

Try shifting your perspective for a day. You can always abandon the practice. Nothing will be lost. Imagine getting interested in whatever is arising inside you, whatever is happening in response to your present experience. Choose to investigate your own experience, even when it is uncomfortable, and relate to it as an intimate doorway into your own mind and consciousness. You can opt to view all experience as just this. When all experiences are opportunities to deepen your relationship with your own being, to know your self, you can stop being so afraid of and rejecting of the experiences that you don’t want.

We will never stop trying to create experiences that we want. It is who we are as human beings. Until we are enlightened we will always prefer and wish for experiences that we like over those that we don’t. But when experiences do arrive at our doorstep (as they always will) that we have not invited, that we would never choose to bring into our house, it is best to find a way to relate to them without fear, and turn them into houseguests if we can. All experiences, welcomed, are opportunities to see and know the truth of ourselves more clearly. With this attitude, we can relate to our whole life, the sweet and the bitter, as enlightening, not necessarily wanted, but enlightening nonetheless, and in that light, meaningful.

Copyright 2014 Nancy Colier

“There is a difference between doing the next thing right, and doing the next right thing.”

— Peter F. Drucker

Online quizzes have suddenly become a “cheap — if vexing — form of modern self-analysis,” according to The Wall Street Journal. In a recent 24-hour period, 97 million people took a quiz to determine which Disney Princess “matched” their personality; 41 million people tried to determine which state is best suited for their personal traits; and 20 million sought to find out which city they should live in. As this tsunami of lightweight online quizzes engulfs the world, I think you would agree that it behooves us to try and take one that truly matters.

Let’s take a quiz that pinpoints how human the companies for which we work are.

Peter F. Drucker, management guru

It’s far from a trivial questionnaire, but rather a meaningful form of organizational analysis that gets to the very core of whether or not our companies and their workers will thrive in the new conditions of the 21st century. Taking the “How Human is Your Company?” quiz has a heck of a lot more at stake than figuring out if we’re more like Cinderella, Snow White or Mulan. That’s because assessing our company’s humanity also tells us about our company’s capacity for performance.

Yes, I said “performance.”

I’ll get to that connection in a moment, but first let’s get into corporate humanity. In the past several years, more and more companies have been asserting their humanity: Ally Bank speaks human; Chevron is the human energy company; Cisco is the human network; Dow is the human element; JetBlue says they “air on the side of humanity”; Samsung is designed for humans, and so on. The trend is so prevalent and so consequential that Ad Age has even pronounced “human” the newest marketing buzzword. What’s more, a recent MarketingWeek article reports on a study that describes a “societal shift in relationships that requires brands to behave like humans in order to connect with consumers and build trust.” (By the way, as more and more companies assert their current humanity it raises a question about their previous behavior – did these companies used to be inhuman, monstrous, or were they just inconsiderate?)

Sure, these proclamations can be casually dismissed as marketing campaigns, but keep in mind that marketers are supremely adept at understanding the current context in which their companies operate and pinpointing society’s social (read: human) nerve. We should celebrate the fact that some marketers have nudged their companies into a promise of humanity from which they cannot retreat. (Some of these efforts have even catalyzed companies into operating in a more human manner, as we have witnessed before. But we can’t stop there. The work of humanizing organizations must spread beyond the marketing department and permeate the whole organization.)

What does it mean for a company to be human? For starters, it means we want our companies to embody the best – not the worst – human capacities and qualities. Peter Drucker’s distinction between “doing the next thing right, and doing the next right thing” nails a profound difference between humans and machines. Getting the “next thing right” is what we program software and robots to do by giving them a script of what they can or cannot do. In the same vein, we have scaled a management model where we “programmed” – and still do in some ways — employees to implement or execute a strategy set by top management.

Doing the “next right thing,” however, is a uniquely human endeavor. It requires pausing — and then using that pause to think beyond what we can or cannot do to grapple with what we should or should not do. This act requires a moral conscience — one of the main differentiators between humans and other life-forms – which enables us to be thoughtfully conscious of all the stakeholders affected by our behaviors. While machines may beat humans in how fast or how much they can process or produce, our humanity is most manifest in how we do things: how we think, imagine, create, collaborate, share information and relate to others.

It is one thing to develop and manifest one’s humanity, but quite another to develop and scale it throughout an entire workforce. The upcoming Global Drucker Forum this November, where I am speaking, will address the responsibility of leaders to transform their companies into more human organizations so as to guide them onto a path of sustainable prosperity. The Forum brings a sharp focus to this critical issue, and in doing so highlights and amplifies the enduring relevance of Drucker’s teachings.

Quality was once job No. 1, with companies doing the hard work of systematizing quality (and let me remind you that before it was job No. 1, it was marketed as such). Now, in the 21st century, humanity is becoming job No. 1 because of how easily and inexpensively we can peer into individuals’ character and into the inner workings of companies. Because we can see how companies truly behave, we want to see more of how they behave: What does your company stand for? The stakes involved in answering that question are high. As Drucker wisely warned, “There has to be something ‘this organization stands for,’ or else it degenerates into disorganization, confusion and paralysis.” He went on to draw an analogy between companies and humans, by pointing out a company “needs a commitment to values and their constant reaffirmation, as a human body needs vitamins and minerals.”

We can now ask, and answer, that core question about corporate character. The answers — just like the existence of product defects during the quality revolution of the last century — are the key indicators of which companies will perform and thrive, and which ones will not survive.

It turns out that the more human your organization is, the better it performs. The most human companies (i.e. self-governing) significantly outperform less human companies (rules-based or “informed acquiescence” companies, as well as autocratic or “blind obedience” companies) in areas of financial performance, innovation and related measures of success, according to research developed by my company LRN and independently conducted by the Boston Research Group. The research shows that the most human companies are 10 times more likely to outperform less human companies in the short-term, and more than 20 times more likely to outperform them in the long-term. The sum of all behaviors in a company — and the degree to which those behaviors coincide with, or contradict, its shared values — form a company’s corporate character.

Humanity not only serves as a performance propellant, it also functions as a bulwark. The most human companies are also far less likely to foster inappropriate behavior, including the type that leads to regulatory compliance problems and enforcement actions. That’s important right now, given the risk of corruption that our ever-more global enterprises confront. Our organizations operate in a world where more than one in four global citizens has paid a bribe in the past 12 months, according to Transparency International. As I’ve been asserting for years, how an organization behaves represents the final frontier of competitive advantage.

The fact is that all companies, regardless of their character, are asking their people for much more human contributions. Rather than executing checklists (never mind online quizzes), we want our employees to exercise judgment. Rather than deferring to marketing or PR, we want our people to behave as chief marketing officers while conveying the company’s key messages in their own words, through their own networks. Rather than merely providing products and services, we also want our people to forge deep experiences and relationships that will sustain through ups and downs.

The question is whether companies possess a corporate character (the sum of all employees’ behaviors) that is consonant and enables, or is dissonant and fights, with these desired human behaviors. How human are our companies currently? Not human enough, according to the early results of LRN’s ongoing global surveying of corporate characters: only 3 percent of companies truly qualify as sufficiently human. Changing our corporate characters is difficult but necessary work. To get started, take the quiz.

You won’t find out who you’d be as a princess or whether you’re more suited for Boston or Boca Raton. You will find out what your company’s made of, how it stacks up against the competition and how well it’s suited for principled performance — the only performance that counts in the 21st century.

It’s still fall, but the seasonal flu has arrived.

Following the Royals’ 10-0 drought over the San Francisco Giants in Game 6 of the World Series, the Kansas City Star’s front page Wednesday morning pictured an emotional Yordano Ventura pointing toward the sky, honoring the pitcher’s childhood friend and former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Oscar Travers, who died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic on Sunday.

The photo, taken by John Sleezer, captures the intensity of the moment and the headline is simple and direct. Facing elimination, the Royals needed a miracle Tuesday night. They got one.

Fireball Cinnamon Whisky is taking heat in Europe over a chemical ingredient that’s used in some forms of antifreeze.

Norway, Sweden and Finland have recalled the popular cinnamon-flavored liqueur — a trendy favorite of sweet-toothed college students — after a batch of the North American recipe, which contains higher levels of propylene glycol, was shipped there, its manufacturer said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says propylene glycol is “generally recognized as safe” for use in food, where it is used to enhance flavor by absorbing water. Therefore Sazerac, the New Orleans-based beverage company that owns Fireball, puts more propylene glycol in its drinks sold in America and Canada than in Europe.

Propylene glycol can have toxic effects in some circumstances, including for people suffering with pre-existing skin or eye conditions, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry. In recent years, the substance has been used as a less-toxic alternative to ethylene glycol in antifreeze, which was killing pets who lapped up the sweet-tasting engine fluid. But the Humane Society warns that propylene glycol is “still toxic.”

The European Union’s stricter guidelines on recommended levels of propylene glycol forced state-owned retailers to yank the drink from shelves in Sweden and Finland over the last week. Norway, which is not part of the European Union, also pulled the product.

Europe generally enforces tighter regulations of ingredients used in food. Earlier this year, Subway said it would remove a chemical commonly used in yoga mats from its bread. The substance, azodicarbonamide, was banned in Australia and Europe. In May, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola vowed to axe brominated vegetable oil, prohibited for food use in Australia, Europe, India and Japan, from its soft drinks in North America. The coloring agents found in soda, candy and macaroni-and-cheese are banned in Norway and Austria, and require a warning label when used in products sold in the European Union.

“Unfortunately, Fireball shipped its North American formula to Europe and found that one ingredient is out of compliance with European regulations,” the company said in a statement on its website. “Finland, Sweden and Norway have asked to recall those specific batches, which is what the brand is doing.”

The company said it expects to be back on the shelves in those countries “within three weeks” without the chemical.

“As I’m sure you are aware, Europe, as with many things, has different rules for product formulation,” Amy Preske, a spokeswoman for Sazerac, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “Hence we have a different formula for Europe.”

Sazerac said it uses one-eighth of the FDA-approved amount of propylene glycol in its North American formula.

Fireball, a syrupy liqueur that tastes like Red Hots candy or Wrigley’s Big Red chewing gum, skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. Sales of the 66-proof drink, which contains less alcohol than actual whiskey, zoomed past Jameson Irish whiskey and and Patron tequila last year, topping $61 million, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The FDA has no plans to ban sales of the drink.