Never, never, never, never give up

I thought about what to blog about. Never give up, my husband said. I thought he meant for me to not give up on coming up with a blog topic, so I thought some more. Maybe that guy throwing his shoes at George Bush, I said. That would be a good leadership blog. Sort of about what not to do. Don’t throw your shoes at the leader of the free world and all that. Try to keep control of yourself. Be emotionally aware and so forth. Be able to disconnect your hot buttons. Maintain your good reputation. Not prove to people that you are an idiot in ten small seconds. Five, maybe. Stay a bit under the radar if you’re having a non-emotionally-intelligent day. Leave your shoes at home.

Churchill Never give up, he said, and I realized that he meant for me to write a blog about that. About not giving up. But Winston Churchill had already said all there is to say about that, really. He had been very clear, when with his jowls trembling, he said it and emphasized it: “Never give up. Never, never, never, never give up.” He actually said it on more than one occasion, sometimes mixing it with another favorite mantra: “Never give in.” I think he meant it.

When you consider the times in which Winston Churchill wrote this, it is clear how powerful it was. People were thinking about giving up on a daily basis. Their social, political, economic, and geographical foundations seemed to be slipping away dramatically right under their very feet. The world as they knew it was unrecognizable. Bombs were dropping. People were dying. Buildings were falling. The fabric of society was peeling apart. I’ll bet for a few of them giving up seemed like a reasonable option. For some of them it may have seemed like they had no other option! And those were the very ones Churchill was talking to. He wanted them to keep that famous British stiff upper lip. He wanted them to keep the faith.

We still have Churchill’s words ringing in our ears. Most of us can remember them even though we weren’t alive to hear them. We’ve really never been a giving-up kind of a country, and that’s very good. It gives us a strong legacy to lean on in these difficult economic times. We need it. All of us do. And it’s our job as leaders to inspire our organizations, both professional and personal, to keep the faith. Never give up. Never, never, never, never give up. It creates a deeply held value for us that mandates a right way to do things.

And what was Churchill talking about not giving up to? Not giving in to? I think it was the evil of entropy. The notion that if you give up or give in for a moment things start slipping away and it’s hard to get them back. Giving up starts that insidious process. I realized that not giving up is the key to everything. Success in anything depends on not giving up. Weight loss. A wonderful marriage. Good parenting. Quitting smoking or drinking. Reaching a creative solution to a business problem. Winning a war. Retrieving a ruined reputation. Regaining health after a heart attack or amputation. Learning to play basketball or skateboard. Completing a dissertation. Anything we try to do, if we give up, it starts slipping back. That’s what Winston Churchill meant. Don’t let it start slipping away. Sometimes you can’t stop it once it starts.

Another famous shoe incident some of us remember: Nikita Khrushchev taking off his shoe and pounding it on the table of a summit of world leaders. All of the most powerful leaders in the world at the table, and in his feelings of anger and impotence he was unable to form words, so he took off his shoe and started pounding. Some of us feel like this right now, with our retirement, our health insurance, our Christmas vacations, and our bonuses slipping away. But we should never give up. It could be worse, no matter how bad it gets. A big part of what helps us conquer anything is just what Churchill said: not giving up. If you want to land on your feet, you can’t give up in the middle of the air.

It is part of the leader’s job to maintain hope, to inspire. Yes, we must be realistic, but realism should include a generous dose of optimism because we really are strong and smart, creative and caring. We are a great nation. We must never give up. Never, never, never, never give up.

Talula Cartwright on Monday, 22 December 2008 (originally posted on LeadingEffectively.org)

Creative Thinking: Leadership and the Walnut Root

We had a small walnut tree in our back yard. I guess the squirrels loved the nuts, because we never got very many of them. Finally the tree just died. My husband carefully saved all of the pieces and made beautiful handles for things—knives, axes, hammers. They would just show up under the Christmas tree as exquisite gifts for several years. He also made several walking sticks and finally an elegant highly polished sculpture for me this year, I guess from the trunk. It was like “the giving tree.” Never hugely noticeable in its life, the tree had been gracious and generous in its death.

Just when I thought all the gifts from the tree and my creative husband were finished, this week Richard dug up the root of the tree, which was rather remarkably big. He couldn’t get it all, because a piece of it had already made its way under the fence and into the neighbor’s yard. I wondered if they mightn’t have been willing for him to get it, but he said he had already poured concrete over it to make the foundation for the fence he is building. So, no.

So now he has taken several pictures of that big root and he studies it on his computer to see what he might do with it. He looks at it from different angles, perspectives; considers different opportunities for it. What a shame we as leaders don’t get to consider our problems from so many perspectives. He can do anything with that root. All possibilities are open. Base for a table. Another sculpture. Base for a lamp. A bowl, a dish, a clock. He wanders back by the computer screen and investigates it again and again, patiently, like a predator gaining on its prey.

What a blessing it would be if we had time to examine our colleagues and our clients with such consideration. Everyone and everything is in much too much a hurry. No time to come back and look again. Decisions must be made. Projects must be planned. People must be assigned. Budgets must be developed.

Such a hurry and rush approach does limit us, though. It’s hard to do really creative things without giving our “right brains” time to work. Our right brains are very efficient, but they do not operate in a linear fashion like our left brains. We must have some time available so we can come back to something patiently, consider it over time. Put it up on our computer screen and look at it casually as we walk by. Like a stealthy predator: “I don’t see you. You’re safe over there.” And all the time our minds are working. All the time, we’re gaining on it.

The wonderful thing about the way the right brain works is that we do not have to be conscious of what it’s doing for it to be effective. We can be deeply involved in other things. We have all experienced an “aha!” while we were showering, driving the interstate, or drifting off to sleep.

Good creative leadership allows such thought processes, and is ready to take advantage of them. We must acknowledge the efficacy of such workings of our brains and be ready to claim the harvest. We must find ways to inspire such thinking. Sometimes “sleeping on it” really is the best idea.

Talula Cartwright on Monday, 26 January 2009 (Originally posted on LeadingEffectively.org)