In The Spirit of a New Order of Things

By Craig Clark | Published: March 24, 2012

When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, if he had known he would among other things have to wander in the desert for 40 years subsisting on flat cakes, he may not have taken on the job. I think a lot of leaders are like that. The idea of building organizational excellence into the fabric of their organization for sustained superiority sounds good; then they try it!

After all, a leader’s job could be legitimately framed in the task of growing the organization. Now growth could be in size, revenue, margins, profits, stock price, etc, but nonetheless most leaders’ performance is assessed in terms of growing something. A lot of CEO’s, owners, executives find ways to accomplish this. This is not the “wandering in the desert for forty years part”, this is the getting out of Egypt and crossing the Red Sea part. I don’t know, but reading suggests that Moses kept the Israelites wandering through inspiration, manipulation and belief, not to mention occasionally calling on the help of “higher authority”. This may be the first organizational effort to capture the engagement of its people. So what is the point?

If you are going to grow the fabric of the organization, you have to grow the spirit!

If you don’t, as you grow the physical you stretch the Spirit of your organization thinner and thinner. You get big, you have a large footprint and there is little essence to what you have. Look at most large corporations, see if this model fits what you see and hear. So, I ask you, where is the heart of your company? Are you attending to it? Are you focused on growing your revenue or engaging your people? In the end, we think it takes both. In the March 10 article, “Bringing about a new order of things ll”, we gave you a template. Consider it a road map. Should you be bold enough to take on the journey, remember Moses and consider the following, it’s a long arduous effort and nurture the Spirit, the body will follow.

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Victim Mentality (…teaser)

By Brett Morris | Published: March 18, 2012

No one wants to cop to being a victim. There seems to be a reluctance in most of us to admit that we are at any given time acting, talking or thinking like someone who has been victimized. Right now I’m being victimized by Microsoft Word spell and grammar check as it underlines words and phrases I type incorrectly. Small example, but it shows how pervasive this mentality can be.

The alternative to being a victim is quite simple: taking the path of full accountability, but we don’t always do it.

Why? The adult reason could be we don’t want to admit fault … but let’s get to that later.

Another possibility? Could be there’s just not as much drama in it … thinking drama doesn’t apply to you?

Let’s see.

If you get wronged by someone, some thing, or traffic, or the weather … taking responsibility for your role in the matter just isn’t as juicy as blaming your circumstances. If you call up your sympathizers and sway them to your side it can be bring an interesting and dramatic fun to your life. Plus you have a story to tell … again, and again, and again, and again.

It could even become the story of your life! Now you have an identity to cling to and to blame for your failures!

I would have been successful if not for that thing that happened to me when I was a child …

I would have been on time if not for the unexpected traffic at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon …

I could go to the gym if not for my family and all their demands …

A little dramatic, yes. But isn’t that what we do?

What might be the dramatic story of your life? If you don’t think you have one ask the people in your life. It will occur to them as the thing(s) you regularly complain about.

Big topics might be:

Marriage, job or health …

Smaller ones might look like:

Aches, allergies, broken back door, appliance with a mind of its own …

The relief is found in a jump from victim mentality to accountability … and it is actually a short little hop. How do we make that hop?

More on victim mentality another day … I did headline this entry as a teaser, but we’ll leave you with this:

More than requiring real work what it really takes is a different way of thinking about who’s in charge of your life. The willingness to make that shift in thinking is what makes all the difference.

Next time … Are there unexpected benefits of Forgiveness?

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Bringing About a New Order Of Things – II

By Craig Clark | Published: March 10, 2012

As promised in the previous article, here is the path or template we follow in pursuit of helping a client to achieve a sustainable level of organizational excellence.

Engage and Explore

Discovery

Identify the Restraints

Transform the condition/Paradigm shift

Master the Breakthrough

Build the Breakthrough into the behavior of the organization

Given there is a certain amount of repetition in parts of this process, an organization can plan to spend one to three or four years at this, depending on their size and the speed at which they engage.  Individuals can take less time depending on their willingness to challenge their belief systems.

Now what I have given you is really just a skeletal structure, about as useful as saying to get from Austin to Los Angeles you go west thru New Mexico and then Arizona. Any time a potential client reaches out to us, obviously it is driven by a concern about something.  It can take multiple conversations to identify the “something”.  This is a critical moment in the process. Often the “something” is simply symptomatic of the actual issue.  Often the prospective client has identified the issue as something wrong with the organization.  Not many leaders fully appreciate the organization learns its behavior from them.  So in “engage and explore” there is a period of going “deep” with the leader to discover the actual issue in the organization and their relationship to it and then coaching them to a moment of clarity about this.  At this point we can explore with people around the leader what are the leaders’ “blind spots” and how those blind spots impact them, the organization and its performance. This information provides the illumination for the leader to see their role in things fully.  Only when the leader can see their role in the issue is something new possible. At this point the issue can often be resolved by a period of coaching with the leader or it may be a period of coaching with the leader to prepare to go deeper into the organization.  Either way, properly executed, the leader and the organization will have gotten a return at this point.

So in this piece, following the template, we have taken a brief look at “Engage and explore”. It is the critical step of determining the issue and setting the leader up to succeed in whatever follows.  Our next piece will look at moving into the organization.

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Bringing About a New Order Of Things

By Craig Clark | Published: February 29, 2012

In physics, momentum is the speed at which you can move mass. In the business world mass are the organizations, except there is really no thing, organization. It only exists on paper or in thought.  The mass in organizations are its people.

Organizational excellence is building an environment that engages people to do their best towards delivering clear outcomes, enthusiastically and collaboratively consistently over time.


We do not think this is an especially complicated process nor do we think it is a particularly easy process.  We just think it’s doable.  Any organization, with sufficient commitment and guidance, can.  We are dedicated to providing the guidance.

A number of years ago, I started this journey involved in training and development seminars focused on transforming the quality of people’s lives.  They were very successful, still are.  However it occurred to me that on a global scale this was a very very long road to making any

CEO, Founder

significant impact in the world.  Could bringing the same transformational qualities to organizations provide a better shot? It certainly seemed so.  So I became a consultant.   Some thirty plus years later I am of the thought that if I had the mythical lifetimes of a cat, maybe.  What can I report?  Over that time I have learned a lot about what it takes to transform organizations.  I would be remiss if I did not admit I have learned “a lot more” by the failures of my efforts than the successes.  What have I learned?  You have to do it fast, you better produce results early, you need to measure the effort and it takes a lot of commitment and willingness to change on part of the organization, or more specifically the leadership of the organization.  So where are we now, we have learned a methodology for how to bring that to organizations and we are busy honing our skills.

Are we going to be a world game changer for organizations, no! However we can provide a model for transforming organizations that could be a paradigm changer in the consulting world, yes we can! And that is exactly what we are dedicated to doing and to transforming a few organizations along the way.

This is the first in a series of pieces that will take our readers through the steps of how do you transform an organization onto a platform of sustainable organizational excellence.  The next article will cover the whole template for change that has been so successful for us.  Subsequent articles will take the pieces of that template individually.  Then, you can decide for yourself.

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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

By Brett Morris | Published: February 22, 2012

THE GOLDEN RULE AND FULL ACCOUNTABILITY

It has often been said “no good deed goes unpunished”. Many of us don’t have to look too far in our history to find evidence why this is a true statement. How many times have you gone out on the skinny branches to help someone in need only to get no sufficient gratitude or payback? Wouldn’t it be great if they just did the right thing and recognized how generous you are? It’s much easier to do “unto your neighbor …“ if there is a solid guarantee they will reciprocate.

At this point I will pose the suggestion that a 50-50 mentality does NOT add up to 100%. In fact it is much closer to zero.

50-50 mentality makes me think of one of my favorite metaphors: “It’s not leaking on my side of the boat, only yours.”

If I venture to take accountability for my half I am not adding to yours. In reality what I’m doing is apologizing with the condition you do the same. So this means I get to hold on to the belief that you were wrong, because you apologized. Furthermore I get to carry this with me for future use should I need evidence to again prove your wrongness. Isn’t that what we do?

Full Accountability

When we take full accountability for the situation we do it 100%. We do it unconditionally and without expectations from the other party.

Does this completely forgive the other person? Yes.

Does it sometimes feel like you will choke on your pride as it goes down? Yes.

Does this mean you are condoning bad behavior? No.

Look … we’ve spent a lifetime surviving and attempting to get people to do things our way. Taking full accountability is relieving yourself of this burden. This is good news!

Blaming puts me in jail. Taking accountability gives me the key to unlock the cell door and step into freedom and power.

Freedom and power is the whole point really. Otherwise if I’m shirking responsibility, it’s kind of like I’m affirming an inability to deal with the situation. By taking accountability I’m sending a message to myself: I made this, and I can deal with this!

Try it out and notice the difference in power. It is this power that gets us what we want.

Sound good so far? Sound powerful and free?

Next time … where do we get derailed?

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Farmhouse Delivery Is Expanding to Houston!

By Momentum | Published: January 26, 2012

Congratulations to Farmhouse on their expansion into the Houston market – we’d be honored if you would share the news with anyone you think might be interested!

Farmhouse Delivery Is Coming to Houston!

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Getting to know… Consultant Brett Morris

By Momentum | Published: June 29, 2011


1) I have yet to meet a consultant who started their career as one. What other paths did you go down before landing at Momentum?
I was a landscaper for 15 plus years and short stints in other fields, including finance manager at an international corporation and an English teacher in Istanbul.

2) Momentum is all about transparency, so let’s apply that here. You recently moved away from Austin to Iowa. What took you there? Are you still accepting Austin clients?
Primarily my family and I moved to Iowa to take over my wife’s family’s business and to be closer to my in-laws. And the great thing about being a coach and consultant with Momentum, is there are no physical boundaries. Most of our work is done via teleconference and coaching our clients through the day-to-day happenings in their businesses. Momentum has clients all over the world – North America, Africa, Europe — so the distance between Austin and Iowa doesn’t seem that far. I also fly to Texas at least every couple of months. I am still very much a part of Momentum Consulting and always open to more Austin clients.

3) So, Texas boy, how well did you survive your first midwest winter?
Oh, it was fine. And by “fine” I mean it was cold and snowy all the time. A month in Austin helped me survive. Of course now that it’s over, it all seems very tolerable. It definitely heightens my appreciation of the other seasons.

4) You have a toddler at home. How has parenthood changed the way you consult?
I used to use a lot of sports analogies, now I use a lot of parent analogies. In coaching sessions with my clients, now we talk about how they hold their commitments in all aspects of their lives – not just at work.

5) What do you miss most about Austin?
It’s not what I “miss” but what I notice that I took for granted. Being born and raised in a great place like Austin I never noticed the value of community until it was gone. Like a fish wouldn’t notice the value of water until it was on dry land. Creating a new community from scratch has been a worthy challenge though.

6) What have you learned about human nature in your work as a consultant and coach?
The universal unwillingness to do what we know is good for us. Over and over and over and over… And on the brighter side … when a client takes an opportunity to demonstrate courage beyond what I thought they would actually do, I get inspired to follow their lead in my own life.

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Meet the Consultants: An Interview with Martha Lynn Mangum

By Momentum | Published: February 8, 2011

1) How long have you been with Momentum Consulting?
Since 2003. Wow, time flies!

2) Why do you love what you do?
The reason above all others is that it fulfills my number one core value of connection. But I also love what I learn from my clients. They all come from different industries and backgrounds. It’s fascinating to learn what makes each of them tick and what got them started in their field of interest. Coaching is a great opportunity for me to continue learning and expand my knowledge of the business world. 
 
3) What is the best feedback you’ve gotten from a client?
“You’ve changed my life.” Can’t really beat that.
 
4) You hold a degree in spiritual psychology. What got you interested in that?
I always wanted to study psychology in college, but got off track in the beginning. My first four years, my goal was just to get through it as quickly as possible. When I went back for my master’s, I still had the interest in psychology, but was really intrigued by the spiritual aspect of it all. The idea that there’s something out there that’s bigger than us, supporting us. I believe that.
 
5) Why did you decide to plant your roots in Austin?
My family is in Corpus, so I love being relatively close to them. Austin just has so much to offer. It has that small town feel but with big city opportunities. I love the Bass Performing Arts Center, the lakes, the parks, the live music (Bob Schneider!)… I could go on and on. You can completely be yourself here. It’s a true, no-judgement melting pot.
 
6) Describe a typical weekend in the Mangum household.
Coffee on the deck, reading, exercising and quality time with my fabulous husband, Greg. If we have the kids for the weekend, then it’s all about them. If it’s football season, then it’s all about football. We love to entertain. 
 
7) How did you end up at Momentum? 
I was at a crossroads for creating a new career for myself. This led me to do some other transformational work with Craig and Marlene. They had focused mainly on the international consulting work and then we started talking about growing their business locally. All I could think was “I want to play there. That’s good stuff they’re cooking up.” 
 
8 ) To wrap it up, what are your top three favorite restaurants in Austin?
1) Fino
2) Uchi
3) Shady Grove



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Meet the Consultants: An Interview with Marlene Clark

By Momentum | Published: August 31, 2010

1)   Why do you love what you do?
I am really driven by helping people understand that they don’t have to do it alone, and I think that stems from my core value of partnership. We work so hard on our relationships in our personal lives, but all too often that doesn’t translate in the workplace. Blind spots stop people from being able to create great partnerships, when really it’s all that we want. It’s like when you’re driving down the road and you don’t see the car that is right next to you because it is in your blind spot. The same goes for our relationships. There are things we can’t see (from our limited point of view) that keep us from achieving the level of partnership we desire. Once we are able to “see” these blind spots, then the next course of action comes naturally.

2)  Name a famous person who has been influential in your life:
You may laugh, but I would say Jesus and Madonna (and I’m not talking about Jesus’ mama!). I am attracted to compassionate rule breakers –– who shake up the status quo –  I even married one.

3)   What is your favorite restaurant in Austin?
It’s such a cliché, but of course I love Uchi. However, dining on the patio at the Paggi House is always a favorite.

4)   Tell me about your first job:
At 16, I started a business renting inner tubes from a corner property above the Comal River. My marketing strategy was simple: arrange the tubes differently everyday…and play hackey sack in a bikini.  My philosophy was to keep it simple and stay true to who I was – and it worked. I ran the business for six years, and it’s where I first learned about customer service, money managing and leadership development. We sold the company to a family member, and it’s still going strong today!

5)   Describe yourself in three words:
Tenacious, compassionate and fair.

6)   If you could live anywhere in the world, obviously you would pick Austin. What would be your second choice?
Bali left a huge impression on me. The people are full of gratitude, compassion and acceptance. You feel ethereal just being on the island. I always felt loved and alive there, and that atmosphere made me want to pay it forward.

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