Friedman, Seidman on Character & Connection

Here is an outstanding session from the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival where Dov Seidman and Tom Friedman discuss the importance of individual and corporate character in a connected world. I was fortunate to attend the first Aspen Institute Ideas Festival some years back where it seemed all the speakers touched on the issue of connection. In a future blog post, I plan to share some of my thoughts related to connection that I recorded in my personal journal following that event.

Tom Friedman, Dov Seidman: Need For “Sustainable Values”

Check out Tom Friedman’s column in today’s New York Times at this link. Friedman cites Dov Siedman’s belief that in an interconnected world we need “sustainable values” more than ever. I couldn’t agree more.  In past posts I’ve written about Dov, his book entitled How and LRN, the company he founded to promote principled leadership.  

In our work at E Pluribus Partners, we promote universal character values and virtue as essential for people to thrive, individually and collectively.  Our “Character > Connection > Thrive Model” (see below) lays out the rationale.  In a nutshell, individuals who believe and behave in ways that are consistent with Universal Character Values (also known as character strengths), create “Connection Cultures” that meet universal human needs to thrive.   You can learn more about Connection Cultures, Universal Character Strengths and Virtues by reading this free manifesto published by changethis.com entitled The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage.

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More Evidence: Trust and Connection=Life, Distrust and Isolation=Death

Trust increases when people feel a sense of connection to one another. Strength of connection and trust develop over the time.  This happens as people interact and get to know one another increasing each person’s credibility and reliability in the eyes of the other, and as intimacy develops. Several studies support that this connection that develops trust is the most or among the most significant factors affecting the performance of organizations.

Parker Palmer, the Quaker writer and educational thought leader, told me about the book entitled Trust in Schools by Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider. Bryk and Schneider found that far and away the most powerful factor affecting school improvement during the 1990’s in Chicago was “relational trust.” Money, governance, curriculum, etc. were nowhere close to affecting educational outcomes as compared to relational trust (Tony Bryk is now the president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.)

I learned about two additional studies related to connection and trust from the writings of Dov Seidman, the founder and CEO of LRN.

Closing the Reputation-Character Chasm

Frank Rich, The New York Times’ columnist, wrote in his column today that Tiger Woods should be the person of the year because so often we’ve been “spun silly” into believing that a leader or organization’s character is stellar only to discover it wasn’t.  Tiger, Enron, Eliot Spitzer and athletes on steroids are a few of the examples Rich sites.

Earlier I wrote about LRN’s Dov Seidman and his view (expressed in his book How) that in today’s connected and wired world it has become increasingly important for individuals and organizations to get their “hows” right.  In other words, it’s difficult to manage your public reputation these days so character matters more than ever.  Dov encourages organizations to out-behave the competition.  I couldn’t agree more.   (As an aside, reading the Times this morning I could see that the late Iranian cleric Ayatollah Montazeri was a fierce critic of Iranian hardliners because they were getting the “hows” wrong. Montazeri wrote “a political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate.”  Read more about Montazeri in his obituary at this link.)

No doubt, the connected world is improving transparency and rooting out the bad behavior of individuals, organizations and nations.  It provides another much needed check on power.

Last week while having lunch with Jay Morris, the head of Yale-New Haven Health System’s Center for Excellence, the topic of Tiger came up.  

Out-behave Your Competitors

John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, once said character is more important than reputation because reputation is who people think you are but character is who you really are.  Last night at a packed event in Manhattan I heard LRN’s Dov Seidman make the case that in a connected world “how” we do what we do is every bit as important as what we do.  In other words, with everyone able to blog, take pictures or shoot video of you on their phones then upload the content on the world wide web (that becomes easily accessible via Google), an organization’s character (or “how” an organization does what it does) has become much, much more important.   Dov went even further and said that wise organizations will out-behave their competitors to gain a competitive advantage.

Following are some points I wrote down during the discussion Dov Seidman had with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman:

Historically we never imputed character to an organization but in a flat, connected world we can.

Today you can’t manage your reputation as you could in the past. You must earn it.

New leaders know you can’t have power over people.  Today you can only have power through people.

Out-behave is not presently a word in the dictionary.  Dov encouraged the audience to help change that.

The paradox of success.  When you pursue success, happiness eludes you.  When you pursue significance, you discover happiness.

I’ve been working on an article about Wall Street entitled “Goldman Is Great, But Is It Good?”  The article explores what it would take to make a better, healthier, more effective Wall Street.  Many of Dov’s ideas about getting the “hows” right are germaine to Wall Street’s future.

What do you think?  Has the internet made corporate character more important?  Should organizations strive to out-behave their competitors?

Michael Lee Stallard speaks, teaches and writes about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation at leading organizations including Google, GE, NASA, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. Most recently, Michael and his colleague Jason Pankau filmed a 90-minute program for Linkage’s Thought Leaders Series that will be released in January of 2010. Michael wrote the guest editorial for Talent Management magazine’s January 2010 edition and last month his article on how the force of connection boosts productivity and innovation was featured as the lead article in the UK’s Developing HR Strategy Journal. Click on these links to learn more about Michael and Jason in the media and their speaking engagements.

LRN’s Dov Seidman: Inspiring Principled Performance

Thought leaders such as Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming and Martin Seligman have had a profound effect on entire industries.  In this and coming posts, I’d like to bring your attention to a few thought leaders I believe will have a profound effect on business in the years and decades to come.

Dov Seidman is the CEO of LRN.  I’m going to see The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman interview Dov this Sunday coming evening at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.    You can purchase tickets for the event and see a video of Charlie Rose interviewing Dov at this link.  I highly recommend that you take the time to watch the video and, if you live in the NYC area, to attend the lecture/interview.

Dov argues that in today’s more transparent, hyper-connected world, maintaining a stellar reputation is critical to success.  The days of The Music Man — who behaves badly and then moves to another locale where inhabitants are unaware of past bad behavior — are gone.  Dov encourages organizations to develop a self-governing culture that out-behaves the competition.  His company helps organizations do this by providing, communication, education, certification and registry capabilities.

When organizations develop principled performance, it results in powerful connections among employees and with customers.  These connections are critical to sustainable performance as I have pointed out in The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage, a free ebook published by changethis.com.

To learn more about Dov’s views, I highly recommend reading his excellent book entitled  How: Why How We Do Everything Means Everything…In Business (and in Life) and checking out articles at this link to LRN’s website.