The Rise of the New Entrepreneurs

a conversation with rachel minard

about the age of meaning, proof and authenticity

CG: You see the world entering a new and important entrepreneurial age, different from what we experienced before.

RM: Yes. A classic definition of entrepreneur is someone with a new business idea willing to accept commercial risk for profit. And being entrepreneurial has been, to most of us, a cocktail of smart ideas, naïveté and fierce determination. Now it’s more akin to the definition of a hedge fund, which (misperceptions aside) is about “unconstrained active management.” About developing and challenging ideas holistically, and evaluating all the permutations of risk and reward.

Most of the entrepreneurs behind resilient businesses in the last few years started by envisioning the entire opportunity, then laying the groundwork, then taking all the pragmatic steps to realize it.

Their business objectives, while infused with passion and conviction, were based on much more: on hard realities: they studied the fortitude of the markets they were targeting, and all the impediments. Becoming famous or making a lot of money was just a possible luxury, and secondary. While seeing the path forward clearly, and having the resources and resourcefulness to travel down it was the necessity, and primary.

This defines an emerging new breed of entrepreneurs. Those looking holistically and presciently at the environment their ideas will germinate in. Making sure they are the right and most conducive environments. And, identifying and understanding the multitude and interplay of macroeconomic forces and external risks that might dilute or derail their vision or venture.

CG: So how do they create something that can be monetized and sustained?

RM: By doing a lot of research, to fully understand everything necessary to not just start but also fully sustain a business. By being acutely mindful about the operational, market, headline and investment risks. By seeing the entire landscape – and by not backing down or away from an idea and conviction that’s valid and well supported.

CG: What about the role entrepreneurs have played in building large enterprises, like Bill Gates did with Microsoft, or Steve Jobs did with Apple?

RM: Apple’s advertisement years ago forever changed the industry: Think Different. Steve Jobs made a difference in the world. He created a brand and product around the geeks, outliers, artists, creatives, knowing it was this group that would reshape the world. He made a thoughtful tool for them; which also made the world closer, and made personal computing technology more accessible and less intimidating for millions of people.

CG: Would we all be better served by smaller, nimbler, and truly entrepreneurial companies?

RM: Yes. Eventually, we won’t even need the giants. If you spend any time in San Francisco, you know about Alice Waters and her Edible Schoolyard,and her local cooking movement that gives people incentives to produce healthy organic food locally, to sustain those in the neighboring area. It works wonderfully.

But look at any high tech, high touch company. You’ll be hard pressed to find any that are massive. Quite the contrary. They have an intimacy big companies don’t. And a level of quality, passion, attention and adaptability, that few if any very large companies truly possess, let alone could sustain.

Still, we’re witnessing huge consolidation; many companies getting bigger, more powerful and less conquerable. There’s a widening divide between the boutique and the monolithic, the Davids and Goliaths, and it will be interesting to see if and what each learns from the other. I’d like to hear what your readers think about this.

CG: What’s behind the rise of these new entrepreneurs and new style of entrepreneuring?

RM: A deep desire for meaning and authenticity. After the crash of 2008, including the Madoff scandal, an authenticity movement of a kind emerged, a drive to re-find the authentic and meaningful in business. New-style entrepreneurs began in earnest here, and started showing how to achieve this and be honest, clear, transparent, accessible and good partners in the process.

CG: If you had to name the business age we’re entering right now, what would it be?

RM: The Age of Meaning, Proof and Authenticity. In the past, you could largely succeed on reputation, image, pedigree, even performance. That’s not enough any more. Now you have to prove substance and sustainability across the board. From having a clear business vision and a structure that can support and advance it, to creating true and needed value. You’re not selling pet rocks anymore; not selling concepts. You have to prove you have a meaningful solution, and show you can not only deliver it but also keep delivering it.

CG: Are these newly-emerging entrepreneurs going to become our heroes?

RM: They are, but in clusters not solo. Most of the great entrepreneurial stories of the past were about one person or one big idea. Going into the future they’ll be based on a lot of teamwork and a rich exchange of ideas. You see it at TED, and at hedge fund industry events. I see it there, and also as a board member of various organizations. It’s forming constellations of ideas and talent with common goals. Why? Because it’s too costly to go it alone in this market. And because there’s no capital to back a great idea unless the monetization of the idea is established and vetted, and factor modeling maps out exactly what’s achievable.

CG: So it’s not the solo achievers to look to for inspiration, but groups of collaborators?

RM: Yes. Farewell to the narcissism of the nineties and early part of 2000. These entrepreneurial clusters, this actively collaborative model of entrepreneuring, are forming in many areas, from biotechnology to global warming. Niche talent is coming together in highly-focused groups, sharing thinking and resources and creating extremely meaningful and sustainable long-term businesses. Of course, there are still individual thought leaders and visionaries out there, but delivering on a big promise now involves much more than “two geeks and a Gateway” with a great idea.

CG: How do those of us who want to work as or with these kinds of collaborators succeed?

RM: You need an incredibly clear and meaningful vision. You need to figure out how to realize it sustainably (including who best to join hands with). And you need to be authentic: you cannot succeed without being genuine, regardless of the worth of your idea or the image of your brand.

CG: Is the business world becoming more thoughtful now? What about our financial bubbles and excesses? Paul Hawken says “At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product…We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation.”

RM: 2009 taught us a great deal. Some call it the last 20 Years of a Ponzi Economy, when we lived off credit – which we did. Well that party is over, and the bills have to be paid – though no one has the cash to pay them. We have to be far more thoughtful now.

Fortunately, our new entrepreneurs are going to lead the way with original thought and passion combined with wiser approaches to constructing and running businesses. They will change the landscape. They’re beginning to already.

CG: I’d like to expand your point here, about building and running businesses in wiser ways. To include being more authentic and meaningful (on and below the surface) in the stories we as enlightened or evolved entrepreneurs shape and tell the world about our businesses. A subject I often write and talk about, and work with companies of all kinds to seek and achieve in their marketing and communications.

CG: And speaking of communication, how is it changing in this new Age of Meaning?

RM: We communicate now as a society more than ever before. This revolution has enabled more people to express themselves; articulate their ideas; and connect with each other more easily and widely. But the key is managing and making sense of all these communications, and prioritizing them, in order to solve problems well and efficiently…and to build business relationships that have real meaning and purpose.

CG: What about finding time and space for reflection?

RM: I know some companies that encourage daydreaming. Including Google, 3M and Gore-Tex. There’s no question: we must make room for original, meaningful thinking in our work and personal lives.

We also need to find opportunities to connect with like-minded people, and really talk. It’s the fundamental way we gain insights, and arrive at creative solutions to problems and opportunities.

CG: Where do you see examples of this in action?

RM: More than anywhere, I’d say in the movies. Influential ones like The Road or The Hurt Locker or Jane Campion’s Bright Star. They all have to do with some form of hope; with coming together to solve some universal need or problem. They also have lead characters with deep authenticity.

When you step back, you see that what worked for the last 20 years in business doesn’t work now. Sales for example is no longer about selling but about empathy and educating, engagement and partnering. The old approaches have given way to new starting points for discussion, for truthful, useful discussion and exploration.

CG: Thank you, Rachel.

Colin Goedecke is a strategic story developer and high-level interviewer, with a 24-year history helping leading and emerging companies worldwide platform and tell their marketing stories. The Rise of the New Entrepreneurs is the 20th in a series of thought pieces to help us think, act and communicate in wiser ways. Others can be found at www.tenowls.blogspot.com

Rachel S.L. Minard is a Partner and Managing Director of Optima Fund Management, and an active industry orchestrator and thought leader. She has been building and raising assets globally for hedge fund-of-funds firms for the past 18 years, and is based in San Francisco. www.optima.com

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What Makes a Compelling Story?

A short video interview with Colin Goedecke
by San Francisco brand strategist Russell Volckmann

About this video:

"How does a brand or business tell a story, and tell one that really matters—one that people relate to and find compelling. What's essential— yet often missing — from many communications? Brand strategist Russell Volckmann of Volckmann and Friends interviews long-time strategic story developer Colin Goedecke on shaping meaningful stories for leading and emerging businesses."

Click on either link to see some or all of the 6-minute interview...

http://vimeo.com/7719983

or

www.youtube.com/volckmannfriends

Colin Goedecke is strategic story developer for leading and emerging businesses. What Makes a Compelling Story is the 19th in a series of thought pieces, to help us think, act and communicate in wiser ways. Others can be found at www.tenowls.blogspot.com

Russell Volckmann, principal of San Francisco-based Volckmann and Friends, is an award-winning brand strategist, designer and creative director; who has worked with a range of companies in Asia, Europe and the US, including LÓreal Japan, Ziff-Davis, HP, Geffen Records, Pink Floyd, E*Trade, Landor and Bank of America. www.volckmann.com

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Our Most Valuable Assets Are On the Line

An urgent conversation about the state of our health and the disappearance of our GPs  with doctor daniel carlin


CG: We tend to think about our most valuable asset as our investments, our homes, our jobs, but there are far more valuable ones, one we don’t pay enough attention to let alone actively manage and appreciate…until there’s a problem.

DC: Yes, one is our personal health, our physical well being. The other, related one is the vital yet vanishing role and number of our country's primary care doctors.

I work as a medical consultant with some of the world’s wealthiest people. Individuals and families of all kinds, including senior executives. Many of them take smart, active and holistic approaches to managing their financial risks and assets, yet put little priority on their health and health risks.

Surprisingly, they fail to see their own health as a priceless asset, as a key variable in their enjoyment of life. They rarely give it the profound attention it deserves. They’re also challenged – as many of us are – in finding doctors who can help them tend to their health, prevent problems and facilitate decisions. Doctors who’ll talk candidly with them; caringly, and at length.

Of course without good health all other wealth is meaningless. It’s true on a personal level, and it’s true on a national level, meaning the health of our population as a whole.

CG: Is this what led you to a more enlightened approach?

DC: I got into the niche of 24/7 personal doctoring and started World Clinic because the system was becoming so impersonal; revolving so regressively around procedures and images.

I went completely outside the system; straight to very intelligent and enlightened people and said: you’re an expert on managing your financial assets. I’m an expert on managing physical health. The return on investing in someone like me directly will be greater well being and peace of mind…and likely greater longevity. What’s the value to you of more well being and time for your philanthropic work, family and friends, joys and passions?

A vital part of what I do as their medical advisor and point person is think. I serve as a seasoned guide, quality judge and risk “manager” for whatever’s going on with their health; for any care they’re seeking or receiving from the system.

On the most fundamental level, I help bring their awareness and attention to their greatest source of wealth: their physical well-being.

CG: You’ve said “locus of control” is a central concept, that impacts pharmaceutical marketing and helps or hinders our personal care.

DC: Yes, and this means who’s making the decisions: who has the control, you or your doctor. This affects everything. Including how drugs are currently marketed by companies, which is psychographically. From Viagra and Ambien, where marketing messages are direct-to-consumer and all about you being in control, to blood pressure medication where, because of the complexity of the condition, they’re all about your doctor calling the shots (which assumes you have a good doctor to make the right choices for you).

There’s also a strong generational dynamic at work. We have Baby Boomers who feel they’re in charge of their health decisions, and seniors who feel their doctors are or should be in charge.

My first question to a hedge fund owner or rock-and-roll entertainer client is: why did you hire me? My second question is: tell me who’s in charge of your health? I’m absolutely amazed at the answers. Many masters of the universe don’t have a sense of their own mortality: they believe they’re invincible.

Most of us need to do some emotional homework. How do you feel about your health? How invested in well-being are you? Are you empowered, and making confident choices – or do you automatically defer to your physician?

CG: Don’t most physicians help people make decisions?

DC: Sadly not really, because modern medicine is now governed by an almost pervasive fear of litigation. Physicians are reluctant to provide anything beyond basic, objective facts that can be supported in a courtroom. They’re rarely if ever willing to say to a patient is if this was me, this is what I would do…

In the specialist-driven world we live in today, we’ve lost the country and town doctor: the family doctor who knew and looked at your big picture. Who had the luxury of a real and honest relationship. Instead we have a predominance of specialists who look at and diagnose and treat you narrowly, without this vital view: without these wider, wiser insights and personal connections.

CG: How and when did we get into this worrisome situation?

DC: Going back to about 1965, the world of medicine was made up of mostly primary care doctors and general surgeons. When science started unlocking the ‘big secrets’ of the human body, the age of specialization began. As a result, internists started becoming obsolete and replaced by field-specific specialists, from cardiologists to neurologists. Advances in technology led to specialist surgeons doing only one, extremely specific kind of surgery.

More and more money started going toward procedures and less and less to office visits. The healthcare system has since favored and now richly rewards the procedurists and technologists; who rarely if ever talk to patients. All of this at the expense of the essential yet much lower paid general practitioners who do the heavy lifting with patients: who spend the time to consult with them, interpret their histories, and point them in helpful directions.

To me, there’s something very wrong with this picture.

CG: What’s happening as primary care doctors disappear, as they throw in the towel?

DC: Their essential value has become more obvious. There’ll be fewer of them to keep us on the right and best path to wellness, diagnose serious illness, be fairly immediate resources to call on with questions, knowledgeable people to tell our story to. And fewer of them out there to listen and care about us.

Technologists and procedurists don’t, can’t play this role. And none of them are engaged or invested in long-term relationships with patients. That’s the nature of the system we have. Specialists even talk about patients as organs or diseases, not as people, which says a lot. I’ve been a doctor for over 25 years, and talk about all of mine by name. I know and relate to their personal stories, to their larger life situations.

Another root problem is how we pay doctors on the basis of 7-minute primary care visits. By the time they say hello, how are you, have a chat, most of that time has elapsed. So there’s no time left for them to think properly. Or, they might quickly scan your information, say here’s the story and see you in six weeks or six months. You the patient are sent out the door unclear or unhappy or both. Even for me, a doctor inside the system, dealing with my own health issues, even I encounter this.

CG: What should we all be asking?

DC: Is there a doctor in the house, a doctor out there who truly cares about me?

CG: What’s our greater social responsibility?

DC: We need to support paying doctors properly, to do the critical thinking that gives a clear and meaningful context for patients and their medical issues. Likewise, give doctors enough time to connect with their patients in order to help them preventively, proactively. All this would go a long way to stopping or slowing the endless, wasteful merry-go-round of consult/image/lab-test/procedure, where too few are doing this thinking for too little money while too many down the line are getting richly and overly paid to do a slice of disembodied informational work.

At the same time, we have to stop compromising our personal health with poor behavior, behavior we flat out know is unhealthy.

CG: How do we keep physically healthy, individually and as a population?

DC: There’s the fledgling concierge model, where you pay a small retainer so your provider can make a decent living. In return they care for and about you. You might pay $80 a month for a doctor like this. Well I’d take that deal, it’s a good one; especially when you look at how many of us pay $1,000+ a month for health insurance with large deductibles.

Staying healthier personally? It’s not rocket science. There are basics: your weight, your blood pressure – and your general attitude of happiness and contentment with life – which I believe is the most important component of our well being. If you’re very heavy, or your pressure isn’t well managed, or you’re depressed, it’s straightforward: you’re not healthy.

Staying healthier as a country? Imagine if we had an earthquake every year that cost the U.S. 17% of its GNP. Wouldn’t we be spending money on preventing earthquakes? And moving people out of earthquake zones? Of course. Yet we have a similar situation: collectively epic medical earthquakes, from heart disease and lung cancer to stroke, most of them self-inflicted. These “man-made” disasters cost our country a massive amount of national resources year after year after year. Yet there’s no seriously productive spending on preventing them or on changing people’s unhealthy behaviors.

CG: How does consciousness change in desired directions?

DC: The national consciousness is starting to change. At the end of the day, though, money and political interest will shape the outcome.

What we need to raise first is our own consciousness. To realize there’s no healthcare coming to save our bacon. Most facilities across the country are overburdened, and are hard pressed to deliver a high caliber of care to everyone. We must also be acutely aware that good general and family practitioners, internists and pediatricians are an endangered species, a vanishing species.

Here are three rules of personal responsibility to live by:

Rule one. Make a commitment to wellness, and avoid getting sick if you can help it.

Rule two. Find a way to acknowledge your doctor for caring. Don’t take it for granted. They made a decision to care on a professional basis with no expectation of reward. So be the thoughtful, appreciative kind of person they look forward to seeing and helping.

Rule three. Vote, make your voice heard, be part of the political process, to save the good primary care doctors from becoming extinct or demoralized. It’s in your best interest.

CG: What kind of primary care doctors should all of us look for?

DC: GPs who are profoundly competent, understand the human condition, and can connect clearly and quickly with you as a patient. An individual who’s emotionally-wired and committed to care, and will go the extra mile as the rule not the exception.

Though diminishing in number, GPs like this do exist.

CG: What do you see as our biggest opportunity?

DC: Making patients an active, central part of their healthcare experiences. The key variable is not the doctor and not the medication or the test, it’s you, the patient. Each one of us needs to be actively involved with our well being. To be taking charge. To be wisely managing our greatest asset, our health – and getting a good, caring, committed physician to manage and enhance it with us.

CG: Dan, many thanks.


Colin Goedecke is a senior marketing writer, messaging strategist and interviewer, with a 23-year history helping leading and emerging companies worldwide platform and tell their stories. Our Most Valuable Asset is On the Line is the 18th in a series of thought pieces, to help us think, act and communicate in wiser ways. Others can be found at www.tenowls.blogspot.com

Daniel Carlin is a 25-year-long physician, clinician and thought leader in medical change. He’s a former US Naval officer, and founder and CEO of World Clinic, www.worldclinic.com, a unique, global, 24/7 medical and telemedical practice serving a select group of senior executives and wealthy individuals and families.



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The Importance of Silence

a conversation about why we need silence with stephen chinlund


CG: Why do we need silence?

SC: We need it for our well-being; for slowing down, for understanding what life is about, for being happy in the world as we encounter it; to tune in to what’s happening inside our own bodies – which we hardly pay attention to; for being creative; for savoring important moments; for being thankful for the people in our lives…and much else.

CG: So part of silence involves pausing.

SC: Yes. Silence is an antidote for our speeding.

CG: A remedy, for our state of overdrive or perpetual motion, which is an occupational hazard for many of us; especially in 24/7 cities like New York.

How or when can silence be most meaningful, Steve?

SC: Wanting it is the thing. If you truly want it, you’ll find it and make regular places for it. If you haven’t experienced silence before, it’s a bit of a Catch-22. Because you have to allow time for it first, in order to discover and appreciate how incredibly meaningful it is.

Being afraid of or bored by silence prevents a lot of people from trying it. They actively avoid it. And getting past this anxiety – which is often a fear of having uncomfortable thoughts or memories rush into that “empty” space – or getting past the expectation of boredom, can seem like a big step to take, sometimes too big.

CG: Hence the tendency to fill up the silences with activities, busy-ness, or the sound of our own voices. Which doesn’t allow room for other, very important experiences to enter.

SC: Yes, because when you’re truly silent, and taking the time to be quiet, whether it’s for a half-hour or a whole morning…or even a whole day, vital new things come. They don’t always come in the first five minutes. It takes time for them to arrive, and unfold. But they come.

Whole libraries have been written about silence, including books by the German philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart, the mystic-poet Angelus Silesius (The Cherubinic Wanderer), Francois Fenelon, the main advocate of “quietism” in the late 1600s, Thomas Merton and others.

CG: I’m sure we’d all be wise to develop our “third ears,” to hear what’s being said not just in the lines of conversations but also in the silent spaces between them, where there’s a great deal happening; where what’s unsaid is equally important to understand. I’d extend this to marketers, who could better relate to the people who buy their products and services by adding or using a well-tuned third ear.

SC: The Quakers listened in the silences, and to what was underneath what was being said. They were also a canny bunch of businessmen, and even used the power of silence in the boardroom, when they were running companies; especially when things got contentious. It worked well for them, their disciplines of silence and consensus.

There’s also a new book out by the novelist Anne LeClaire called Listening Below the Noise: a Meditation on the Practice of Silence. It’s about the promise she made herself to be completely silent all day, every other Monday. Out of this commitment, she discovered many new and wonderful things about her life and potential.

CG: Let’s come back to this key issue of commitment, to not just wanting silence but also dedicating ourselves to it, for however long or short a period of time we choose.

SC: If we’re really committed to being inside it, we’re able to drift into less active and non-verbal ways of thinking, feeling and being. To let go of all the stuff floating around in our heads. Then it becomes very exciting.

This happens for me when I paint: magic happens, once I move past all the “frontal” thinking and enter into whatever I’m painting; enter into a noiseless flow. When I engage the silence this way is when I create the most satisfying things. It’s an experience second only to sex. Blissful.

CG: How would you describe a clear state of silence as a room or landscape? What would it be like?

SC: A place full of life, of sunny and dark places, flowers and caves, pleasant and unpleasant aromas; things beautiful and strange; a place that’s endlessly rich. An intimate place you enter into; merge with.

CG: How do we set the stage for this?

SC: I’d encourage each person to do it their own way. You might go to a Quaker meeting, which has a special kind of power. Or into a church – a cathedral of silence. You might draw or paint, and make a commitment to be silent when doing this. Give yourself the luxury to sit somewhere where you won’t be disturbed, and promise yourself you won’t say anything for an hour or two, and see what happens. Go wherever it’s quiet and congenial for you.

And if you find yourself wavering, don’t get sidetracked or give up too quickly from exploring silence.

CG: Slowness and silence for all of us, and time for these, aren’t luxuries, but necessities; enriching and revitalizing.

SC: All kinds of people in this wonderful town [New York] that I adore feel if they had two or three times as many hours of the day it wouldn’t be enough to keep up with all that’s happening personally and professionally. This isn’t the answer.

CG: If we don’t incorporate silence into our lives, as a way to connect with our interior landscape, do we risk living incompletely, too much on the outside of things, outside of ourselves? A theme Robert Sardello focuses on in his book Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness, and a fount of healing for Carl Jung.

SC: The fact we spend so little time in silence, inside the quiet of our beings, and don’t even expect to spend any time, is a terrible deprivation. It’s like being malnourished or unloved.

There are cultures, especially in Asia and Muslim countries, that are far more comfortable with silence than our American one. Even in Europe you sit back after a long lunch not having to talk, and you quietly savor the experience.

Zen Buddhists are great models, partly because they’ve carried the thinking about it to an almost baroque level: Zen and the art of archery, of painting, tennis, even motorcycle repair. The root is silence.

CG: It’s also fundamental to achieving mastery, creative silence; and going back to what you said at the start, to achieving a deep state of well-being. Most of us might be surprised to find out just how deeply we can go, what do you think?

SC: Definitely. I guarantee that if you promise yourself to be silent for just five minutes each day, each week, and honor that quiet time – silence without distraction – you’ll have a deepening experience. It yields all kinds of welcome surprises, from peacefulness to creativity.

Silence is also necessary for reflection, and for pondering important questions and issues.

CG: In our virtual and digital and social networking age, where it’s about action, interaction and transactions, how is silence let alone meaningful silence possible?

SC: A good question. When two people are together physically having a conversation, there can be a shared silence, whereas in virtual conversations people feel insulted, confused, upset if there’s silence.

I think noise and speed and chatter and twittering are substitutes for vital interior explorations, internal explorations we need to engage in.

I have a character in one of my plays who says when I was a kid summer lasted forever, then I started to grow up, got married and had kids, now suddenly I’m an old man. Part of this speech reflects the absolute pell mell character of many lives, that are lacking in deeply quiet introspective time.

CG: What’s the most important aspect of silence we should be contemplating right now?

SC: That there are treasures inside us, wonderful treasures, that no other person can tell us about; that we can only discover in and through silence.

If we can get ourselves past any anxiety or boredom, and just let the silence be there; let ourselves be in it, then that remarkable hidden room, that rich hidden landscape each one of us has within will be revealed to us.

CG: Steve, thank you.


Colin Goedecke is a senior marketing writer, messaging strategist and interviewer, with a 23-year history helping leading and emerging companies worldwide platform and tell their stories. The Importance of Silence is the 17th in a series of thought pieces, to help us think, act and communicate in wiser ways. Others can be found at www.tenowls.blogspot.com

Stephen Chinlund is a painter, playwright, minister (and Harvard man, class of ‘55). He’s a former Executive Director of Episcopal Social Services, Rector of Southport Connecticut’s Trinity Parish, and Chairman of the NY State Department of Correction, among other dedicated positions in his abundant and still unfolding 40-year career. www.chinlund.com



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The Art of Listening

a conversation about listening vitally with jane hewson



JH: Charles Ives said Thoreau was a great musician, not because he played the flute but because he didn’t have to go to Boston to hear the symphony.

CG: Jane, a good entry point into our conversation about listening. So what is the real art of listening and why do we need to be practicing it right now?

JH: Listening is about being still. And patient. And generous. It’s a difficult trifecta to achieve.

Think about the last time almost anyone you know gave their absolute attention to you or someone who was talking to them.

You have to quiet your mind entirely, and be willing to be influenced by someone else’s thinking and thoughts.

You need to put aside any desire to rebut or argue a point, and be completely open and non-judgmental. Very hard to do.

CG: You say most people don’t listen because they don’t know how to.

JH: As individuals, we rarely discuss how to listen, nor learn how to listen. Unless you’re a musician, or a journalist – and I’m not sure even journalists learn how to listen any more.

As for corporations, there’s fast-growing awareness that their operating paradigms don’t foster active listening. Many now seek out teachers to help them become more proficient at it and create working environments that foster and reward it. It’s part of what I’m engaged in at The Creating WE Institute, where we talk about vital conversations. So many decisions are made through conversation. Each one of them should be considered vital, because each one provides an opportunity to create positive, selfless outcomes.

We work with corporate clients and are making remarkable progress moving their cultures out of an entrenched self-focus.

CG: What happens when we listen vitally?

JH: In the purest sense, when we really listen, we’re re-created and grow by taking in something new. When we become receivers of ideas – like great radio receivers – and attend to the thoughts and views of others without transmitting our own. So listening becomes, can become an extraordinarily creative process.

Think about a river at its source. Along the way thousands of brooks and streams and other bodies of water join it, all adding to the flow and the whole. So by the time the river reaches its mouth it has swelled with all these contributions. Think of your mind and heart growing in this same expansive way as your life progresses, as it freely receives a wealth of other contributions.

We have an opportunity to live and work this way; but we can’t do it without making listening vitally a priority.

CG: How has technology affected our ability to listen?

JH: The act of listening itself is a factor of your age and exposure to technology. Those who grew up with computers often thrive on mental multi-tasking; listening to music for example while chatting online while talking on a cell phone while watching a sporting event on TV. They listen differently – and more chaotically – than their parents, than someone like me.

Today, the art of listening has been overwhelmed by the ceaseless input of ‘noise’ in our daily lives; which gives rise to our need to be heard clearly…a need that rarely gets met. There’s so much coming in that isn’t filtered, can’t easily be filtered, so you wind up drowning in this unfiltered kind of listening.

There is an antidote: tuning in to the healthy, the wanted and the needed.

CG: There are many different kinds of noise, static, interference, from the ambient to the intentional.

JH: Yes. Just think about the noise that comes from man-made things that run on gas, electricity etc., from cars, refrigerators and air conditioning to stereos, televisions, printers and phones. Which has nothing to do with all the marketing noise that surrounds and bombards us, a whole other layer.

When was the last time you sat in a place where there was absolutely no man-made sound? Where it was completely quiet. Even in the wilds of Vermont, there’s interference. But when the power goes out there, I can sit in the kitchen next to the wood stove at night with a candle and hear a lone drop of water outside. I can hear the creak and groan of the old sugar maple in a slight wind. And listen to the hisses in the fireplace. There’s no extraneous input to contend with.

All this pure expression is always there for us to listen to. But we have to work harder these days to be in these moments.

CG: How can a company or marketer learn to listen well or better?

JH: The biggest risk for marketers is selective listening. Listening only for what supports your theory or strategy. Yet you can’t listen selectively and effectively at the same time. It may solve your short-term issue, in meeting an immediate agenda or deadline, but it’ll come back to haunt you.

CG: It seems we’re at a point where companies simply can’t afford to not listen closely, completely, sincerely.

JH: Yes, because there’s a minor form of social revolt afoot now, a dearth of trust in providers among consumers. Partly because consumers feel the scale of large companies doesn’t allow for any personal dialogue about our thoughts and feelings. Or because marketers, providers are just pretending to listen and care; which we see right through.

CG: What’s the litmus test of how well one is listening?

JH: A great listener cares more about the messages being communicated to them, than in their reply to those messages. Another test is if you’re bored, which shows you’re not engaged; that you’re not being generous in your listening. Because you have to actively care about what someone is saying; be genuinely interested.

A great listener expresses their listening with their whole body: their eyes are engaged, their posture is attentive and directed toward the speaker; their expression is naturally welcoming and supportive.

CG: But isn’t selective listening massively institutionalized? What will it take to move this mountain?

JH: It’s no easy feat. Most companies need to be up against a wall to change their ways. And they also need to have someone extraordinary or courageous enough in a leadership position to say no one’s really listening here. We don’t even know what we’re supposed to be listening to. I believe the transformation will happen first with smaller businesses.

And, many big institutions may be dismantled or crumble in part because the prevailing corporate paradigm hasn’t fostered a purity in listening. In fact, it has disabled companies’ ability to listen well.

The pressure to meet a prescribed agenda has generally overridden any reason to listen. Jack Welch in a recent Financial Times interview basically admitted that his own theory of placing shareholder value and profits at the top of the priority list was destructive. He said business leaders wound up sacrificing listening to and caring for their employees and customers, and sacrificing the quality of the products or services they were providing, because those things didn’t necessarily lead to accelerated shareholder profits.

CG: What kinds of great listeners are out there in our world that you look to?

JH: Musicians, poets, great salespeople; individuals of deep faith; teachers who work with children with physical and emotional disabilities. All people who have open minds and hearts; who thrive on creativity; who listen to far more than just words.

CG: And why do you feel face-to-face communicating is still so essential? In this day and age of distant and disembodied communicating.

JH: Good face-to-face interaction means being fully present. If we ever lost the ability to have generative conversation around a dinner table, that would be a sad day for humankind.

While hearing comes naturally, listening and interacting well with others has to be learned. It’s a skill. In my coaching work, I videotape people in small group settings making a presentation. When I play the tape back immediately afterward, most are shocked by what they see: how powerful their facial expressions are, how much others read into their tone of voice and body language. Because often what someone says doesn’t match how they say it, or how they appear when they say it. Mixed messages.

CG: Does something like Twittering close off our opportunity to listen?

JH: Twittering is a new phenomenon, one that’s self-facing, one-directional: it’s about blasting out your information. You don’t need to attend to the listener(s) at all. And if you’re only transmitting, you’re unable to listen.

CG: You did a recent radio program on face-to-face communicating for Lori Sackler’s show ‘The M Word: Money & Family’ that was very thoughtful. If anyone would like to hear it, the link is here.

What’s the most essential question we should be asking ourselves around this big issue of listening? As individuals, as companies, as a society.

JH: We have to ask how sincerely interested and capable we are of quieting our own minds, and receiving openly and deeply.

It’s difficult, because it comes back to the fact most of us are underserved in being listened to.

We have an incredible opportunity and ability to get to this important place. To practice the real art of listening, and as a result positively and powerfully affect our personal and business communities.

CG: All vital things for us to ponder and pursue. Thank you for our conversation, Jane.




Jane Hewson is principal of Beresford Partners, business development consultants, and a founding member of The Creating WE Institute focused on new forms and levels of thought leadership. Her career spans over 30 years counseling leading firms on marketing and communicating.


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Riding the Long Wave

a conversation about deep presence with dan kowalski



CG: What is ‘deep presence?’

DK: Experiencing presence is coming into relationship with a person or place. Experiencing deep presence is coming into a deeply felt relationship with the living Earth.

CG: You believe this is an essential connection for each of us to find and feel; to rediscover.

DK: Our connectedness with each other and the larger living world is innate, yet greatly challenged and diminished. We have to regain our ability to experience it. It’s in our best interest, because it leads to a fundamental state of well being; not just for us individually but also for us collectively as a society.

CG: How can one go about entering this state of being?

DK: In the wilderness of Southeast Alaska, where I’ve been guiding for many years, the discovery is open to anyone.

But in a lifelong way it comes down to ‘practice,’ to an ongoing engagement you adopt versus a task you complete. What you discover is that more engagement leads to greater depth.

Engagement is fundamental, as are aspects of Eastern spiritual practices, especially mindfulness: paying attention and being present to whatever is unfolding around you. This doesn’t have to be in the wilderness. It can take place wherever you find yourself.

In my experience, the entire Earth has a deep presence, and expresses itself magnificently. It’s always there, even when muted by the buzz and rumble of human activity.

CG: Isn’t it easier to be highly present in the wilderness, because there’s nothing else to divert your attention?

DK: The wilderness offers a very straightforward place to experience this wonder and pure quality of being. Because everything flows the right way there; the rhythm is much slower; you feel at home inside it and inside yourself.

Urban environments are no less wild in their way. There’s so much stimulation going on, and sensory overload. To prevail and prosper in these surroundings our systems have evolved sophisticated filters and other coping mechanisms. But these adaptations don’t lend themselves to deep presence, or to ‘long wave’ ways of being. Which is one reason why many people establish meditation and other contemplative practices like yoga…to connect with the long wave and counterbalance the man-made stresses.

CG: Explain this long and short wave notion.

DK: I think of wavelengths of light and sound, and ocean currents, as metaphors. Long waves have more penetrating power. At sunset and sunrise we see the rich reds and oranges because these longer waves penetrate the thicker atmosphere. Or the low thundering whoosh of a whales’ breath you can hear across a stretch of water. On the ocean, there are long, storm-generated waves that develop way off in the Pacific. They move across the ocean in long, rolling, undulating swells. When we’re fishing for halibut, it’s much easier to get into a working rhythm with these long waves than with shorter, wind-driven chops which can be quite uncomfortable.

Short-wave frequencies do have a place and value in our daily lives. They sharpen our mental processes, helping us to focus more clearly and analyze and act faster.

CG: But you’re especially keen on riding the long wave.

DK: I am, because the long wave gets short shrift in our modern culture, our ‘technogenic’ culture obsessed with speed and efficiency but too often caught up as a result in short wave, multi-tasking behavior that’s percussive and chronically distracting. Chronic distraction is the opposite of deep presence.

Some wise traditions have upheld the long-wave way all along, including a deep respect and reverence for all living things. The Eastern and Native American cultures in particular, which are good models.

With the monumental challenges facing us in the world, we desperately need to have and integrate both the long and short wave.

CG: How is our relationship with the natural world changing?

DK: The Judeo-Christian tradition of thou shalt take dominion over all things is hard to support when we’ve now reached or exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. We need to realize we’re not separate from but part of it; to understand that when we do harm to it we do harm to ourselves.

What needs to come to the fore is our beautiful, inherent nature to care and nurture, to steward. It can motivate us to reconsider our choices and our ways of living.

CG: Are there champions you look to who are making efforts to inspire positive, powerful awareness and change in this sphere?

DK: Many, which is a good sign. In the West, John Muir was the most prominent thinker to champion the cause of what today is called ‘bio-centrism,’ another way of saying everything is interconnected. Radically interconnected. Muir felt this in his bones.

I look to Bill McKibben, who writes wonderfully and stridently about our relationship with climate change. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, who calls for doing things much differently. Whose view is this may be our only chance to get our act together and change course while we still can.

Others I pay close attention to are Joanna Macy, part of The Great Turning Initiative, essayist and poet Gary Snyder; the critic and farmer Wendell Berry, earth scholar Thomas Berry, author, naturalist and ecologist Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez. Also Aldo Leopold, who was the father of wildlife management.

CG: What about the progress of the environmental movement?

DK: The ‘environmental movement,’ as it was pegged back in the 70s and 80s, is in a state of flux right now. Many of its orientations are less salient today because of the far more complex conditions we’re up against. Yet despite the complexities, there are still significant environmental champions at work promoting sensible, deep and right-on ways to proceed.

CG: Could there be an incredible simplicity that transcends all the complexity? If we could arrive at a deeper sense of the interconnectedness you’re talking about, wouldn’t respect and reverence for all living things flourish?

DK: Yes. But people can have an intellectual understanding of something and at the same time have no visceral awareness. If we don’t get it in our bones it won’t show up in how we live; in the defining qualities of our being.

CG: You guide people into the profound experience of Southeast Alaska’s Inside Passage; and facilitate conversations with Nature and the wild.

DK: It’s wonderful to witness people who travel here come into harmony with the wilderness, this awe-inspiring habitat that’s very long-wave from its native culture to its wildlife to its tides.

CG: What about the meditative visual journey you co-created on DVD, Deep Presence: Meditations on a Wild Coast? That uses an innocent eye and ear to take you into the soul of this landscape if you’ve never been there, or back into it if you have.

DK: The immersive nature and language of film is very effective in touching and engaging your heart and mind. And films like this one that celebrate the wilderness and invoke wonder can bring a deeply satisfying encounter and experience to you at home.

CG: What about engagement in terms of how companies communicate with us; the ways marketers and others want to ‘engage’ us?

DK: Our attention is precious, and our identity in many respects distills down to what we pay attention to. But our deeper being has a subtle compass: we know in our bones whether or not something is relevant and life-affirming.

The current crisis of confidence has given companies a tremendous opportunity to re-evaluate the compass-heading of their messages to us; in order to find a deeper resonance with people. In this information-overloaded environment, their voice and messages will draw our precious attention and will resonate if but only if they speak and make sense to our core.

CG: What’s the most vital next step we need to take?

DK: To move to discover and engage with our vital interconnectedness with each other and with the larger living world. Right action will come from knowing this place in our bones.

CG: Dan, thanks for all your thoughts. I look forward to joining you in Alaska and continuing our conversations there.




Dan Kowalski is a filmmaker, founder of Pacific NW-based Rollingbay Works www.rollingbayworks.com and a long-time commercial halibut fisherman and wilderness guide in Southeast Alaska. He co-produced Deep Presence: Meditations on a Wild Coast.



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A Time for Questioning

a conversation about self-exploration with yannis simonides


CG: You've been touring the world, solo-performing Plato's Apology; where to me you nearly channel Socrates; who was spot on 22 centuries ago about the examined life and the virtuous way to be. Yet 22 centuries later, we’re still struggling as a society with living and behaving in right(er) ways.

Where are the clues, the insights we need?

YS: They’re right there in Plato’s text of The Apology. Plato’s and Socrates’ systems of thought, their philosophies, are still fundamental models to study and listen to – and emulate.

CG: Can we achieve a more virtuous culture?

YS: We can, but only to the degree we honestly examine our lives and apply the findings that flow from this self-examination.

Socrates said virtue is knowledge; that the only way to reach knowledge and therefore virtue, is to study, to examine and to have the opportunity to do so.

If we spend the time to have a dialectic, an investigation, a reasoning with ourselves, and not stop until we arrive at the truth – a truth that satisfies us (or satisfies us and whoever we’re engaging with, a boss, a friend, another nation)…we will be greatly rewarded.

We need to be willing to live in a culture of questions not one of ready answers. It’s a more courageous approach. And it takes more time. But it’s worth it. It serves us better in the long run as individuals and as a society, by giving us stronger foundations for our lives and for our world.

When I talk about questioning, and avoiding dogma, and achieving a change for the better in our entire ethos, it’s relevant because success here has to do with listening more versus trying to speak more.

It’s time for us to fall silent and listen. To begin.

CG: I’m reminded of Rainer Maria Rilke’s words from his Letters to a Young Poet, where he said: Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them… the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

YS: Each of us can initiate these kind of conversations, with ourselves and with others – in our families, our workplaces, our social circles; our communities, and our governments.

Socrates was never dogmatic in the way he talked. His approach was always propositions; suggestions; ways to consider being; invitations to question and discuss.

CG: Why do the simple wisdoms of Socrates, as you present the philosopher and his ideas, resonate so strongly today especially among the youth of many different countries? You’ve experienced this firsthand in and after your performances, from Athens to Dubai to Uruguay.

YS: Because it isn’t dogma. Because it engages them in questions and questioning. Because there’s great respect and dignity; a belief in peaceful co-existence; benevolent laws; an unwillingness to harm. Also because there’s no imposition of false gods or one’s own gods or ideas on them. Living to the best and fullest is the aim. These are all great gifts and inspirations for the youth of all cultures.

These are also things, deep inside, as you discover in The Apology, that we all – no matter what our politics or backgrounds – acknowledge as valuable.

The youth of today listen to Socrates because, like them, he’s not afraid to take a piss. He wasn’t afraid, as most of us are, to risk losing a job, a career, a relationship, by opening his mouth to say right and needed things. His philosophy teaches courage; it teaches examining yourself; and learning on your own more about yourself…and about what’s right and wrong – so it all becomes self evident. And in this process you become virtuous.

CG: You see a problem with the popular desire for immediate solutions, especially in dealing with crises or monumental issues personally or on a wider scale.

YS: This is a trap we fall into: looking for easy answers. Stop instead. Take a breath. Take a walk. Consider. Call a friend or colleague and have a conversation. Don’t take pride in being a man or woman ‘of action.’ No one knows enough about life to face a crisis and say they have the absolute answer. Yet this is how so much of society has acted for so long.

CG: As a long-time actor, director, teacher, radio host, you’ve mastered the art of communicating; dramatically, effectively, memorably. What are the ingredients that contributed most crucially to your mastery? What advice would you give about achieving effective communications?

YS: Empathy. Patience. Listening. Humor. Humility. And, a willingness to understand what communication actually is and should be: a two-way street; a full circle: you put something out and wait for a message to come back to you; that tells you your message was received and fully understood, as intended. Then you have communicated.

It’s the difference between the teacher who talks with you, engages you, and the one who gets up and just reads from a text; talks at you.

We can never be presumptuous about our audiences; we can’t label them.

Why? Because there’s so much more to people. Therefore, explore them; test them, as an actor would do. What is this house like, that you have before you? Is every Broadway theatre audience the same? No: the energy and interest and point of view of each group vary greatly. Those who ignore this dynamic are not the best communicators; they cannot communicate effectively.

And, don’t avoid doing something because you assume an audience won’t get it. Conversely, be sure to avoid things you think make sense but, looked at from their point of view, are likely to go right over their heads.

To be a great communicator, consciously play to people’s intelligence; to what you perceive as the best in them; using the best in you.

Anything else is deception, artifice or insensitivity.

And whatever medium you choose to communicate with, it’s your obligation to master it, as any great actor or director masters their craft.

Communication is as basic as breathing. Given our nature as social beings and our one-ness with Nature itself, we’re interdependent; in constant communication with each other and with Nature; in a give and take that happens billions of times a moment, every day, everywhere. Exchanging atoms with our environment is communication. Without all this, we stop breathing.

CG: Why do you feel such a burning personal need to examine and help others examine?

YS: Because I believe the world of our senses is just the tip of the iceberg. And those of us who live only on this level are blind, and make mistakes. If you ignore the rest of the iceberg, you’re another Titanic waiting to happen.

The world’s great difficulties now, like history’s Great Wars and Great Depressions and cataclysms, are signaling an enormous shift; one that’s not just economic. We need to understand what it means, what’s underneath it.

CG: I think despite the dislocations we’re up against, this tectonic shift is inspiring many of us, and forcing others, to re-examine their values; revisit (or re-affirm) what really matters in their lives, question long-held assumptions, and reconsider what right(er) thinking and acting is going forward.

YS: The most essential question we should be asking is should we re-examine the entire ethos we’ve been living by. My view is we should.

In every aspect of our lives and parts of society, from our governments to our faiths to our relationships to our place in the economy as consumers and as workers, we should be asking who are we? And asking what we want our future roles and responsibilities in society to be.

We all have the opportunity to initiate an exploration, in some way, in our own circles. I’m doing it through my performing and discussions around those performances. In order to bring people and organizations together in shared exploration – and discovery.

But assuming we have the answers, and following agendas and dogmas won’t get us there. Only a spirit and desire to examine deeply and freely and honestly will.

This is how we’ll evolve. And while evolution can be painful, because some things die, it can be wonderful because new things are born. This is the way, and Socrates’ way, that we’ll ultimately achieve a ‘culture of rightness,’ of higher values; of virtue.

CG: Yannis, thank you for all these thoughts. I hope some of our readers will find the opportunity to see you perform your stirring version of The Apology that continues touring.




Yannis Simonides has been touring the world as Socrates in solo performances of Plato’s Apology. An Emmy Award-winning documentary producer; actor and director, born in Constantinople and raised in Athens, he’s a former Chairman of New York University’s Tisch Drama Department, and was recently named an Ambassador of Hellenic Culture by the Greek Government. www.ellinikotheatro.org


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