January 2007

(I) Hail the First-person Singular Pronoun

If you work for a company--small, mid-sized, corporate behemoth, whatever--chances are pretty good that you've been provided with a company values statement. Chances are also good that it's laminated in a convenient wallet-sized card that does not, funnily enough, reside in your wallet. Readers of The Radical Leap will know that I'm dubious at best about the value of values statements. I think there's a major problem with almost all of them, but it's not, you may be surprised to hear, in the way they're written. It's in the way we read them.

The problem is in the pronouns.

Allow me to demonstrate with this excerpt from Home Depot's corporate values statement. (This isn't a commentary on Home Depot, per se; they just came out near the top when I Googled "values statement" corporate). Here's how it's written:

Doing the right thing: We exercise good judgment by "doing the right thing" instead of just "doing things right." We strive to understand the impact of our decisions, and we accept responsibility for our actions.

The problem is that many people will interpret the pronoun "we" as "other people around here; a group that doesn't necessarily include me."

Now try reading it this way:

Doing the right thing: I exercise good judgment by "doing the right thing" instead of just "doing things right." I strive to understand the impact of my decisions, and I accept responsibility for my actions.

Feels different, doesn't it? That's the power of the first-person singular pronoun. That's the power of "I": nothing's going to happen around here unless I do something about it.

So, back to your company's statement. Go find it, dust it off, and read it again with a new set of first-person singulars--change the "we's" to "I's" and the "ours" to "my's". How do you feel when you read it that way?

Guilty, perhaps?

Good.

Maybe we should do something about that.

Posted by steve at 01.22.2007 | Comments (5)

Start Your Day With a Double Shot

Recently, I've taken a little downtime from posting on this blog. I've been reflecting, thinking, stewing, incubating on where, exactly, I'd like to take this experiment in dialogue, relationship, community, friendship, etc.

Consequently, I'm glad to say, you can expect some pretty cool things from this site in the year ahead. I'll fill you in on the plan in a future post; in the meantime, let me offer you a double shot of inspiration and gratitude to help you jump start your Extreme Leadership journey for '07.

In the spirit of you can't inspire unless you're inspired, let me suggest an experiment.

Start each day for the next two weeks with this web-based ritual:

In the morning when you first fire up your computer--before you check your email or do anything else--open your browser and go directly to karmatube.org. Pick a video and watch it. Then go over to gratefulness.org and light a candle.

Let's give it a try right now:

1. Inspire yourself by watching this video on The Strongest Dad in the World

then...

2. Cultivate your sense of gratitude by lighting a candle here.

Try this every day for two weeks and let me know what happens.

Posted by steve at 01.11.2007 | Comments (6)