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[ CREATING EXCELLENCE ]
WISDOM
That 'something extra'
of leadership
During my career, I have come across a vast body of research and writing on the issue of leadership. Is it born, vs. made? If made, what are the building blocks? How do we impart these building blocks to aspiring leaders? Indeed, I have partaken in many a leadership development program, both as a participant and a teacher.
Recently, I was reviewing the videotape a CEO coaching client sent me of a senior executive meeting he'd conducted, as a prelude to helping him to continue to develop his leadership skills.
I'd known from the first meeting we had that there was something extraordinary about his leadership style, but I never could pin it down. To be sure, he had an above average IQ. His school smarts were matched by his street smarts; he came up through the ranks, so he knew what it meant to work in the trenches. His EQ, his emotional intelligence and its resulting interpersonal sensitivity and skills were equally well developed.
And then there it was in black and white on the playback screen before my very eyes. His extraordinary quality was staring me in the face. It was shouting out for me to notice it. What was I seeing? What was I hearing?
What I was hearing was a full 30 seconds of total group silence! What I was seeing were no nervous fidgeting of papers. No anxiously darting eyes.
Like most extraordinary qualities, however, I missed his because I was focused on looking for something I expected to see instead of just seeing what was happening. I forgot a related lesson that my father taught me decades ago about spotting feeding fish. The trick was to not focus on looking for the movement of fish, for what I wanted to see, for what was going on "out there." Rather, the challenge was to look for what wasn't supposed to be there, for what was going on inside and underneath what was going on out there, like ripples going against the wave pattern, dimples on the surface of the water and colors sharply contrasting with those around them.
This new observation was high on my agenda of topics to discuss with him at our subsequent session. It seems that, early in his career, he had learned that when faced with a particularly difficult decision, both he and his executive teammates seemed to exhibit a specific array of group dynamics. Interruptions and overtalking increased in frequency. The normally more introverted and quiet of his colleagues leaned further back, away from the table, lest they somehow get caught in the periodic fusillades of verbal crossfire. Eye movements became more rapid as people tried to catch glimpses of others' nonverbals in hopes of identifying potential supporters or dissidents to the decision they knew was correct -- theirs.
This CEO had learned that there are times when a group needs what no amount of intelligence, intellectual or emotional, or sophisticated leadership training can ever be expected to provide. There are times when wisdom is needed. And wisdom, like looking for feeding fish, comes from looking inside. Wisdom cannot be trained before the fact. It has to be uncovered and emerge.
So the next time you and your team are struggling to come to consensus on a difficult decision, consider following this CEO's extraordinary quality. Ask everyone to be quiet for a moment. Suggest that they go inside and see if they can identify what they know, in their hearts, is the right thing to do. What decision will truly serve the greater organizational collective good in its efforts to care for or about its clients, customers or patients?
You might well be surprised at how quickly a true consensus is identified.
Silence might not be golden, but it is often the path to it.
Irwin Rubin is a Honolulu-based author and president of Temenos Inc., which specializes in executive leadership development. His column appears twice a month in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Reach him at temenos@lava.net or visit temenosinc.com
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Hawaii moving in
right direction to kick
its reliance on fossil fuels
Most energy experts are convinced that the days of cheap oil are over. The search for alternatives has brought new and competing technologies into play, especially for electricity generation.
When the hype is removed, however, and the marketplace rules over our primary energy choices, oil, coal and, increasingly, wind power are still the winners. For transportation fuels, nothing beats oil, although $5-a-gallon gasoline would forever change our driving habits.
This state and others have taken the position that the transition to non-fossil-fuel energy needs to begin now to soften the economic blow of $100-a-barrel oil five to 10 years from now. It's the right thing to do for environmental and geopolitical reasons, as well. We don't want to become irrevocably enmeshed in Middle Eastern resource wars.
Despite the optimism that we will learn to wean ourselves off cheap oil, there is no easy way. Wind power at 6 cents to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour is as cheap as fossil fuel power, but it isn't available on demand. No wind, no electricity.
We also need to weigh economics against aesthetics when costly oil drives us to cheap wind power to avoid a recession.
Photovoltaic (solar) power, aside from its high cost of 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, suffers from not being available at night. With energy storage and small, efficient generators, the user can become independent but at a price that is not competitive yet with electricity off the grid. Kauai's electricity, however, at about 27 cents per kilowatt-hour, is expensive enough that the consumer might give serious thought to the solar alternative.
Hawaii has adopted Renewable Portfolio Standards, introduced on the mainland to mandate annual increases in the share of renewable electricity generation up to 20 percent of the total by 2020.
Hawaii, however, is unlike the mainland in the way we distribute power. A California utility, for example, when becalmed, can buy through the grid from an independent wind-power generator in Wyoming and satisfy its obligation to supply power to its customers. If the wind isn't blowing on Oahu, however, Hawaiian Electric Co. has to deliver power from a reliable, fossil fuel-fired plant.
Until we can produce renewable energy on demand, therefore, utilities on the islands will have to maintain generating capacity equal to the maximum expected load.
This would mean that additional demand would mandate new, fossil fuel-fired plants unless we are cleverer about managing our demand.
Solar water heaters, subsidized by both the state and Hawaiian Electric, reduce consumption by storing the energy of the sun in a hot-water tank previously heated by electricity. We are able to conserve considerably more electricity than we do through improved lighting, air conditioning and electric motors. Moreover, after the cost of hardware is paid off -- usually about 10 years -- conservation continues to save money by reducing electrical bills. Possibly, the widespread implementation of these conservation measures will stave off the construction of new fossil fuel-fired plants for decades.
Retrofitting of state buildings in Hawaii for energy conservation was given a boost by the Legislature in the 2004 session. Private properties can get income tax credits for installing solar or wind energy systems. Carrots are being held out to developers of sea-water air conditioning in the form of special revenue bonds for financing.
To encourage utilities, not only renewable energy purchased for resale by the utility is to be counted; energy savings from energy conservation measures of all sorts may be used in counting the renewable portion of the Renewable Portfolio Standard.
The Legislature deserves considerable credit for providing incentives to keep our renewable and energy conservation options as open as possible. The utilities are required to buy electricity from renewable sources, but only if the cost is at or below what it would cost them to generate it.
The 20 percent of renewables by 2020 is a target figure and not designed to hurt utilities' financial performance. Individuals and corporations have tax incentives to explore their own energy strategies.
Where we are headed for now seems right. There is no one solution, but rather a mix of technologies and strategies that we will need to employ to begin kicking the fossil fuel habit in our electricity generation. No one of the proposed alternatives to fossil fuels is going to get us very far very quickly. There is really no choice but to proceed with some haste, however, and move with the advance of technology.
Barry Raleigh is executive director of the Center for a Sustainable Future and a researcher at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
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[ TECH VIEW ]Broadband Internet
connection is time saving
I've been in the telecommunications business for around 20 years, so it should be no surprise that I've been using a broadband Internet connection from the earliest days.
When I run into friends or relatives still using a dial-up modem I find it a curiosity. The other day when I was getting my car serviced I noted that my mechanic, Art, had an old dial up modem sitting on his desk.
I was astounded, but at the same time I didn't want to make him feel bad. I asked him about it in an off-handed way and the weird thing was he didn't seem to care. All he uses his Internet connection for is to check on his stocks every once in a while and to e-mail his sister in the Philippines.
He'll order an car part online occasionally, but most of the time he uses the phone to take care of business. It's as if the broadband revolution passed him by.
I know it sounds a bit self-serving, but my feeling is that if Art knew what he was missing he'd be online all the time. The truth is, broadband -- whether it's cable modem or DSL -- is incredibly useful and time saving.
I don't mean "useful" just to get deals on books from Amazon or to order bulk pet food.
Here are a few other reasons why broadband can come in handy:
>> You can share it with the spouse and kids. Many homes in Hawaii have multiple computers. This is especially true if you have a home office or school-aged children. In my home, the entire family might be online at the same time. As I've written before, it's fairly simple to set up a wireless network and local people have been buying Wi-Fi gear in droves. (They even sell wireless routers at Costco or CompUSA if you need a some help.) Well, guess what? In order to set up a home network you need a broadband connection.Whether you end up with DSL or cable, it will change your communications life immeasurably. You'll be able to work more efficiently save a few bucks by eliminating that second phone line and turn your home into a wireless hotspot for the entire family.Everything goes faster. Remember the days when it took forever for Web sites to load? With broadband, those days are gone. It's not just Web sites that are speedier. If you send or receive digital photos, the last thing you want is to tie up your phone line for half an hour waiting for Grandma's picture to download.
>> If you have a home office, chances are you're going to be sending PowerPoint presentations and other huge files. A high-speed Internet connection will make it a whole lot easier to perform these functions.
>> With broadband, you're always on. Talk about instant gratification! With broadband, you're e-mail will come in automatically. Bingo, you've got mail.
>> With a DSL or cable connection you're also not tying up a phone line. Of course the downside with an "always on" connection is that your security needs are more complex. You'll need a firewall to protect yourself from hackers and you'll have to take other measures.
Keep those patches up-to-date. One of those other security "measures" is to keep your operating system up to date with the latest patches from Microsoft or antivirus upgrades from Symantec, Computer Associates, MacAfee or whomever your antivirus software vender happens to be.
With a broadband connection you can automate these multi-megabyte downloads and they will take seconds instead of minutes to get dumped on your hard drive.
>> Dealing with spam is easier. Nobody likes to deal with spam in the first place, but unfortunately it's a fact of life. You're going to get it anyway, so why waste time waiting for that junk to download. With broadband, you'll retrieve it faster and get it out of the way more expeditiously.
>> Dig that tune or that film clip? Unless you've been living in a cave for the last few years, MP3 and video files are really popular. (Just ask your kids if you think I'm making this up.) New music services like Real's RealOne Rhapsody, Apple's iTunes and others are the newest and least expensive way to purchase music. You can make your own CDs, but if you're thinking at all about this, you must have a high-speed connection. Songs are usually in the 3 to 5 megabyte range which just doesn't work well over dial-up.
>> Do you like getting radio news or music online? If you're a radio news junkie like me and enjoy getting your news on the BBC or Hawaii Public Radio Web site, you'd better have broadband. The same goes for listening to music streamed over the Net. There are thousands of stations online for every taste.
>> What about Internet phone? One of the newest, coolest Internet features is called Voice over IP (VoIP), which allows you to use the Internet as your phone network. New Internet phone services such as Vonage (which I did a column on not too long ago) are inexpensive and have quality almost equal to a conventional network. All you need to do to is plug a box the size of pocketbook into your router and you can call your cousin in Brussels or for three cents a minute or the mainland free of charge (depending on what your program allows).
What are the downsides?
As I mentioned, you'll definitely have to be more security conscious. You'll need new gear like a firewall and you'll have to pay much closer attention to updating security patches from Microsoft for your operating system.
As for my auto mechanic, Art? Well, he's still happy with his dial-up service or just doesn't want to change. That's his business. I just hope his sister in Manila doesn't e-mail him photos of his nieces. He'll be online for a long time downloading them.
Kiman Wong, general manager of Internet services at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is an engineer by training and a full time computer geek by profession. Questions or comments should be addressed to kiman.wong@oceanic.com
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