I mentioned in my JPMorgan / Chase blog posting the other day that I may be suffering from some learned helplessness…

This is an AMAZING article that speaks through another’s heart what is in my own head and heart.

(Warning – longer than a typical blog but worth every word. The comment section goes on for days, so I’m not the only one who was nodding yes over and over as I read it. Here’s a snippet and link -

Are Americans a Broken People? Why We’ve Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression

A psychologist asks: Have consumerism, suburbanization and a malevolent corporate-government partnership so beaten us down that we no longer have the will to save ourselves? more »

“But today, most U.S. citizens are broken by financial fears. There is potential legal debt if we speak out against a powerful authority, and all kinds of other debt if we do not comply on the job…Elitist “helpers” think they have done something useful by informing overweight people that they are obese and that they must reduce their caloric intake and increase exercise. An elitist who has never been broken by his or her circumstances does not know that people who have become demoralized do not need analyses and pontifications. Rather the immobilized need a shot of morale.”

The executive summary is that the hours and project management that has gone into my effort to manage gracefully a revamping of my financial picture to accommodate current reality has been Herculean, diligent and compliant, assertive and redundant.

Please understand that I’m not going to grouse – much. Or defend because I know how responsible I have been and that it really didn’t matter. So be it. I am changing my game plan, though, and reactivating this blog with a new Category as part of that game plan. I’ll explain in a minute.

My game plan has been to work with JP Morgan and Chase, both locally and in New York. Local employees have had even less success than I have myself.

I have submitted or resubmitted the same and updated paperwork to Chase more times than I can count without consulting my very thick log. I set up a project management plan because, for example, my case was closed without informing me, Chase communications are internally contradictory, and even after buying stock in the company in the hope I would receive humane treatment rather than discourteous or nonexistent customer service, it got worse. I need the help because if my temporary downturn in income. It took 14 months for Chase to tell me no because my situation was a ‘temporary downturn in income.’ No kidding! Really? And the second reason? I’ve been paying my bills. Really?

14 months. My story isn’t even news anymore. I will not benefit from Obama’s executive order. I cry uncle. Maybe today’s meeting between the White House and Wall Street will make a difference and this blog is moot.

I have a media campaign & spread the word plan, media contacts, private phone numbers into Dimon’s office and Obama’s administration to possibly provide ammunition to aid others and raise citizen activitism. I am dragging my feet. I ask myself why. To have come so far, only to close the door with less money, less time, more deferred home maintenance, and less faith in so many things…. I drag my feet. Why?

I’m tired. I’m disillusioned. Probably learned helplessness, as I have had to explore my internal landscape when I feel caught in Victim mode. It’s ironic even. JP Morgan was a previous client hiring us to assess their readiness for a virtual work environment. I liked them. I’ve always enjoyed listening to Jamie Dimon.

The financial lack of results is infuriating, but the bigger pain for me is that I am giving up on the system. I need to focus – and WANT to – on my work and thought leadership in helping organizations and people grow through better collaboration for strategic accomplishment across internal, geographic, and organizational boundaries. My upbringing chides me – you’re letting them win.

My time spent jumping through hoops to entertain the drones of the robber barons has taken me from my business development activity.

And I am one of the lucky ones. My income has been slashed by 2/3, but I have been working even if a bit underutilized. In 2009 75% of my net income went to my house payment.

I’ve made 3 decisions.
1. My commitment to doing good work over greed has not served me, and greed is still good on Wall Street. I have to find the balance that works for me. That is MY work. I tilt at windmills when I find injustice doggedly, and that has to go on hold for the time being.
2. I have worked with businesses over a quarter century, and I am mission, strategy, even business model neutral. I am Values Alignment and People Integrity biased. If JPMorgan says it fosters “a culture that stresses the highest ethical standards in support of clients,” I want to see aligned words and action. When I don’t, I will move on as quickly as I can, whether as consultant, advisor, or customer. I am accomplishment committed, and words and actions misaligned interfere with accomplishment. Anyone want to finance my mortgage when on paper it don’t look so good? (Only half kidding, and no mortgage lenders need apply.)
3. I have to scale back my efforts to fix the unmotivated, like the banks. I want to see this through but need to leverage my time more smartly, so commit to short updates in a separate blog category here. If you are or know an interested party (media, influencers in business or DC, activist changemakers and professional consumer rights advocates, politicians, affected individuals) who might want to join, lead, or take on the banks’ total indifference to us middle class Americans…. Please forward, connect or join the conversation.

I’m getting back to the work I love to do – facilitating forward movement for people who want to move forward. Thanks for letting me get this imperfectly expressed frustration off my chest.

I want to be part of it but cannot lead. I have to do my work, save my home, and live my life again.
It’s up to me; just not in the way I foresaw.

I’ve been asked to do a lot of coaching and speaking lately on how I built Tennyson Gallery’s patronage so quickly, as well as how I’ve built such long lasting business relationships. This is the basic presentation that came from those questions.

Networking is the answer, and I share this for those who might pick up a tip or two. I was playing around with SlideShare presentation app tonight on LinkedIn, and here is my first uploaded show. This was done as support for a speech I did this winter for Chicks Who Click. Enjoy! Click on the link below to view the presentation.

http://tinyurl.com/ddw9vs

We cannot turn on a newscast or day time talk show without having to listen to Blagojevitch proclaim his innocence and victimization, droning on and on.

Citigroup seems to have no shame.

The Bush Administration continues to believe that, despite finally acknowledging mistakes were made, they truly were doing the right thing.

My fellow consultants continue to moan that they are less able to charge exorbitant fees for their expertise. While not questioning our contribution and competence, and while I have over a quarter century experience learning that independent consultants must charge significantly more to accommodate the additional personal and business expenses, I do believe that some consulting firms have joined the ranks of some highly paid executives who have lost sight of the financial divide between the lowest paid and highest paid contributors in the organization.

Does anyone see a pattern here?

It is easier to believe proclamations of no wrong doing when the accused truly believes no rules, ethics, morals, or laws were violated.  Culturally, the very air we breathe may be so toxic that we are lost in the rules of the game to the point that we truly are doing what we must to retain the “right” to offer our competence.

Mark Maguire and Barry Bonds are exceptional athletes. If no steroid abuse were happening in baseball at all, they would still be exceptional athletes. Just perhaps with lesser stats. If the virtual physical enhancement playing field were equal, they would still excel. If they took the “high road” and refused to use any asset available to them while others did, perhaps they would have simply blended into the pack.

What’s a star athlete to do?

I grew up in Illinois, and have watched Illinois and Chicago politics my whole life. Blagojevich is a travesty, whether he is blinded to his own culpability or not. What may be the bigger travesty, though, is that he was just arrogant or narcissistic enough to think he didn’t need to cover his tracks. Was he operating at a level worse than most in his practices, or does he simply have a potty mouth and a temper and bad judgment? We ALL know political corruption is rampant. What is the old saying that Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Isn’t that why our Founding Fathers built a constitution of checks and balances? (Which is a story for another day….)

Yet here we are. A governor waging a PR campaign second to none, likely convinced he was only practicing politics as usual. And perhaps he was. If he is the poster child for change, I’m all for it. I’m ready for clean air.

The money people have been greedy and corrupt at many levels, but I venture that many top earners are simply riding the wave of their peers. One must make a certain amount of money and bandy a certain amount of power and money around to be considered “successful” in today’s marketplace. Some just plain want all they can grab. Many are simply playing by the current rules. Some have been probably quite unaware of how out of whack it all really is.

If ambitious professionals want to rise above the masses, they must compete against prevailing norms. Our society’s prevailing norms are toxic, and create choices for many – politicians, athletes, executives , consultants – that verge on the line of narcisisstic lack of other-awareness, and many fall on the common practices side of that line. It’s easy to become unconscious sheep, following blindly what is normal and losing sight of what is right.

Common practices suggest that you have to woo and win and barter and trade and wield money and status sometimes in order to rise in your respective profession. You have to garner and horde power wherever you can so you have the ammunition you need.

Frankly, I want clean societal air. Much is falling around us – beliefs, hopes, dreams, salaries, jobs, housing prices. Believe me, I’m affected directly. I would rather be without a house than steal from someone in the name of “This is the way it’s done around here.” I would rather lose my status in the community than  take a job where I know I can’t have a positive impact. It just doesn’t feel right to me. And besides, while I like cash flow and nice things, I’m not driven by them.

I, despite watching my retirement disintegrate around me, breathe the air and make choices. I choose clean air as much as I can find. And yes, I am willing to sacrifice to do that.

Aren’t you?
Shouldn’t our financial institutions? Our professional athletes? Our financial and industry top executives?

And shouldn’t we – as the people of this great society – call them out and support the ones who choose to rid themselves of toxicity they may not have been aware they were breathing in?

We cannot participate in strategic thinking and America’s renewal if we are breathing unconsciously.

We have many choices in front of us. The first is to open our eyes, breathe clean air, expect exceptional humanity from the best of the best, and stop worshiping superstars that cannot sustain super human elitism without great cost to their bodies, all our ethical consciousness, and us.

Happy New Year!

What an interesting ride we are all having together. I have been doing so much private writing and creating that I have been neglecting my blog and networks a bit, but much is coalescing and I am confident the best is yet to come….

Many of you have asked about my 2-day course for the University of Wisconsin, interested but unable to make the class. It is available as a custom inhouse offer, and will also be offered again May 19-20, 2009 in Milwaukee.

In the meantime, I wanted to extend an invitation to an extraordinary evening! This is a unique event because yours truly is featured in the book! If you conduct a series of 50 interviews with experts in a specific field, will it change your life? Brian Schwartz believes it will.

After going through this process himself, he is so convinced about its effectiveness that he wrote a book about it and is now building a business around it. Brian Schwartz, the author of 50 Interviews: Entrepreneurs has interviewed 50 entrepreneurs about their challenges as well as their rewards. He got advice from people who stood in his shoes, felt the same fears, and went through the same challenges.

On January 19, 2009, Brian Schwartz will be demonstrating the process used to create 50 Interviews: Entrepreneurs by interviewing a panel of entrepreneurs unscripted & LIVE during Startup Junkie Underground, a monthly series hosted by The DaVinci Institute in the Denver area (Westminster, for us Colorado folks). https:www.davinciinstitute.com

Brian will also share the truths and insights he uncovered upon interviewing over 50 entrepreneurs. The intent of 50 interviews is NOT to simply offer another book of useful advice (although it is full of useful real-world wisdom). There’s already an ample supply of books that provide all the self-help tidbits you will ever need (in fact, you will get a list of recommendations from the interviewees themselves). Rather 50 Interviews serves as a catalyst for the reader to discover his or her own answers, as we often learn the most about ourselves through observing others. The compilation of over 50 interviews offers the reader endless opportunities to observe skilled, successful, and fulfilled individuals to discover something new about their own life. The framework is one that anyone can apply immediately to immerse themselves in practically any passion.

Every interview was conducted in 2008, and many of the names will be familiar to you, so the content will be highly relevant and applicable. The cost of the event is $25 if you are not already a member of the DaVinci Institute, and will include a $10 credit for all attendees towards the purchase of the book. In the meantime, if you’re not in Colorado or can’t attend, but are intrigued…. you can join the 50 Interviews community on: Facebook Linked In Twitter Happy new year! Let’s make 2009 the best one yet.

This current reality is unprecedented, and I’m in fear sometimes, too. Would love to say I’m not, and most of the time I am more positive than hopeless, but this is real. ALL my newer clients have put holds or dropped projects from the budgets. (So I have time on my calendar, folks! Take advantage of it and contact me! lol). Kind of hard to stay in denial when it hits my work. My best asset is a long history of doing good work and seeing many ups and downs. But back to Corporate America.

Wanting to cut, and cut hard, is understandable but still dangerous. Get on a budget, yes. Delay optional new initiatives, maybe so.   Historically, though, a couple years after these big swings, the cuts usually end up costing more than if the company used the time to improve and get more lean but NOT go into big sweeping layoffs. These “swing” businesses spend more money to recoup the lost talent and, averaged, have saved nothing. And this behavior doesn’t factor in the cost to the people impacted, either. My friend and colleague Lisa Jackson has said it as well as it could be said, so I will relinquish the blog mike to her, and ask that you read Lisa’s posting.

Find her at http://blog.jacksonandschmidt.com.  I’m sure she would welcome comments as much as I would.

I noticed something in the room that was palpable.

The capabilities demonstrated were solid, impressive, and the presentation (and presenter) good. Yet, en masse- the audience fell into a couple camps with a pretty wide berth between them. The passionate and wonderful geeks who shared vocabulary, and the rest of the room. Mike, our passionate leader, made a good effort to translate to the nontechnical folk in the room, but it didn’t work. The tools work great and are at the beginning of what will fast unfold in the open source world of Java, but the talking about the tool…

The trainers in the room were lost when the technical vocabulary overwhelmed. Connected, interested, giving up a night with their families committed to bringing collaborative virtual training to their organizations, but definitely not tracking the vocabulary. The programmers get it. Use it. Adapt it.

I loved the conversation and watched the respect and genuine attempts to bridge the gap, but they really do speak 2 different languages. They can connect, but it’s with effort.

At least that’s what I noticed. What can we do to better translate so that business really can build the kind of affordable and triumphant virtual team work and training environments that are available? I know at GroupONE Solutions we are  moving more of our collaboration and virtual team training to Just-In-Time modules that can be team train or self-paced, synch or asynch. I’ve wanted to do this for years, but customers have still been  committed to classroom training. As more teams become virtual and geographically dispersed, as travel budgets stay tight, and as onboarding happens through rolling entry…. the time has come for virtual training to be another equally viable option.

It seems to me it’s also time to up the design and engagement quality of much self-paced online instruction. The tools are here, including Sun’s Project Darkstar and Project Sun and others. But will nontechnical users easily migrate into the virtual world? Didn’t see it in that room tonight. It’s too bad, because it’s easier to use than ever.

What do you think? Do you agree that there remains a digital divide within the computer-savvy population? Developers and nondevelopers? Geoffrey Moore nailed it when he wrote Crossing the Chasm. There is a huge gap between early adopters and early majority users who are progressive but more cautious.

What I saw tonight, though, was a little different. I saw an invitation to dialogue and partner, on both sides. But at least some of the nontechnical audience members who most want and need simple and engaging virtual training solutions got lost in the vocabulary.

I got lost in the vocabulary, and I’m more familiar with the virtual world and collaborative software space.

What do you think? How do we bridge that gap? I ask because I’m curious, because I know a whole lot of people in that room want to find ways to work together, and because, honestly, I want to make sure any content conversion I do with GroupONE’s virtual work training and other solutions meets the needs of all who need it.

It’s exciting stuff… if only it weren’t so hard to teach us old dogs new tricks….

As a teacher, practitioner, and facilitator of collaboration, I vibrate with excitement while shivering in worry.

We can do this. We are smart when we bother to be. The Cabinet being created and huddling in Chicago, preparing to break into fast action in DC is being compared to Lincoln’s Team of Rivals (a brilliant read by historian Doris Kearns) while hands wring or clap that the team has a ring of retro 90’s Clinton days. That’s not my worry, and here’s why….

First, whether it’s for the US Cabinet or hiring the best branding team, if you want the best and brightest, you find them. If you’re seeking smart experience with aligned commitment to the objective, you find them and hire them. If it provokes the media and pundits, reassure them by reminding them of what you know…. that you are setting not only the agenda, but the tone of the team dynamic. That people can rise above their own agenda for the greater good, and be better people with a wiser agenda in the end as well. In other words, people can collaborate better than they ever have, and for reasons bigger than WIIFM.

So now you have smart, experienced, committed, competent people embarking on a path that has never been travelled. You are forging a path together, smart and, I hope, humble enough to know that there is no time or room for isolationist action, polarizing politics, ego grabs, or stubborn insistence on holding on to one opinion when many are being offered for consideration. This is an invitation for not only critical advisers to the President, but for all of us in our own work and challenges and lives.

We are being invited into a higher order of caring and commitment and responsibility to be part of the solution, not the problem. We are being asked to stop standing by and waiting for someone else to do something for us.

I know – from over a quarter century of professional work facilitating collaboration and from twice that of living my life – that the end result of authentic joining together to think and act is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. I have success story after success story, and a few disappointments and abject failures ready to give testimony to the Power of Collaboration.

We can do this. The Administration can do this. The Nation can do this. Possibly, if we really commit to this, we can beat all forecasts and odds and, even successful examples from history. Miracles happen every day when minds join, wisdom speaks, and hearts align. Actions follow.

Extreme opinions do not need to derail this overriding commitment to building a pathway back to the United States as global leader and prosperous nation. America is burying labels that don’t allow for crossing borders. We must collaborate across the distance of difference, beliefs, habits, perspectives.

So I don’t worry about too many Clinton administrators or the size of the challenge before us. My life exudes the power of collaboration even while I am severely impacted by the current global financial crisis.

Rather, I worry that fear will short circuit patience, and that strong opinion unexamined will hide the best integral solutions. I ask that I, you, and American leaders actively explore together the best routes to build our future together the fastest without disregarding risk, most innovative after reasonable examination, and as fairly as possible.

HIRING: A team of rivals committed to lead with a visionary executive fully committed to the United States being a healthy and contributing global citizen. Lots of room for strength and power and savvy and brilliance and advocacy. Much need for inquiry and What If’s and wisdom unfolding integral and synergistic solutions.

In other words, dialogue and collaboration that is so important it cannot fail.

Are you ready to be a full collaborator – beyond your labor-management views? your socio-economic perspective? Your “job status”? your comfort zone? Your zebras-are-better-than walruses bias?

Am I? Yup!!! I’m all in….

Soon after the election I caught a commit made by Whoopie Goldberg, where she said something about feeling like she fully “belonged” here as an American citizen for the first time. That she could finally put down her suitcase. Her comment / commitment resounded inside me with familiar but as yet inarticulate feelings. I, too, feel like a committed patriot moving past history and hurt and fury, settling in for the long haul as an activist American again. Can’t say worry has fully disappeared, or that I am blind to all the work left to be done – from the obvious to the irony of Proposition 8 on the same day we elected our first black president.

Always hopeful and sometimes frustrated, frequently worried and occasionally overwhelmed, but in. Fully in.

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