I recently watched Nothing But the Truth with Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda, Matt Dillon, David Schwimmer, Angela Bassett, and Noah Wyle. 

Movie synopsis: "In Washington, D.C., a female reporter faces a possible jail sentence for outing a CIA agent and refusing to reveal her source."  I won't give any of the plot twists away; I just wanted to share this great quote:

"Great people are inseparable from their principles."

And they then trotted out a few examples... MLK, Gandhi, Christ...

It was a stellar movie, very under-the-radar. 

And I just love that line, because to the extent we are blessed enough to come across people who are really committed to their principles, despite the cost(s), faith is buoyed.

With the recent celebration of our 16th wedding anniversary, followed immediately by the occurrence of Father's Day, I have a whole wallet stuffed with Barnes & Noble gift cards.  One of the 'givers' inquired, "What did you buy?"

In response to her, and a client this morning who asked, "What are you 'bedside reading' these days?" I offer this brief defense.

The table is spilling over with magazines: The Week, Inc., and Time -- to stay abreast of 'the serious issues.'  And I've got a couple issues of Entertainment Weekly, for those moments before take-off when my mind wants empty calories rather than world events.  There are undoubtedly moments when I cannot bear to read 'heavy stuff.'

I also purchased an assortment of interesting books, a couple new ones and a classic.  A Different Life by Quinn Bradlee looks promising.  A young man with VCFS who has memoir'ed his journey as a learning-disabled student, son, and friend.  I love the dedication page, "To my mom -- my archangel, and my father, who is my sword and shield."  We should only be so appreciated.  Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley, about his inimitable parents and their respective deaths in 2007-2008.  A loving tribute from a complicated son.  All the King's Men by Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Penn Warren.  A classic, and more timely than ever, even 63 years later.  Finally, I've got an Idiot's Guide to Latin beside the bed because it has always fascinated me and I don't want my brain jell-o-ing to mush.  To keep a muscle, you gotta use it!

It'd be nice to be one of those folks who grows younger as he grows older (more curious, more free, more fun), rather than the other way around (less curious, less free, less fun)!  (Sort of a Benjamin Button, if you will, minus the drool and diapers at each life-endpoint.)

Keep the recommendations coming; I'll read all I can.  As a great mentor, Carveth Kramer, once said to me, "Leaders are readers" or, at least, they should be. 

Among several others, I had a couple of specific, very interesting conversations in the past week (one with a CEO, the other with a researcher) that I thought I would pass along today.  In both, the opportunities and challenges associated with innovation and commoditization arose.

These visits were unrelated to one another, and days apart.  But in both sittings, I was told, "It's important for an organization to innovate more quickly than it is consumed from behind by its own commoditization."

I just love that.

We've all heard this sentiment for years, but rarely so pithily.  It is all the more important today, in this economy, as the desperate, shortsighted, or lazy are inclined to simply mimic whatever is working.  I believe the evidence is everywhere... from car manufacturing to failed credit default swaps.  Easy 'initial money,' when predicated on a sandy foundation of mimicry and commoditization cannot survive the stresses of change, diluted profits, or shifting consumer desires.

Here's to a more innovative America, and world.

Create on!   

As is often the case, I notice things when they happen in 'threes.'  Sometimes, perhaps rarely, I'm quick enough on the uptake to notice things in isolation, but more infrequently than I care to admit, even to myself.

This past week, I spoke with and coached a few folks who were frustrated with what we might call 'taking behaviors.'  Specifically, people with whom they were frustrated because the relationships were lopsided: my 'coachees' were GIVING and the 'wrongdoers' were TAKING.  You know the drill; we've all been perpetrators and victims in the same circuit.

Such is the human condition; always has been -- always will be.  Don't mean to be a fatalist, just a realist.

That said, I've always most admired The Invisible Man.  Not the cheesy-movie one, but the real man (or woman).  You know, the unassuming type, like Clark Kent, whom we later learn is really super.  Or the quiet one in the back row, whom we later learn is illuminatingly bright.  Or the awkward and seemingly powerless one, whom we later learn is a mogul's son and thrice-over gazillionaire eyeball-deep in curing cancer. 

I share these thoughts, not because anyone need be super, smart, or rich in order to be worthwhile (quite the contrary, I postulate), but because there is something to be said for not placing oneself onto every stage.

But moreover, I believe, because the legacy of Takers -- whether others' time, attention, credit, or sundry finite resources -- is one of emptiness.  I have been to many a funeral, and the Taker's is the least attended.

Better to be humble in life, listening to and encouraging others and supporting them behind the scenes, than to gluttonously devour the entire banquet table for oneself.

Give me the Givers, please, though we should all give regardless.

While checking email recently, a link popped-up with a few interesting workplace articles from the writers at Career Builder.  They're worthwhile and, given their locations, transient, so -- if you intend to read them, do it quickly.

Here are three of the best:

How Toxic Behavior Leads to Sinful Behavior at Work

10 Worst Work Habits

10 Worst Things to Say in the Workplace

For the last two nights, this 211-pages-page-turner absolutely possessed me.  The [not-long-but] short of it is this: after four years at Princeton, and just prior to attending Oxford on scholarship, author Walter Kirn gets pneumonia while visiting his parents.  Late one night he notices, for practically the first time, a few classics in his mother’s bookshelves.  From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Great Expectations, he becomes engrossed and reads them, really reads them, for the first time in his life.

Setting his pretenses down – the ones he honed to enter and survive Princeton – he says, in the final lines of Lost, “And so, belatedly, haltingly, accidentally, and quite implausibly and incredibly, it began at last: my education.  I wanted [for the first time in my inauthentic life] to find out what others thought.”

Like ants in a mound, we all sense the vibrations of impending change.

In particular, I am feeling in my bones, perhaps for the first time ever, bona fide (sorry for the pun) traction in the Green Movement.  Similarly, I also sense the early tremors of a tectonic shift in Workplace Expectations in smaller, more nimble organizations.

The minority of "crackpots" are now becoming the mainstream, and with them... the trains are beginning to steam-up, rumble, and leave their respective stations.  The 'get on board' or 'get left behind' decision-point is now becoming less theoretical and more tangible.

On the topic of the green movement, the media is dripping with books like The World Without Us, The Earth After Us, and The Last Human and 'thought-experiment-documentaries' like Life After People are springing up through the cracks of every sidewalk.  Long overdue regulatory emissions and fuel economy standards have just passed, and now more and more grocery stores are charging a tax for consumers who use paper or plastic sacks at checkout.  (Even Michael Moore has joined the proverbial greenpeace parade, with his latest entreaty on what should be created in the wake of GM's bankruptcy.  GoodbyeGM,MichaelMoore.pdf (15.29 kb))

On the topic of shifting workplace expectations, there is a trove of research -- two decades old now -- that has tracked and highlighted and forecasted all the varying expectations between 'generations' in the workplace.  Given the recession and an average 40% loss in wealth among those with retirement plans, the 'social contract' between employees and employers is under assault and will result in a renegotiation of what truly matters.

I am running into more and more people, often in their sixties and seventies, who spent some fifty years away from their families to create a nest egg which barely remains.  "Why?" is pretty much all they can ask.  The 'deal' they made with the devil was a house of cards and, as the economy melts down, much of their 'earthly treasure' has become tragically diluted.

For all the parents who worked tirelessly, barely seeing their spouse or children in the mornings or evenings or on weekends, "why?" indeed.  The then-logical, selfless, and sacrificial decision by these millions to create income as a means to secure financial and familial stability has been wholly undermined by a few reckless risk-takers in the most opulent buildings in NYC.

As a result of coming to terms with 'the casino sets the rules,' more and more employees are accepting that 'the house always wins.'  And so, as Wall Street lands on featherbeds of bailout dollars and safety nets while Main Street shutters its windows and closes too many doors, individuals are taking stock and starting to reclaim what they can -- their lives -- for the benefit of their families and the sake of their own sanity.

I witnessed it just last night on Charlie Rose as he interviewed Claire Shipman and Katty Kay about their new book, Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success.  In it, many startling admissions that, hitherto, would have been blasphemous.  But in the harsh sunlight of 2009, many people will say, "Of course."  Read it and decide for yourself, but I predict it will be one of a raft of such books to follow in coming months.  Books about owning reality, speaking truth, and reclaiming one's life on her or his own terms.

I am also hearing and reading more and more about such things as ROWE, Results-Only Work Environment as espoused by CultureRx and embraced by clients like BestBuy.  This is a trend I have seen coming for years, and it goes hand-in-hand with expectations held by many Generation X-ers, Y-ers, and Millennials (20-somethings).  Few within these generations will agree to be chained to a desk, tracked or monitored to within an inch of their life, or to serve as a cog within a large, cold machine.  Most of them will commit to accomplish results and be accountable, but not in exchange for balance, community, or altruism.  And most of them studied George Orwell's 1984 as required reading somewhere in high school. 

With all implosions and explosions, there is debris and fallout.  And following forest fires, be they accidental or prescribed, there is regeneration and new life.  New growth is the 'creative' that follows 'destruction.'  What will the Recession of 2009+ yield?  Only time will tell, but if the hairs on my arm are any indication, Bob Dylan's line was spot-on: the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.  People are questioning. 

As is the case every hundred years or so, this will likely prove to be a season, nothing more.  In time, the pendulum has a tendency to swing back.

But it is also possible that rather than a Season, we are dealing with a Genie or Pandora.  And they, once out of the bottle, lamp, or box, prefer to stay out.

Either way, I'm sure the questions and changes are welcome.  The way we worked throughout the Industrial Revolution is neither sustainable nor compatible with what is coming. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, with new and fervent questions come better answers.  And this, in the words of the "venerable" Martha Stewart, is a good thing. 

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."

                                                                                                - Albert Einstein