Dec, 2011

December 22, 2011

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

This issue of the ELC Newsletter was to be completed as I embarked on our first ever three week vacation in my professional career. I'm not proud of that, I'm just realizing that it is so. My partner of more than 43 years decided that she wanted to make this year a special year. We've known each other for more than 50 years, married for 43, so I think it's the "50" she wanted to celebrate. Thus we took off on a multi-city trip to visit children, grandchild, siblings and my father. It was awesome and required that I be "retrained" when we returned! And, of course, my plans to be able to work on this newsletter a bit while on vacation were thwarted mainly by my extreme enjoyment of the time, but also because we lost power back here at home and so my PC was no longer available to me through the network. Oh well. Shucks, things will just be a bit late. And if you are at all interested (not saying you should be) you can find selected vacation photographs here.

And of course this newsletter must have the best wishes for you and your loved ones for the holidays and beyond. As my brother is fond of saying, "May the best of your past be the worst of your future! Hopefully we will see better growth in 2012 and a stabilization of business. And speaking of business . . .

We are still seeing mixed signals from the economy. Various CEO surveys show confidence of the small business owners, especially here in Orange County, as dropping. They seem to think they will be okay, but that the economy in general is in trouble. I think most of this sentiment comes from concern over what's happening in the Euro-zone. Our economists are still saying 2012 will be a good year and then flat first half of 2013. The second half of 2013 and 2014 will be "down" years. Growth years again in 2015, 16, and 2017.

Many of you have asked "what are you reading?" So I will compile a list of the 2012 books I've read and send it out with the annual New Year's e-card. Below is a review of a most recent read, and highly recommended for you.

I hope, despite being late, you find some useful information in this month's newsletter. Enjoy.

Dave Kinnear

CEO, dbkAssociates, Inc.
Executive Leader Coach

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Another Year

Time sure flies when you're having fun

I have always been blessed by being able to authentically say that I enjoy what I do. In more than four decades of professional work, I can count on two hands the number of times I felt as though I didn't want to go to work - and usually that was because of a personnel issue rather than the work itself. Perhaps that's the real reason why I was force to confess that my wife and I had never taken a three week vacation until this year. In fact, as I look back on things, there was only one time when we took two weeks together. The rest of the time we would string our vacations out a week at a time and lots of long weekends to use up the days we might lose.

I'm not proud of that, by the way, it's just that it's so. And I would not want to change things if it meant that I would have to like my work less so that I'd want to take more time away from it. No, instead, I would keep things pretty much the same with perhaps a slight change in the time management - or lack thereof!

The bottom line is that I as look back now on 2011 and prepare the calendar for 2012, I am profoundly grateful for being able to say that I still love what I do, have a solid relationship with my spouse, am in good health (yep, lost more than 20 pounds and only put about 4 back on over the vacation) and continue to learn many new things every day. Gratitude.

My sincere wish is that everyone might have that sense of well being and gratitude for what they have - regardless of how what they have compares to others. Certainly there are many fellow humans in the world who are struggling, are poor, go to bed hungry, suffer from ill health, grieve the loss of loved ones and have little reason to celebrate. For them, I wish that a kind soul will help to bring some solace to them in this holiday season. Perhaps it will be one of us who finds the time and presence of mind to lend comfort to a fellow traveler.

May you and your family have a joyous holiday season and a prosperous, healthy new year.

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Education in the US

How do we hold professionals accountable?

A friend started a conversation over on Google+ about standardized testing in education. What prompted her to do so was a Washington Post Local blog post about when an adult took the standardized tests and failed miserably. Her point is that nobody should be surprised at this – on several fronts. To me, the most important of the four points she delineated was that "Teaching methods have changed dramatically in the last decades, and it's entirely possible he [the adult who took the test] was NEVER previously exposed to questions such as those on this test."

Well, with some misgivings I commented, on her G+ post, that (among other things) I thought that based on my observations that the K-12 education in our country was "pretty horrible." I also stated that, "I've tried to stop criticizing the education system (not very successfully) because I admit to not having a solution." However, that didn't deter the challenge since she commented: "I'm still hoping that +Dave Kinnear will give some thoughts on how accountability in K-12 might be accomplished."

Read the full article . . .

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The Living Organization

Transforming Business to Create Extraordinary Results

There is much discussion in the business world as to what has happened in the economy and how it affects our business models. Most business owners with whom I speak agree that things have permanently changed. What that means to the business is that we need a new model, a new way of thinking about our businesses so that we don't fall into the trap of trying to do the same things over and over, faster and faster and expect different results. Norman Wolfe has provided such a model and while the concept of "living organization" isn't particularly new (Wharton School used the metaphor years ago) Wolfe has taken the concept much farther and added to it a more complete explanation of the interaction between the Living Organization, the energies created and the manifestation of results. In the spirit of full disclosure, it is important to note that Norman and I spoke frequently during his work on this book, and so I am familiar with his concepts.

Read the full review . . .

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Nullius In Verba

My view - U.S. capitalism

From time-to-time, I find myself in a philosophical discussion with colleagues about our economy and our brand of capitalism. There are, of course, the two extreme views on this subject: (1) markets should be the only determination of value with no interference from government and (2) free markets are bad and central planning is the way to make sure people are protected from greed. Most of the folks I know are not at either end on this spectrum but are much more toward the center.

After one such conversation, I found myself saying to a colleague that, "An economy without capitalism is lame; capitalism without regulation is a cancer." I liked that comment so well that I decided to use it on my e-mail signature for awhile. It seems very obvious to me that we cannot, do not and never have had a totally free market version of capitalism. Certainly the headlines exposing company and government excesses proves the point that it isn't wise to let things go unregulated. The question always seems to be how far do we go with the regulation? How much do we allow government (local, state and/or federal) to interfere by favoring industries or businesses within those industries? How much do we allow business to influence government through lobbying? The amount of money involved will certainly corrupt those who are governing and lobbying.

Read full essay . . .

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