What is your Big RE?

What is your Big RE?

We have spent the last couple of years in an environment of deep disruption and uncertainty. Now, we are living in a revolutionary time. A time that surrounds us with change, transformation, and all the REs.

Your opportunity is now!

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5 Tips to Thrive in Chaos (or What Good Is Vision When You’re up to Your A** in Alligators?)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWHpTQc-nhM[/youtube]

I knew there’d be pushback the minute I dubbed vision the #1 leadership characteristic.

“Get real,” several readers e-mailed. It reminded me of the cartoon a colleague once gave me, bearing the caption: “When you’re up to your a** in alligators, it’s hard to remember your goal was to drain the swamp.”

In a time of economic chaos, when many people are desperately trying to keep those writhing reptiles from nipping off their knees, lofty vision talk sounds unrealistic.

It’s difficult to keep your eyes on the prize, your focus on the vision, your hand steady to the wheel when the assumptions you thought were well grounded turn out to be quicksand. But a counterintuitive skill that can help you thrive in times of change and disruption is to embrace chaos as opportunity…

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5 Tips to Carpe the Chaos and Thrive

NAFE, the National Association of Female Executives asked me to write a “Five Tips” article for their latest newsletter.

I chose to write about 5 tips to use chaos as opportunity, or as I’ve put it in No No Excuses power tool #5, Carpe the Chaos. I had recently spoken on this topic to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Women’s Roundtable and the International Museum of Women. In my experience as a leader, it has been a very useful concept that got me through tough times when many people thought there was no way to succeed.

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The 7 C’s of Why We Must Embrace Controversy to Change the World

I have the pleasure of speaking to each “class” of Progressive Women’s Voices, an exciting program of the Women’s Media Center, where I serve on the board. This started during the first class two years ago when I was asked about the lessons I learned leading a social movement where I worked a great deal with the media and messages as vehicles of social change. My comments have evolved over time from the conversations I’ve had with PWV participants and Heartfeldt Politics readers. So as I prepared today to speak to the final 2009 class tomorrow evening, I decided to share the latest iteration here on my blog. Please let me know your thoughts.

The angry, gunslinging, mobs opposing President Obama’s healthcare plan at town halls have created quite a stir. Screaming confrontations aren’t just great political theater that captures media attention, did you know they literally make your blood pressure rise and cause other involuntary physical anxiety-fear-pain-fight-flight reactions?

If you’re a live-and-let-live sort of person, as most Americans are, your first reaction to public controversy might be a racing heartbeat, but it won’t be long before you’ll probably want to race away. We have millennia of rape and pillage warnings in our brains, after all. Who needs it?

Well, actually you do if you’re interested in getting health reform in our time, or if you’re advancing any personal or organizational mission that you care about through the democratic process. Your voice is essential.

Public disruptions succeed not because they are necessarily proposing valid points of view, but for two other reasons:

  • The people are organized, passionate, and persistent. They know that if they can cause enough discomfort, the rest of us will probably back away, go silent, and leave the field to them.
  • They take charge of the conversation, frame the issue as they see it, and change the terms of the debate.

Let’s look deeper at these two dynamics.

With regard to public discourse: You can’t change eggs into omelets without breaking them. It’s not surprising that change will always upset some people. That causes controversy. It’s just the nature of the beasts social change movements have to dance with. As Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the former Surgeon General who was pushed out of her job when she said controversial things about the positive value of masturbation, told me one time, “When you are dancing with the bear, you don’t get to sit down until he’s ready.”

Since we can’t avoid controversy when we’re changing the world, we have to learn to love it, embrace it, not back away but rather use the energy to advance our cause.

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MESSAGE TO OBAMA PART 2: CHANGE YOUR VIEW TO “OBAMA FOR WOMEN”

In the first post on “Message to Obama: Change Your View to Obama for Women“, I made clear that I’ll vote for Obama, but the fervor with which I and many other women work for his election will be determined by his actions going forward. As one former Clinton activist said, “women aren’t marginal; we’re the key”. John Kerry took women’s votes for granted, and won only 51% of women’s votes in 2004. That’s several points too low to create a gender gap capable of propelling any Democratic presidential candidate to victory.

Since I wrote that post, Obama’s tidy double digit lead over John McCain evaporated to a measly 3%, a statistical dead heat. This shift was brought about in no small part by Obama’s clumsy attempts to tack to the presumed center on core issues like wiretapping and abortion ostensibly to broaden his base, but instead turning off the passionately progressive grassroots groundswell that brought him to where he is. And remember–Republicans vote for their candidate come hell or high water while Democrats argue the issues, and that’s how we all too often lose elections.

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