A few weeks ago, Kare Anderson interviewed me on the subject of Organizational Learning Circles. We talked about how to start a Circle, pitfalls to avoid, and successes that occurred through the Learning Circle.

Head on over to Kare’s blog, Moving From Me to We, to hear the podcast. And if you’ve been inspired to start your own Organizational Learning Circle, let me know…I’d love to hear your own experience with this powerful tool for bringing people together.

Are you someone who has many interests? Do you like to read and write, fix and invent, design projects and start businesses, and many other things, all at once? Do you feel limited by the word ‘or,’ uncomfortable when you need to narrow down choices, and absolutely revolted by the command to ‘pick one?’ Is ‘and’ your favorite word?

This is the paragraph that begins chapter five of Susan L Reid’s book Discovering Your Inner Samurai. The chapter is called Doing What You Love: Multiple-Streams-of-Passion (MSoP). Okay, raise your hand if Susan’s profile describes you. My hand is raised high in the air…and I’m tempted to throw the other one in the air for good measure.

The thing about Susan is that she really makes this characteristic sound great (and for the most part it is). But how many times are we made to feel not-normal, unfocused, and generally less-than because of it? And then we try hard to hide this inherent inclination by going the normal, focused route only to be met with unhappiness and frustration. Starting to sound familiar? Fantastic! This post, my fellow MSoP’ers, is dedicated to you. Actually, I’m hoping it’s going to be co-written by you. We all have experiences with the questions laid out here, experiences that can be shared as we help others like us use this characteristic as the awesome, empowering quality it is. So, come along…join the dialogue below and let’s show how we Renaissance Souls can kick mucho butt.

Jumping off questions:

What are the tell-tale signs of someone who is a multiple-streams-of-passion character?
Susan’s description above is pretty indicative of someone with MSoP. I’ll throw in another that I struggle with…not feeling like you have a home. That’s home in the figurative sense, particularly when it comes to professional identity. Ever wonder where you fit in exactly because your interests don’t fit neatly into one of the confining boxes most professions create? The last thing I want is a label or be confined to just one thing…and yet there are times when I pine for that kind of simplicity.

How can we best explain this characteristic to others, particular to those who don’t find it “normal?”
I’m not sure why it’s so difficult to explain the concept to others. Is it really that much of a foreign concept? Or do we MSoP’ers present some threat to those who believe that stability and consistency are absolutes?

How can we emphasize that our MSoP is an asset rather than a distraction?
This is sort of a related question to the last one. In this case, though, we have to ask ourselves how we can use our inherent gifts of curiosity and exploration for a stronger guiding purpose. How can we weave all of these different interests together to form a new niche that’s distinctly our own?

How do you know when running toward the next great thing is actually running from something else?
I’m leaving the question that I posed to Susan offline as my parting shot. It’s one that I struggle with in my own internal dialogue. When I get bored with something and want to move on to the next great thing, am I leaving that activity too soon? Or is this just the voice of all those non-MSoP folks in my life telling me that I’m doing something wrong?

As I wrote in The Dip, you’re either the best in the world (where ‘world’ can be a tiny slice of the environment) or you’re invisible. This means being Draconian in your choices. No, you can’t also do a little of this or a little of that. Best in your world means burning your other bridges and obsessing.

Wrong or right? If he’s right, what does this say for all of us MSoP’ers?

Once upon a time, I left a well-paying job to start a business. It was a personal services business where I would provide coaching, consulting, writing, and speaking focused on careers. It had such wonderful potential and energy at the beginning. I loved the idea of working for me and working toward my own dream rather than someone else’s dream that was imposed upon me. It was liberating. Until I realized that I kind of sucked at it. Not the coaching, consulting, writing, and speaking parts…I was pretty good at. It was the entrepreneurial start-up business part. You know, the stuff any entrepreneur has to do like sell themselves and their business. My inability to do this surprised me because my work up to that point was marketing and membership development. How hard could it be to sell myself when I had sold my organizations for the past few years? That’s right…a hell of a lot harder. That’s when I learned that entrepreneurship isn’t for the meek or the timid (or the overly arrogant).

Before going any further, let me make a full confession: I fell flat on my ass and while it was painful and humiliating and the time I would not take back the experience for any amount of money. I learned way too much that will help me when I go back to working for myself again in the future. And until then, I’m making a point of reading and networking with folks who have made the transition from organizational employee to entrepreneur.

Enter Susan L. Reid and her new book called Discovering Your Inner Samurai. The subtitle is The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success, but if you’re a guy don’t let that scare you away. Even though she writes from a female perspective and often openly to a female reader, there’s plenty of great advice and insight for anyone.

As to what this whole Inner Samurai stuff is, here’s how Susan describes it on page 5:

I began calling [my inner voice] my Inner Samurai when I realized how strong, vast, and powerful my inner voice is. Inner because the voice is deep within my being (to distinguish it from the voice inside my head) and Samurai because of how strong and powerful it is.

That definition gives a pretty good indication of what’s to come. Bear in mind that this isn’t your typical “how to get started in business” tome. Susan is much more interested in helping her readers figure out who they truly are, how they can connect their identity to their passion, and how they can focus that passion in their entrepreneurial actions. She interlaces these lessons with her own personal experiences as an entrepreneur (or as she calls it, an Accidental Pren-her™) and the experiences of her clients.

Susan encourages any newly emerging entrepreneur to consider the process of starting up a business as an adventurous journey. Along the journey, it’s natural to ask questions like these:

• Is my business idea good enough?
• How do I get the money to start up my business?
• Will I be able to run a successful business and not be chained to it 24/7?
• Do I have all the learning, education, and experience needed to be successful?
• What if I fail?

From my own experience, I readily admit that I struggled with each of these questions. They’re the types that can gnaw at you – particularly that last one on failure. And for each of these questions, Susan offers real examples of how to deal with them and the underlying fears they represent.

By the end of the book, be prepared to walk away with some essential tools that will help you build a business based on who you are. This is where the energy is and it’s what will get you through the lean times that are inevitable in any start-up venture. Trust yourself. Confront your fears. Enjoy the journey.

So if you’re thinking about starting a business, add Discovering Your Inner Samurai to your library. You can learn more about Susan and her coaching practice at http://www.alkamae.com/. And if you’re interested in what others are writing about the book, check out her virtual book tour page.

A final teaser: On Friday, I’ll be writing an additional post connected to Discovering Your Inner Samurai. One of the chapters in Susan’s book is on a subject that I’m intensely interested in – the concept of Multiple Streams of Passion. If you’re someone like me who has multiple interests and passions but don’t know how to harness the potential of all these options, make sure you come on back and join in the dialogue.

I’m casting out a challenge to organizations who use stock footage of employees on their websites, in their PowerPoint presentations, and in their marketing brochures. Here’s the challenge: STOP IT! Do you honestly think you’re fooling anyone by using these glossy, made-up people who are pretending to give a shit about what your business does? It’s phony and incredibly inauthentic and it’s not working.

Please, take each and every one of these pictures and burn them (both literally or figuratively if they infest your corporate server). Go and take a good look at the folks who actually do work for you, who do actually give a shit about your business every day. Put them front and center on your website, in your presentation templates, and in your marketing collateral.

If you want to put a human face on your organization, start with the human faces that actually power your organization.

At first, I was just going to make a short comment at Ben Martin’s blog on his latest post concerning organizations and branding. Yet, the more I thought about it and started writing I realized this is a blog post in its own right. Putting aside the dialogue on marketing, the central theme of the post is the organization as a monolithic or holographic entity. Now if you’re thinking, “I’m not interested in organizational theory and similar crap, why should I care?”…give me a second and I’ll show you why this may matter to your everyday working life.

Organization as monolith (aka no one is the organization)
This is the old-school version that no matter how much folks try to kill it, it just won’t die. It’s a vestige of our industrial society past where the top controlled everything and the workers underneath were just happy to not have their arm chewed off by the machinery that day. This concept was further set in stone with the idea of the blindly loyal organization man. In this case, the worker and newly formed middle manager were just happy to not have their head chewed off by the boss that day.

Unfortunately, the monolith as organizational model hasn’t passed into history despite the increasing evidence that it no longer serves a purpose to either the individuals working within it or the folks on the outside who purchase its services and products. How do you know whether you’re working for or dealing with a monolithic organization? Here are a few clues:

• The monolith talks at people
• The monolith sees people as things
• The monolith sets rules above relationships
• The monolith creates narrowly defined roles for people

If you see something strongly resembling an engineering mindset here, that’s not by accident. The monolithic organization is built around notions of efficiency, practicality, economy, and order. These are precisely the kinds of things that folks at the top of organizations want because they believe it makes their jobs easier. All of which is pretty much crap.

Organization as hologram (aka each person is the organization)
For us organizational leaders who understand that the 21st century calls for a different paradigm, we’re driving the movement from the concept of one to concept of the many. The power and control that used to be jealously guarded at the top is being dispersed downward and sideways to the point where the whole fixed hierarchical dynamic has become blurred and increasingly useless.

Rather than viewing an organization as a bland, uniform, static structure, consider the organization as a hologram. Within a holographic image, each section contains a complete image of the original object. So the real beauty of the holographic perspective is acknowledging that the organization is a vibrant collection of all the individuals within it. It recognizes that each individual is fully reflected in the whole. The organization is the individual and the individual is the organization. The interests of each individual and the organization are interconnected and interdependent.

This approach offers a more human organization. Coming back to the marketing and branding conversation that got this whole subject started for me, it means that there’s not one message but scores of messages that define the organization. Each person brings their own stories and relationships to the anthology that is today’s organization. And these stories evolve as the people within the organization learn, grow, and change.

Let’s recap…
If your organization is monolithic, what’s that getting you right now? Employees who give a damn about their work? Doubtful. Customers who want to buy from you? Maybe. Customers who are passionately loyal? Probably not. Just keep asking yourself what’s the price of control and what will it cost you to keep a tight hold on something that is only going to slip through your fingers eventually?

Here are a few phrases that I’ve heard thrown about lately:
Billy is an absolute ass…he’s always out for himself.
Stan never does his job right…I’m always having to pick up the slack for him.
I can’t stand Beth…every time I need something she’s too busy to help.

Note some of the common language used here – always, every, never. These are the kind of absolutes that get in the way of an open perspective and honest dialogue. They position our own thinking about people toward an extreme edge that most folks rarely occupy. Do we really believe that those around us are so one dimensional, so monochromatic? It certainly makes it easier to pin labels on them and make snap judgments.

Since people rarely exist at these extreme fringes, we need to stop trying to force them there. Whenever we think of a person in a very limited way – he’s just this way or she’s just that way – it’s time to think in a more extra-dimensional way. We can’t let laziness or a perceived lack of time get in the way of how we perceive other folks. If we commit to building a more well-rounded, and therefore more human, story about individuals around us we’ll immediately see that they have a rich personality that isn’t so easily pegged by one limiting label.

A friend of mine from the non-profit world is struggling with building influence and political capital in her organization. After talking with her and reading some of her email communications, it’s fairly obvious that one major issue holding her back is something called a power bleed. This is where you give away your power by over-apologizing.

Does this sound familiar to you? Perhaps you’ve worked with a power bleeder or maybe performed your version of the bleed in the past. It can be surprisingly easy to do, particularly for us Pleasers working in customer services. When we screw up (or sometimes when we have to take the hit for someone else’s muckup), we want to make sure that the person on the other end knows how apologetic we are. However, there is such a thing as overdoing it and when we go to that extreme, we do ourselves a disservice. We can actually damage the relationship.

Apologizing itself isn’t bad so don’t take this post as a reason for not showing the necessary humility when you make a gaffe like accidentally erasing an important document from your corporate server or failing to meet a project deadline for a client. God knows we need more people in business willing to offer up a sincere apology when things go wrong. Instead, what I’m suggesting is an effluence of mea culpas is not the key to success here. What is the key to stanching a power bleed? Action. To make things right, we need to take action. And by taking purposeful action, we not only harness power for ourselves but we grant power to others in the relationship.

Any good examples out there of where you’ve noticed a power bleed creeping into your conversations and relationships?