During a recent visit to Quebec City, we went to the exposition on the Titanic. It was an incredible walk back in time. From the stories of the ship’s creators to those of its passengers, one couldn’t help but be moved by the excitement and grandeur of this maiden voyage and its tragic ending.

It led me to wonder about all the decisions that resulted in this ship, believed to be unsinkable, being broken in two and taking a dive for the ocean floor, leaving the 2,000 some passengers in its wake. And I realized that those decisions were made much like decisions made all the time, every day.

In the case of the Titanic, the focus was entirely on the gains this magnificent ship could achieve for the Star Line Company. Whether we focus on potential gains or losses determines how we deal with risk.

For example, if a doctor tells a patient they are going to die, they will take greater risks with treatments. They feel they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. On the other hand, if the doctor tells the patient they have a certain number of days to live, they are more risk averse. They frame their decisions around the days of life they could lose.

Oddly, the primary factor in decisions concerning the design and operation of this new ship was the perceived absence of even the usual risks. Standard practices, warnings and common sense were ignored.

In 1912, the Titanic was the world’s largest, fastest, safest and most luxurious ship, and the maiden voyage was meant to prove it. Confidence was in abundance as the design included 16 water-tight compartments, leading to the belief that the ship was unsinkable. Star Line management would not conceive of a situation where so many of the compartments would be flooded as to cause the sinking of its newest ship.

The high degree of confidence in the Titanic led to many out-of-the-norm behaviors. The designer was overruled on two critical matters. One, the water-tight compartments should have extended all the way up through the ship. However, that would have eliminated some living space.

The same type of rationale was used when it came to not including enough lifeboats for all the passengers. The decks, it was decided, would be too cluttered. These matters rested on one key factor: how conducive were they to the vision of making Star Line the leader in luxury experience and accommodations.

In addition, the lookouts stationed in the crows nest were without binoculars. In the hustle and bustle visual aids were forgotten or misplaced. No one seemed too concerned.

Ice warnings from three other ships were ignored. This is a hard one to understand. It was as if, like with youth, there was this sense of being invincible. The Titanic steamed ahead at full speed with the intent to surprise and impress with an early arrival in New York.

Without binoculars, the iceberg was sighted without much time to respond. And despite the quick reaction, the ship was clipping along at such a fast pace that it was almost impossible to safely clear the iceberg. Though the Titanic was saved from a head on collision, skimming within inches of the icy structure, below the surface the berg’s protrusions sliced into its side.

It seems all the world bought into the belief that the Titanic was this unsinkable wonder. For even the captain of the Californian, a ship just ahead of the Titanic that had sent the last iceberg warning, ignored the distress flares sent up. He figured Titanic was enjoying a bit of celebration.

More astounding was the unfailing belief of a passenger as she watched the ship on its descent from a lifeboat. “The first wish on the part of all was to stay near the Titanic. We all felt safer near the ship. Surely such a vessel could not sink,” recalled 40-year-old Elizabeth Shutes.

Like in the launching of the Shuttle Challenger, facts and experts were ignored. Appropriate questions were not asked and important input was simply dismissed. The decision-makers were so determined, it was as if they thought they could will success. Instead, they met with disaster.

It happens every day in business boardrooms and on manufacturing floors. Politics, influencing skills, position and intimidation get in the way of good decisions. Framing around gains or losses plays with our perceptions, and in some cases blinds us to balanced decision-making. Perhaps the error of our ways goes unnoticed; the consequences are not always as visible, nor as painful as our historic tragedies. Costly, nonetheless, they are.

Anita Ancel is President of Ancelary Group, a Vermont firm that helps executives and their teams develop attitudes and habits for ongoing success.

It was a blustery, winter day, much like those we are all too familiar with in Vermont. But no one was cold, even though they were all outside. I suppose they were hot with excitement, or perhaps fear.

You could hear a father yelling to his son, “Go get your mother, she’ll never have another chance to see anything like this.”

The day was December 9, 1914. The man was the owner of the largest laboratory in the world. His name is a familiar one: Thomas Edison. At age 67, he was watching his research complex go up in flames. All but a few buildings of the Edison Industries burned to the ground that day.

The losses exceeded $2 million. He had some insurance; less than $300 worth though. The building was made of concrete and in those days it was believed fire could not destroy such a structure. That belief couldn’t have been more wrong.

So how do you think our “light up the world” guy reacted? Remember he’s 67; he’d stuck it out through thousands and thousands of attempts (or some might say, mistakes) to succeed in developing the light bulb. How would you react if you showed up at work to find the place lost to fire? Imagine what would be happening in the next few days… the next weeks.

Edison didn’t waste much time wallowing in his sorrow. Nor did he let the expense of his losses drown him in pity or despair. No, it was quite a different reaction.

The next morning he returned to where his life’s work had been housed. While the fire had been brought under control through the night, all that remained were a couple of buildings and smoldering rubble. Edison stood there, looking over his losses. We don’t need to guess what his thoughts were, for he proclaimed:

“There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.”

And start anew he and his team did, as if there was no time to waste. In just three weeks, Edison Industries introduced the world to a new and better phonograph.

Edison could have been a best selling author with a book on how to move beyond disaster. An appropriate title could’ve been: Don’t Sweat the Big Stuff.

Pretty much, Edison lived his life that way. He didn’t get more squeamish or weak-kneed as he aged. So often, we seem to tire of dealing with even the smaller, everyday adversities as our years accumulate. Not Edison, he kept a strong, youthful and atypical ambitious attitude

His perspectives were not the norm. For example, he never claimed to be an inventor despite his more than one thousand patents. Once when the governor of North Carolina complimented him on his inventiveness, he declared he was not a great inventor. His only claim to an original invention was the phonograph.

He explained all the ideas were not original to him. Instead he referred to himself as a sponge, soaking up ideas any where he could. Those with whom the ideas originated just never developed them. So he’d take them, do a little tweaking and improve them to a point of having value.

How is it that Edison worked his way through about 10,000 attempts to create the light bulb? How many goals have you ever pursued with such persistence? How about your company?

How could he move so many ideas to fruition when those with the actual concept took them no where? How many times have you or a friend had an idea only to see someone else develop it?

Why is it there are a few like Edison who don’t let even the big stuff get in their way, and then there is the majority, who often let even the little stuff stop them?

It’s time for the heart to heart, a look inside, some deep reflection. Can you honestly say you have a habit of pulling yourself up, getting on with life and business no matter the circumstances?

I can hear the excuses now. There’s always a reason why the other guy or gal can move on, but you can’t. There was something special about Edison’s situation, you’re so sure. There’s a piece of the story missing, some advantage or benefit that wasn’t mentioned.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. No special circumstance in this case, just a special person. Edison just didn’t believe in stopping. He didn’t see failure and disaster in the same way as others. Perhaps he didn’t see them at all.

So let’s cop ourselves an Edison attitude, and never acknowledge obstacles in the average way again. Let’s commit to not sweating the big stuff, and moving on.

Anita Ancel is President of Ancelary Group, a Vermont firm that helps executives and their teams develop attitudes and habits for ongoing success.

He was born in 1955, raised by adoptive parents in Silicon Valley and is among the top topics Googled today. A college dropout, he was a multi-millionaire before the age of 30. He was forced out of the company he started, only to return to become CEO after his second start-up was purchased by the first. And through the sale of yet another company, he became the largest single stock holder of Disney.

The ups and downs of business were accompanied by a few in his life. He’s survived pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. As a leader, he has as much to offer about life as he does about business. For the two are not separate in his mind.

Reports of the younger Steve Jobs would not include him in the same sentence as a reference to leadership. Seems he was autocratic and a bit cocky. On the contrary, interviews with Apple’s CEO of the last couple of years are rich in insights for happiness and success.

On the business side, focus has been critical. Jobs will tell you it is not about just saying “yes” to one thing, but rather “no” to hundred great ideas. Without discipline in focus, the resources and energy aren’t available to get out in front in a competitive market.

Jobs understands people, the right people, are key, as is delegation and decision-making. “When you hire really good people you have to give them a piece of the business and let them run with it,” he told Fortune magazine. But in doing so, he wants them to make as good or better decisions than himself, so having them up to speed on all parts of the business is crucial. There are no silos for Jobs.

But how does he decide on the right people? Competence is a given, and beyond that the “real issue” is will they fall in love with Apple. This is where life and business blend. It’s all about passion and why an applicant would want to join the team.

This is in total alignment with Jobs approach to life. “I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers,” he said.

He urges people to not settle, but rather keep looking. With work being such a large portion of life, he believes the only way to do really good work is to love what you do.

Living that belief, Jobs says he looks himself in the mirror everyday and asks: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? Whenever the answer has been ‘NO’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

What would you answer your Self in the mirror? Does passion drive you to work every morning? Or are you among those who believe you will be happier when you don’t have to work any more? Perhaps there are too many years before retirement, so you dream of winning the lottery so you can quit.

That’s exactly what one Iowa firefighter did a couple decades ago, as reported in the Des Moines newspaper. With the assurance of a check much larger than his current paycheck, he quit. He bought cars, vacationed and just lived the good life. Then, with the lottery money still coming in, he applied for his job again.

You see he missed the job and all that it meant. What he discovered was that it wasn’t just about the paycheck. Like Jobs, he really loved his job.

As he discovered, and Jobs professes, loving what you do is powerfully fulfilling. And the cliché version of the good life is not dream worthy. This is not a new notion, just a good one to revisit from time to time. French author Albert Camus summed it up rather well many, many years ago:

“Without work all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless life stifles and dies.”

Anita Ancel is President of Ancelary Group, a Vermont firm that helps executives and their teams develop attitudes and habits for ongoing success.

Intuitively it makes sense that transparency with employees allows for greater engagement and more lucrative financial outcomes. Leaders who are transparent evoke trust and a higher level of loyalty.

That newspaper turnaround that I mentioned a few weeks back was accomplished by opening the books and sharing financial results on a monthly basis. It empowered employees to participate in developing new and better processes and products.

I didn’t really think about transparency as putting the employee first, but that’s exactly what it does. And when you take care of the employee, they in turn feel compelled to take care of the customer.

In the latest Inc. magazine, Matt Blumberg, CEO and chairman of the New York company Return Path, talks about transparency and how he has ranked the shareholder behind the customer, who comes after the employee.

Shortly after hiring a Vice President of People to formalize and preserve the company’s culture, Blumberg’s philosophy of transparency and employees first was put to the royal business test. He and his team had decided to sell off part of the company, and proceeded to struggle with what to tell the staff.

The top team was divided, debating about impact from competitors and clients, potential workplace anxiety and talent flight, as well as the trust factor. Blumberg resorted to calling his executive coach, who was able to help him figure out how to maintain alignment with the company’s values and culture. Employees heard it first hand from Blumberg.

In the end, a sale didn’t take place. That portion of the business was broken off into a separate entity, and all continue to prosper.

Prosper and transparency are heard in conjunction more and more. Case in point, the man who wrote the book, Employees First, Customers Second, heads up the fastest growing and most profitable global IT services company. Business Week lists it as one of the 20 most influential companies in the world.

CEO Vineet Nayar, flipped the org chart upside down and made management accountable to HCL Tech’s 57,000 employees five years ago. It’s not just lip service, either. Performance appraisals of all HCL senior managers are posted on the company’s intranet. You can’t get more transparent than that.

Nayar is all about embracing change. He says Gen Y will require high transparency in business. After all it is the generation that grew up in the Facebook community, where they share all.

His implementation strategy incorporates what has been on the business platform for sometime, at least in discussion. It includes creating urgency, sharing the current state so employees can see future possibilities, building trust through transparent communication, nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset, and decentralizing decision-making.

In addition, he transfers the ownership of change to employees. That pretty much gives them license to do some of the driving, or to take the lead so to speak.

Change is known as The New Normal at HCL. Employees are put front and center. You can see for yourself at Unstructure.org, where videos from the company’s conference can be seen.

The opening video is all about kids’ perspectives. And from their mouths, we can hear how change is, indeed, the new normal. Internet is listed among the planets, and as for marriage, the chapel will be left behind for a Facebook ceremony.

Why not follow Nayar’s lead and welcome some of this change inside the walls of our business? There have been enough success stories to show it works. It’s time to believe and get on with empowering employees.
Anita Ancel is President of Ancelary Group, a Vermont firm that helps executives and their teams develop attitudes and habits for ongoing success.

I spent a couple of days last week pedaling my services at a business expo here in Vermont. I wasn’t the only one offering leadership development and coaching. So as good marketing would have you do, I gathered the data on ROI and bottom line impact of my services.

Unfortunately it wasn’t until this week that I read about the “leadership shortage,” as reported by bloggers Sue Ashford and Scott DeRue on the Harvard Business Review site, blogs.hbr.org.

Here are the facts, according to them: 60 percent of companies are facing a leadership talent shortage and another 31 percent expect the shortfall to interfere with performance.
This would lead one to believe leadership development is in high demand, right? Our bloggers tell us an estimated $12 billion was spent last year on said development, which amounted to just under a quarter of the budget allotted for all training and development.

(So I’m sitting here scratching my head, thinking this lack of response is a shortage of leadership in and of itself.)

Ashford and DeRue go on to propose what’s needed to grow new talent. I share some of their views, as do others. Our bloggers speak mostly to cultural values that will allow for the growth of leaders. Keeping the approach simple, they advocate for learning from real life, going beyond skills and knowledge to establish leadership principles, rewarding for growing leaders, and realizing leaders are needed at all levels.

There’s nothing new here, and yet somehow the validity of these notions have not elevated them to a level of common beliefs and practices in business. (Again, I’m puzzling over the current ‘leadership.’)

Leadership comes from within, and thus development rather than training is appropriate. More than general principles, a leader needs to be clear about their personal values. Or in the words of Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, it’s about knowing what you stand for, as an individual. That’s what attracts followers, whether loyal customers or employees, he adds.

According to Peter NG Kok Sung, chief investment officer for the government of Singapore and speaker on “The Contemplative Executive,” the first challenge in achieving this clarity is that of stepping back from the “busyness of business.” An advocate of John Main’s teaching on meditation, Kok Sung quotes Main on the high pressure world of today’s executive: “It’s as though we were rushing through our lives, and in our hearts there is the flame of a candle. Because we are moving at such high speed, this essential interior flame is always on the point of going out.”

Main says a leader must stop being a “busy body,” become quiet, to get in touch with what Jack Welch, former General Electric CEO, called the over-arching quality of a leader, that of authenticity or one’s humanity. Welch further explained it is who we are in our soul.

If today’s executives don’t get it, and aren’t slowing down enough to respond to the shortage they themselves have identified, how will they allow for the development of new leaders? How will they go beyond surface training to a deeper level, one that develops individuals into the leader within, to stand strong in who they are at their core?

Perhaps it would be helpful to contemplate the words of a recognized and successful leader as written in his dying days. Kok Sung relates what he read in Chasing Daylight, a book by the former CEO of KPMG, Eugene Kelly. In his last 100 days, as brain cancer closed in on him, he shares what he learned about clarity and simplicity:

“I had long believed that a successful business person could, if so inclined, live a spiritual life. And to do so it wasn’t necessary to quit the boardroom, chuck it all, and live in an ashram, as if only a physical departure that dramatic would confirm a depth of feeling about larger issues, including one’s soul.

After the diagnosis of my illness, I still believed that. But I also discovered depths to which a business person rarely goes. I learned how worthwhile it was to visit there, sooner rather than later, because it may bring one greater success as a business person and as a human being. You can call what I went through a spiritual journey, a journey of the soul. A journey that allowed me to experience what was there all along but had been hidden, thanks to the distractions of the world.”

Leadership and its development should not be allowed to be lost in the hustle and bustle of the routines of daily business. New leaders, not a crisis, should be the making of the current leadership.

Anita Ancel is President of Ancelary Group, a Vermont firm that helps executives and their teams develop attitudes and habits for ongoing success.