Musings on a Monday Morning from Mike Mullin…
The weekly Newsletter of Without A Vision Consultancy LLC
Want this in your inbox? Subscribe to the newsletter.
October 28, 2019 – By the end of this week it will be November! | Monday Morning Musings
Good morning! It’s an eventful week with the Christian world celebrating three (3) of its holiest days — and then we have the end of Daylight Saving Time. I love this time of year when the rich subtle purples, burgundys, and browns quietly but powerfully assume center stage in the forests. In some cases the warmth of these colors will last all winter — to be paired with boeuf burguignon and a luscious, well-aged, flavourful Cabernet.
- Is your vision a shared vision? If not, of what good is it beyond a daydream?
- A shared vision will transform an organization into being better, stronger, healthier, happier, more profitable.
- Or, in the case of a non-profit, more focused on mission, more effective.
- In the October 21st Wall Street Journal there is a fascinating article, “The Tricky Math in Valuing Experiences.”
- The writer (McAllister) does a good job of explaining the dilemma of thing vs. experience on a limited budget (Unlimited budget? You can have both/ all!).
- I think I was a millennial before they invented the term since I generally have gone for experiences over goods, though each has been necessarily rationed.
- Organized, formal religion continues on a downward spiral (Lovett).
- Perhaps no surprise, but when the data support your anecdotal hunches you tend to move beyond fake news to something more reliable.
- Less than half of us (~45%) attend some kind of formal church (synagogue, mosque, chapel, Etc.) at least once a month, down from ~52% ten years ago.
- The fastest-growing category of religion is none, now up to ~25% compared to ~17% ten years ago.
- With marriages and other relationships so challenging and difficult why do so many people attempt them?
- Pixar goes all-in on one project at a time: “We have realized that having lower standards for something is bad for your soul. Taking the right risks and accepting that bold innovative ideas require a tolerance for uncertainty are central to the whole culture. Talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to re cover when failures occur.” (Emphasis added — Pixar/ Catmull/ Keller & Schaninger, 2019)
The Maple Treeby Gene McCarthyThe maple tree that nightWithout a wind or rainLet go its leavesBecause its time had come.Brown veined, spotted,Like old hands, fluttering in blessings,They fell upon my headAnd shoulders, and thenDown to the quiet at my feet.I stood, and stoodUntil the tree was bareAnd have told no oneBut you that I was there.
| By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist Nobody likes admitting error, and the bigger the error, the harder it is to admit. Conceding that you got a fact wrong or made a bad prediction is one thing, although some (many) people can’t even do that. What’s really hard to do, however, is to admit error when doing so calls into question your character, your judgment or your whole worldview. You may think I’m talking about politics, and I will be in a minute. But refusal to admit error happens in many areas of human endeavor. When Bloomberg contacted economists who signed an open letter declaring that Ben Bernanke’s policies would produce runaway inflation to ask why the inflation never materialized, not one of them would admit having been wrong, because that would have meant admitting that their model of how the economy works was way off base. Even hard science is plagued by the inability to admit error. The great physicist Max Planck famously declared that opponents of a new scientific truth are rarely persuaded — they just eventually die off. In fact, people find it so hard to admit to large errors that they often respond to failure by doubling down on their mistakes. Some World War I generals butchered their men with repeated frontal assaults on enemy trenches, in an apparent attempt to vindicate their initial stupidity. Students of business history talk about a phenomenon they call “escalation of commitment,” in which managers not only refuse to abandon failing strategies but dig in deeper, in an attempt to prove that they were right all along… |
What are you reading?It’s time, don’t you think? Know My Name, Miller, 2019When will you give yourself the greatest gift of all, the gift of time?Schedule a no-obligation, no-cost initial exploratory visit with Without a Vision Consultancy today.
Looking for help on your next capital campaign, leadership training, or any number of other services? Contact us today!
