A business prodigy, and consultant to many, he turned to philanthropic consulting. He has grown an organization of over 100 MBAs. Why did he do it? He says, "I lived in the world of up and to the right. I wanted to do more with my life." And? His firm helps nonprofits build bars, representing results, that go up and to the right. Aristotle said tha we become what we repeatedly do. (Action, then habit, then character, which operates on instinct.) To form habits and character of self awareness, reflection, love and humility. To learn how to be. Who teaches that? The laborer pruning the bushes outside corporate HQ, the woman from Guatemala cleaning our rooms may be our best role models for being. They more than we may be living in community, in faith and in traditions that are more balanced and whole than is our relentless, multi-sectoral, half mad, quest for quantifiable results in systems too complex to admit of our simplication, without groaning under the load of our interventions.
Why are your clothes thrown all over the bedroom?
Why did you miss our child's soccer game?
Why are you drinking so much?
Why are you not exercising?
Why are you so curt and dismissive?
Why are you so peremptory and demanding of others?
Why are you always so off balance?
The answer is, "Goddammit! I have to get Results! The world is in a hell of a mess!"
The answer to the answer is: A deep inbreath, and exhale through the nose: "Yes, Dear." Or, "Yes, boss."
What those who love us know is that we in our unbalanced being are the source of so much that is toxic. They know because they clean up our unacknowledged messes, the ones we make, as the bars go up and to the right. The messes we High Performers make are not measured - not even seen. And so the value of what is done in clean up, the inglorious fixing of our messes, is treated as of no value, unless - yes measured. And how can we measure what we do not even see?
Who am I accusing? Moi, no less than others. Who am I reforming? Don't ask. The results on that are dismal. I will reform myself, yes, but I need to practice on you first!
Comments