A TRUE STORY OF PROBLEMS BECOMING OPPORTUNITIES: Stones into Schools

Several Saturdays ago, my husband, Larry, and I went to hear Greg Mortenson, the mountaineer who wrote Three Cups of Team and Stones in Schools.  Greg told his story of losing his way in the mountains and being rescued by his Sherpa and a remote village in the Himalayas.  And then promising to find a way to build a school for the girls of this remote village.

Over the past 16 years, Greg has learned of the healing power of female literacy.  "When you teach a boy, you educate an individual.  When you teach a girl, you educate a community."  Not only do girls go home and teach their mothers, they also go on to become teachers, doctors, attorneys, and engineers.

We learn that the population explosion is linked to female literacy.  As women are educated, infant mortality decreased significantly.  And as women can be confident that their children will live past age 5, they choose to have fewer children (from 7 or 8 to 2.3 per woman).

Not only can we address the complex problems of women dying in child birth, infant mortality and controlling world population.  Another fascinating link is to jihad and suicide bombers.  In the Muslim culture a son must get the blessing of his mother before doing jihad.  Rarely will and educated mother give her permission because she knows the Koran forbids murder and suicide.  It seems that the Taliban depends on illiteracy to control the minds of the people.  And as schools are being built in the most remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban is finding it more and more difficult to recruit followers.

This is an engaging story of servant leadership, working through trust, teamwork, and local leaders.  The village donates the land and the labor to build each school.  Central Asia Institute (CAI), the non-profit founded by Greg Mortenson, then funds the resources.

It is very encouraging to learn that Three Cups of Team, Mortenson's first book, is now required reading for all US military heading for Iraq or Afghanistan.  Learning and respecting the culture, earning trust, and working with local people has become the new strategy to establish a sustainable peace in this region.  "Drink one cup of team and we are strangers, two and we are friends, three and we are family."

Again and again, as the stories are told, each problem becomes a surprising opportunity.  Greg tells how a child in the elementary school where his mother was the principal, offered all in hi piggy bank to help the children in Afghanistan.  And from that, now 400+ schools now participate.  Pennies for Peace is a program to introduce children to the opportunity to become a philanthropist on behalf of others.

I strongly recommend these book as a fascinating way to learn about the history and complex cultures of this region as well as a very practical true story as t why servant leadership is such an effective form of leadership.  These books will inspire you, delight you, and fill your heart with hope that together we can replace war with lasting peace.

Outliers: The Story of Success filled with insights for Servant Leadership

All of us want to succeed, want our children to succeed and enjoy being a part of the greatest possible successes…winning the Super Bowl, working at one of the Best Places to Work in America, winning a Nobel Pulitzer Prize or a gold medal in the Olympics. We are thrilled to be the best, individually and collectively. So are there ways to increase the odds for extraordinary success so that anyone can enjoy the nourishing joy of achieving bold dreams? Malcomb Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Success makes a compelling case for this encouraging possibility.
In stories that will fascinate all 4 quadrants of the brain he makes a strong case for :
- why winners are typically nurtured by an extended community (the importance of building that sense of team, family, support and belonging which strengthens the immune system as well as mental and intellectual health/social I.Q.)
- the tremendous advantage of persistence and the magic of investing 10,000 hours to unleash genius.
- how problems become opportunities for those who persist and dream bold dreams
- how our ancestral back ground play a far bigger role than we may have ever thought
- the link between rice paddies and high aptitude in math, and
- some blocking assumptions in American education that will startle you.

I read all this with a keen interest, keeping in mind our work teaching Servant Leadership and growing organizations (communities) that learn. Again and again his research confirmed the work we have been doing on nurturing genius in individuals and teams. We all are given gifts of unique genius. The question is not do we possess genius but rather, will we choose to own and apply it?
The role of mentoring clearly brings keen advantages to both mentor and mentee. The act of consistently thinking on behalf of another and finding ways to communicate feedback and coaching transform the breadths and depths of daily experience.
One of the most fascinating insights is the 3 qualities of meaningful work:
• Autonomy
• Complexity
• Connection between effort and reward.
Effective servant Leaders work hard to imbed these qualities in the ways work is assigned to those they supervise.
In a chapter on the ethnic theory of plane crashes, Gladwell describes how low or high power distance impacts effective communications. When we are taught to defer to superiors and obey rather than to challenge their orders, we limit the collective intelligence with serious consequences. One example of this comes in the case of airline pilots. You can quickly realize how automatic deference to authority and being rewarded for NOT challenging decisions or assumptions extends to any supervisor/ subordinate relationship and the probability of their successful teaming.
What I found most fascinating was the consistent role of “hard work” and “long hours” as a quality of success. Yet consistently, along with this mantra of long hours was personal passion or purpose. Bold dreams fuel our lives with purpose. And whether you are loading baggage for Southwest Airlines (working to achieve unsurpassed Customer Service with zero lost or damage luggage), answering emergency 911 dispatch calls for Carrollton Police Department (in the spirit of being the first voice to help a person facing a critical crisis be immediately supported by the right service) or monitoring the control room of a nuclear power plant (in the spirit of providing safe, reliable, affordable power for families and businesses to thrive), having a purpose larger than a paycheck or personal survival is key.
I’ve always been fascinated by the quote attributed to Henry Ford, “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you are right!” Outliers provides refreshing new insights into ways we can expand our successes and claim bold dreams for ourselves, our work places, our community and our world.

Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, a new book by Al Gore

Anybody besides me feeling a bit overwhelmed by news about our planetary crisis and the impact of pollution on air, land & water and the many other issues being reported on? If so, I strongly encourage you to buy a new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis and withhold judgment until you have read it. There is a fascinating chapter explaining scientifically why our brains become paralyzed by the overwhelming nature of what is happening and why we then look away in denial or despair. Yet it also shares great examples of times when we as a nation and people rose up against huge odds and achieved the impossible, again and again. It is a book filled with hope and possibility.

If you care about the health of the planet and how our current life style will impact our grandchildren and their grandchildren, (and I know each of you do) I strongly encourage you to read, Our Choice. Make it a gift to your whole family. It brings us up to date on all the issues regarding how humans are impacting the health of our planet and what we can do.

Instead of beginning at the beginning, I encourage you to start with Chapter 17, The Power of Information. It is fascinating to learn how the web and technology are rapidly changing how we think and leveraging the power of information for good and for bad. It gave me great hope and I could see choices I want to make about increasing my learning curve as a participant and user of technology.

I was glad to read every chapter as each focuses on a different aspect of our planetary crisis, including: Our Sources of Energy, Living Systems, How We Use Energy, The Obstacles We Need to Overcome and Going Far Quickly. It is very thoroughly researched and presents all sides of each issue. But by far my favorite chapter is the final chapter where the author describes two possible futures, one if we continue the status quo and remain in denial. The other is a very, very hopeful vision of what could be. And as you get to the end, you will be totally convinced that we can choose to change and save our planet. He reminds us of our greatness and how many times we have faced overwhelming threats and turned a problem into an opportunity. For example, Pearl Harbor and WWII where every man, woman & child pitched in. I was 5 years old. I helped with our victory garden, recycled tin foil, knitted squares for blankets for soldiers and saved money for Victory Bonds. The Marshall Plan brought renewed hope to all of Europe and rebuilt the infrastructure which brought economic prosperity and good will.

This nation has a history of rising up to face huge threats and finding the courage and innovation to do whatever it takes. If you long to do the right thing for future generations, please do read this book. It transformed my sense of hope and provided the background on each issue so I can make choices as an informed citizen. I am convinced that we must find our collective will and act now. If not us, who? If not now, when? We are the ones given this challenge.

The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness

I recently read a fascinating book, The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness by Christopher M. Bache. For those of you interested in work on generative dialogue and ways to bring a group of people into synergistic ways to think, learn and create together, this book is well worth the read. In business leaders often move from department to department, starting over as they grow a new team to identify challenges, vision stretch goals and then work again a plan to realize these shared goals. One of the phenomena that most interested me was his reporting on energy fields and how a new class would seem to pick up where the former class left off. How can that be? Yet well-known research with rats done decades earlier suggests that once new learning is discovered it becomes like an energy field, there for all others to tune into.

I’m always hungry to keep stretching my own capacity to learn, lead and team effectively as well as to bring to all our clients some of the most powerful ways to leverage the collective intelligence possible and strategies to grow learning organizations. There are plenty of fresh insights one can experiment with by focusing on the ways we team within our families, work place and communities. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline cites that Bache leads us to rediscover our hidden connectedness. If you choose to read this engaging book, you will become keenly aware that we can’t harm others without it coming back to us. The illusion of being separate beings is just that, an illusion. And that has huge implications as to how we lead and nurture all those in our work places and lives.

Ann McGee-Cooper