Month: July 2006

Life Transitions

An important milestone was breached for a dear friend of mine on 30 June 2006. This was her last day in the office as Associate Dean and it marked the end of an accomplishment-filled 30-year career in academe. Yes, she retire — and with all the honor and distinction she so rightfully deserved.

But she didn’t get any from me, at least not in some openly communicated form. In fact, this is the first time I have acknowledged it publicly. And this behavior on my part is not the only instance. So far this year three close colleagues have either retired or significantly changed their lifestyle through post-retirement decisions. I really haven’t handled any of them very graciously.

Over the years I have coached countless numbers of people representing a wide range of principles, achievements, and ambitions to get from where they are into career spaces they wanted to explore. This included helping several with their transitions into retirement. In looking back, though, I realize that with only rare exception, contact with them is lost after they retire. They went on and I went on and we went in different directions. It seemed natural enough – things DO change and life DOES play out differently for each of us. They were busy with grandchildren and family, avocations and second careers, volunteer projects and philanthropies, entertainment and travel: the typical, “things to do, places to go, and people to see.” We were not in the same spaces; and that was OK.

But that was then and this is now. These three retirement-related changes have me feeling antsy and unsettled. As is typical for retirements, the long-time working relationships I enjoyed beforehand were disrupted and the career and profession-related agenda “platforms” that framed conversations prior to retirement disappeared. This is nothing new. In the past I would attend the retirement parties of those I coached, acknowledge their achievements, and we would go our separate ways. But not in these instances – we are simply going our separate ways without even a whimper. Why?

Let’s see now, one is 53, another is 58, the third is 57, and – well – I am 56! Wait a minute, these are my peers! This could be MY retirement! This cannot be! I am not ready to retire. Maybe the coach needs a coach!

No, I am not ready to retire. But the retirement transitions of my good friends and former colleagues raise a very important question for me that, apparently, I have not given due consideration: what’s next, Mr. Bosserman? So, THAT’S what this is all about.

Life is fleeting regardless of genetics, health, and life circumstances. The only reality is that we will not get out of this world alive. My dad died of a heart attack when he was my age. My brother has survived heart attacks and surgeries and is soon to be 75. Our mother lived to be 86 and her mother made it to 90. The truth for me is somewhere between here and there with the only certainty being what’s here, now.

Life is about flow across time horizons we impose for our own sense of control. For us to gain perspective, we describe the current periods in which we live based on what we left behind in earlier phases and where we are going in subsequent stages. While we may convince ourselves that we have control over these transitions, we don’t really have all that much. However, we can choose responses to how we feel about where we are, what we are doing, and what we are considering. And this is the basis for as much management over change as one can muster.

My friends’ retirements cause me to re-examine how I’m feeling about what’s going on for me. This year marks my 20th year of self-employment. These two decades afforded me the opportunity to experience everything that makes strategic framing and organization design such a challenging and rewarding professional area of focus. Most of all it put me in touch with all manner of people, their purposes, principles, and intentions, and the organization relationships they established to carry out their hopes and dreams. It is and it was a GREAT career choice!

While I can argue that there is certainly more to be done in this field and more that I can contribute, my creative spirit is drawn elsewhere. During much of my professional life I have been intrigued by the combination of graphics and the written word to communicate complex ideas and concepts through a universal language of symbols and verbiage. Developing my skills at tapping the power these media hold and applying it more fully for the benefit of others is the next phase of my professional interest and endeavor.

Over the years, I have learned much about people and organized behavior, leadership, and the impact of information and communication technologies on how people do what they do more effectively and efficiently. Using these media to convey that learning to others so they can better do what they do is a legacy worth leaving. And maybe that’s what this is REALLY about – leaving something behind that helps others fulfill their lives. There is a strong tie between legacy-leaving and successful transitions. After all it is difficult to give up one for another unless this is an alternative worth choosing.

So, Marilyn, Bob, and Ross you are ALWAYS a part of my life and you are STILL shaping what I’m doing by doing what you are doing. Communicating through writing and graphics – how IS this going to play out? There is this blog; there is a book with Ed Hiler; there is a book with my brother; there are countless emails and web postings. The list goes on and on. Watch out; I may even write about you 😉 I can think of no one more deserving than you to have the best that can be said about you said the best way it can be said. Hopefully, I am a match for the occasion!

Originally posted to New Media Explorer by Steve Bosserman on Sunday, July 9, 2006

Declaring Independence

Last week when I was visiting friends in a small, rural German village, my host’s eighteen year-old daughter, Lara, asked if I knew the “Declaration of Independence.” “Of course,” I quickly stated while punctuating that harrumph with the added self-assuring thought to myself, “What American doesn’t know the Declaration of Independence.” “We’re studying it in school,” she added. “Our teacher is making us memorize the introduction. Why do we have to do that? It’s two-hundred thirty years old. This is stupid!” Silence. Hmmm. She asked me if I REALLY know it, not if I knew about it! “Do you know it from heart – can you say it right now?” I inquired incredulously. Without a moment’s hesitation she blurted out the nearly 300 words in perfectly elocuted, well-delivered English. As she is reciting I am wondering, how many American kids her age can do this? My two at home are fourteen and fifteen and they don’t have a clue! I want to think they are typical middle school / high school kids, so – hypothesizing from and “n” of two – American kids get a big “F” for failure on this one. But what about the larger question she asked, “Why do we have to do that?” that is the real bugaboo. Why, indeed.

The trite answer is, “use it or lose it.” Urban legend has it that many of the signers of the “Declaration of Independence” came to a bad end due to their association with that act. While Snopes argues that many of these legends are exactly that, fabrications, checking world history, liberty does come at a price and freedom when taken for granted is lost. The common thread through the rise and fall of liberty and freedom is the ascent or descent of political and economic systems within a governmental jurisdiction. Clearly, the trajectory is an arc and what goes up must come down. Nothing stays the same; the only constant is change; and as an old “bull of the woods” boss of mine used to say, “The only thing that runs itself, runs downhill.”

In The New York Times, June 27, 2006 edition, Op-Ed Columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof wrote an editorial entitled, Chinese Medicine for American Schools. Dateline: Shanghai, Kristof writes:

But the investments in China’s modernization that are most impressive of all are in human capital. The blunt fact is that many young Chinese in cities like Shanghai or Beijing get a better elementary and high school education than Americans do. That’s a reality that should embarrass us and stir us to seek lessons from China.

And he concludes with the following:

During the Qing Dynasty that ended in 1912, China was slow to learn lessons from abroad and adjust its curriculum, and it paid the price in its inability to compete with Western powers. These days, the tables are turned, and now we Americans need to learn from China.

China, on the ascent, is blocking the Internet from its citizens…

…and the citizens are fighting it.

The U.S., on the descent, is spying on its citizens…

…and we do what?

When the Declaration of Independence was enacted in 1776 Great Britain was drawing closer to the apogee of its strength as the greatest political and economic power on earth. While the hard-fought independence of the American colonies did not compromise Great Britain’s destiny as a world super power, it did send a signal that despite such greatness nothing lasts forever. Others will challenge what is taken for granted. And as was the case with the former American colonies, the United States eventually supplanted Britain as a stronger powerhouse on the world stage.

Below are the “charges” brought against King George II – deemed by the colonists who revolted, “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.”

The United States Declaration of Independence, continued:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

So, who’s going up and who’s coming down make all the difference. Based on who is affronted by such conditions and the context in which they live their lives, people choose to either accept those conditions or challenge them. It is in making this choice that the principles defining the space where liberty and freedom prevail are brought to the forefront, given true meaning, and set the stage for a just civilization to progress. The very conditions imposed by an unjust government from which the colonists declared their independence now perpetrates those same conditions on its citizens and others. What some 230 years ago was unacceptable is now relegated to the ranks of the routine. We are quickly forgetting why our forefathers took the stand they did. But it won’t take others elsewhere to pick up the banner from us. Liberty, freedom, and justice that underpin them, live on forever! And that, my friends, is why we read and memorize the Declaration of Independence!

Originally posted to New Media Explorer by Steve Bosserman on Tuesday, July 4, 2006