George Guzzardo - LIFE Leadership

LAWS OF LEADERSHIP MOVEMENTS

In the new best seller ‘Leadershift’ the authors Orrin Woodward and Oliver DeMille describe a concept called the 5 Laws of Decline. As with Laws of Decline there are also Laws that govern periods of restoration and revivals. When a civilization is in the midst of a renaissance it cycles just the same except instead of a decline it follows a period of growth, enlightenment, and prosperity from the awakening of leadership. These movements as well as the declines are evident in the study of growing and declining civilizations throughout history.

Each law can become interchangeable in the cycle of decline for the next law to take place. They can occur in various sequences. For example when a company or government grows beyond its quality (Law of Diminishing Returns) most of those who perform duties would naturally fall below the 10% for excellence to be required (Sturgeons Law).  This would also hold that if the company or government performs at sub par levels, then the personnel who hold to higher standards (Gresham's Law) would not want to be part of a program that rewards bad behavior. This trend would also aid the 90% whose performance is substandard. The top performers would exit. These are examples that show the 5 Laws of Decline can become evident with any one of the five influencing the others.

When people look back at this time in history it might be called a period of great corruption. Or it might be called a period when great corruption was replaced with great leadership. Russell Kirk wrote, “If a society is deprived of competition, it is forced to rely either upon altruism (the unselfish efforts of men and woman who work without reward) or upon compulsion (force employed to make people work without reward).  You see, when studying history one sees that prior to all great periods of restoration, revivals, reformation, and renaissance there was a period of great corruption.  Historians Spengler and Toynbee have a depth of research into the ebb, growth, climax, decline, and death of civilizations and empires. You can study any period of civilization and you will find cycles of restoration. Look back through the Sumerians, Israelites, Greeks, Romans, Middle Ages / Renaissance, American Revolution, Industrial Age, and our current Information Age and you will find that in periods of restoration and growth they have one thing in common, we are always sure when leadership is absent and when it’s present.

I recently read a book titled, ‘Revivals: Their Laws and Leaders’ by James Burns. Burns was born in Scotland in 1865 and wrote the book in 1909. Just like the 5 Laws of Decline, he traced the Laws of Revival. I will paraphrase:

1. The Law of Progress: Men and women are spurred by conditions to either reach a higher endeavor or want to be revitalized.
2. The Law of Growth: Growth always has an ‘ebb and flow’ or a ‘time and season’.
3. The Law of Periodicity: No one knows when the next awakening will take place. A sense of dissatisfaction must precede.
4. The Law of Leadership: Change comes from Leadership. The leader is called and equipped for their work.
5. The Law of Variety: No one knows where the leader will come from.
6. The Law of Recoil: Restorations, revivals, and reformation have a unique length.
7. The Law of Doctrine: Leaders of courage are raised when morals depreciate. They stop pretending things are well and face corruption.

Preceding every period of restoration or renaissance was a period of intellectual, emotional, or spiritual deadness.  A dull heavy lethargy had set into the culture and a growing discontent was felt throughout society. Courage to change their conditions comes when people see their beliefs as noble and vital. Their hearts become prepared to hear the message. From an intellectual side, the people’s insight becomes luminous. They begin to see how the change can be obtained. They develop the conditions where they have the materials for the task. When one man or woman becomes alive or a number of men and women become alive, others pay attention to them. A contagious atmosphere occurs.

Changes occur and conditions begin to develop during periods of economic change like the change that took place from the agrarian age to the industrial age or from the industrial age to the information age. There can be a national movement that occurs from extraordinary intellectual awakening. Similarly an intellectual awareness took place during the renaissance when the kings and territorial princes were able to exploit the new money economy in order to build up their government bureaucracies and military forces. A restoration took place when the peasants revolted with new ideas that propelled them to action. They had a rising level of expectation on HOW they they were to live.  This happened from learning new information that spread through art and poetry. Then, came a new born sense of freedom.

Leadership movements have created restorations and revivals when there was an awakening of virtue.  C.S. Lewis wrote in 'Mere Christianity': "If you read history you will find the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." "It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this." Just who is destined for leadership? It’s when one becomes conscious of their mission and become ready for service. Leaders are not born, they are developed, and in just about all cases came entirely from among the people. This is why some of the greatest developments will be an outpouring from a Leadership development group.  People can become ethically complacent and content with their faults and not try to improve anymore but this is not the case with leaders. Socrates was to have said, “The greatest fault was to be conscious of none.” That statement might describe the reason for the 5 Laws of Decline. Maybe the corruption we see is a result of an unconscious society. LIFE Leadership can influence that. Commit to becoming an instrument to making a difference and you will become part of a leadership revival. God Bless, George Guzzardo

 

SELF TALK

Self - talk can be one of the most powerful forces to a successful life. It can also be one of the most destructive. When was the first time you realized someone was inside your head having a conversation with you?  It may sound kind of strange to realize that you can have a conversation with yourself inside your head but once you realize it, you will find that it is one of the secrets to success. It’s called self -talk.

It’s not psychotherapy to realize that there are a bunch of thoughts going in your head on at any given time. Try this. Speak out loud when you are alone. Who was it that heard you? Your conscious made a comment that your sub conscious heard. The conscious mind is a partner to your sub conscious mind. When they work together they can develop quite a productive operation. Thoughts are impressions and the subconscious mind is amenable to them. In the best selling book ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’, James Schwartz describes the relationship like in a factory. The conscious mind is the foreman and barks out the orders and the subconscious mind is the workforce capable of huge production if the teamwork between both of them is in sync.

Your subconscious mind also hears verbal sounds that come from music, T.V. and Radio. The words that come from those sources of media can also carry messages that move your subconscious mind to action. Most of the media messages are focused on consumerism. Frequently the news propaganda is focused on inducing fear. How many of us have heard, “Times are hard”, “The economy is struggling”, “Unemployment is high.”  When was the last time your heard about a violent act of crime somewhere in the country that has nothing to do with your situation? Fear, worry, anxiety are induced with this type of messaging. One study showed 75% of everything that is recorded and stored in our subconscious mind is counter – productive and works against us. In short, we are programmed NOT to succeed. Shad Helmstetter PH.D. wrote in his book ‘What To Say When You Talk To Yourself’, “From education I began to learn what we could not do. You began to see the limits of man versus mankind’s potential.”

What’s your voice saying? Does it need a change? Is it saying negative programming messages like “I just know it won’t work”, “I don’t have the talent”, “Today isn’t my day”, “I never have enough time”, “I’m too shy”, “I never get a break”, “It seems like I’m always broke”, “Nothing seems to go right for me”, “I hate my job”, “If I were only smarter”, “I can’t possibly be a success.” Re programming your voice creates beliefs. Beliefs create attitudes. Attitudes create feelings. Feelings create actions. Actions create results. We begin to change our perspectives from thinking self consciously to thinking successfully. Ashleigh Montagu wrote about what we frown at as foolish: “Never stop to think that our freedom to be foolish might well be one of the keys to a genius’s success.”

How do you begin to take the first steps in programming your self - talk? The right environment is critical. We need to be with positive, encouraging people. We need to be in an environment where others act and are overcoming the same negative self - talk we are challenged with. Learning involves interaction. Get around a variety of positive people. Get involved in listening to positive information on audios. The LIFE Leadership subscriptions provide a means of listening frequently.  I heard my friend and mentor Orrin Woodward once say that you listen to positive information to “shut yourself up.” In addition to listening, reading about how others overcame obstacles and poor self – image provide helpful ideas on reprogramming. Expect resistance when trying to break a habit of negative self – talk. Surround your self with a support system.  Become accountable to your support team with a deadline to listening and developing positive suggestions that are helpful.

Eventually you will begin to change over to positive self – conversation. You can recognize what your negative self -talk habits are and utilize what is called “thought pattern interruption.” You recognize the beginning of a negative though and you interrupt it with a pre determined positive message that interferes with the negative message. In essence it’s course correcting but it really begins to strengthen the neural pathways and makes the nerve pathways stronger like a super highway in you brain.  Use your words to paint a picture for your sub conscious so you begin to see yourself the way you want to be. For example, how do you dress?  Change with the use of the power of suggestion.  Emerson said, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

Mahatma Ghandi while seeking solutions to India’s problems said, “I’m doing this because a voice within me speaks.”  The great Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius Antonius wrote in his ‘Meditations’, “They know not how many things are signified by the words stealing, sowing, buying, keeping quiet. Seeing what ought to be done; for this is not effecting by the eyes, but by another kind of vision.” Change your words and change your life. God Bless, George Guzzardo

INFORMATION IS YOUR COMPETITION

The dawn of the information age began the day Bill Gates announced to the rest of the business community that his intention was to sell information. At that moment the rules of business changed. Today, just about every business positions with its information. Many businesses have aggressive public relations budgets to get millions for marketing campaigns on every media outlet. Politicians are known for spending tens of millions to effect public opinion to get elected. The education system is proposing a standardized curriculum for all students to “get the same information.” Not only are we at the cusp of the information age but we are witnessing the competitive advantage of developing a leadership culture as an offspring of this era. A leadership culture is where people can prosper by creating a learning environment. Understand that with information in actual competition for  our thinking, it’s important to secure the right information.

The new rules are dictating a new way of doing business very similar to the dawn of the industrial age.  Over one hundred years ago who would’ve believed that around the turn of the nineteenth century people were riding horse drawn buggy’s, next to sputtering gas lamplights along the streets. The kids grew up idolizing Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. The first electronic transmission by human voice took place on March 10, 1876 after Alexander Graham Bell finished years of working on that device. Great Grandma got a large pine box – like contraption that hung on the wall. It had a mouthpiece speaker and was called a telephone. There were no refrigerators. Everyone had an ice - box and the ice - man came to your house twice a week. Henry Ford formed the Ford Motor Company in 1903. When a vehicle got stranded you could hear the yell, “get a horse.”  In 1904 ice cream cones were invented at the St. Louis World’s Fair. By 1908 the Model T came out with a 20 horse powered engine.  Today the car you are driving has more computer power than what it took to put a man on the moon.

There are always upheavals that come with a change of an era. We are now in the waning days of the industrial age experiencing the infancy of the information age. Trends show that America’s growth does not come from traditional sources such as steel, mining, and manufacturing any more. One recent study found 1/3 of Fortune 500 companies vanished in a ten - year period. Another shows around half of the students being prepared for a job find that the job or the field in which they were trained no longer exists. It’s not uncommon when people are asked what they do for a living, they describe the task they do but have limited or even no understanding of the purpose as what they do.

Economic policies are designed from theories that come from outdated information. Debt increases over the last several years come from economic policies dominated by Keynesian theories. The theory is that the Government runs the economy by manipulating currency and economic policies. Keynes theory provides the rational that government can stimulate or retard economic growth. This is a perfect example of information manipulating our actual beliefs in free enterprise. This information has been effecting us and our lives over the last several decades. Our understanding of this information is critical. The new Financial Pack being released at the June LIFE Leadership convention will provide timeless principles that are essential in the information age.

But remember that information is competing for our attention at unprecedented levels. Discerning which sources to believe becomes the answer on how to prosper in the information age. Harvard Business School professor John Kotter wrote, “Never underestimate the magnitude of forces that reinforce complacency and that help maintain the status quo.” Learning about the 5 Laws of Decline described in Orrin Woodward and Oliver DeMille's new bestseller ‘Leadershift’ have provided answers. Gresham’s Law for example is where leaders are exiting from industries in decline because “bad behavior is rewarded.” Leaders that create a learning culture effects every business. With leaders exiting industries because bad behavior is rewarded then more bad behavior becomes dominant. We can see this in our society today. This bad behavior does not always boil down to ethics but could come from bad information that is learned from out dated sources. Instead of losing the competitive advantage why not re gain it?

The great engineer educator Dr. W. Edwards Deming wrote, “We will never transform the prevailing systems of management without transforming our prevailing systems of education.” Organizations are creating a leadership discipline. The word discipline comes from the Latin (Disciplina) meaning to learn.  Leadership organizations are creating learning cultures. By building a learning culture, information has no ultimate destination or end state, but learning becomes a lifelong journey. This is what the future looks like and people from all around are aligning with that vision. Thomas Edison noticed that the leadership quality of innovation came from the work of immigrants who found the American System was the right environment for their creativity to flourish. Is it time to create that environment where we can learn and grow again?

Buckminster Fuller wrote, “Wealth is the progressive master of matter by the mind.” A human being is not wealthy because of what they have but because of what they know. Great leaders create a learning culture and teach companies to win. Successful information is nothing more than thoughts expressed in ideas. Those ideas can be conveyed with good communication. Good communication is a skill that comes from relationships. Leadership is a relationship and that is more powerful than technology. Another example of how information can effect us comes from a recent LIFE Leadership audio LLR 582 that describes the soft skills of leadership. The competitive advantage comes in with right information. 

If information is your competition isn’t it time for the leadership advantage? Leadership will not stop the inevitable changes that will come from the information age, it will only prepare you to win. God Bless, George Guzzardo

SAVONAROLA AND THE FLORENTINE REVIVAL

In many ways, fourteenth and fifteenth century Italy represents one of the most fascinating times of the world’s civilization. It was surprisingly similar to our own time.  It had all the elements of adventure, scandal, political corruption, intrigue, and mystery. The period better known as the Renaissance holds several breakthroughs that shaped the information age of our world. If you study this period you will also see not only keys to revival but evidence of the 5 Laws of Decline as described in the new best seller ‘Leadershift’ by Orrin Woodward and Oliver DeMille . Valuable knowledge if learned can lead to growth and if ignored leads to decline.

At the center of the Renaissance of the fifteenth century was Florence, Italy. Familiar names like Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, and Machiavelli came from this period in time. Looking closer, we can see the power of the Medici family. They were the ‘VIP’s’  or the ‘big shots’ during the high point of the Renaissance. They had their hands in a little of everything; banking, textile’s, art and merchant trading. In addition, Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope Leo X. For our purposes one Medici in particular stands out.  Lorenzo de Medici or Lorenzo the Magnificent ruled the house of Medici at the time of the Renaissance. A kind of information age was taking place under his rule. Scholars had fled from Constantinople bringing valuable Greek manuscripts, information that gave birth to art, literature, and philosophy.

An intriguing point was when a man of no notoriety by the name of Girolamo Savonarola ran away from home to join the Dominican order. Many considered him a non - conformist. During this time he read from some of the most learned men in history like Dante and Plato. He received instruction in philosophy, logic, and medicine. He studied the Christian doctrines and developed his ability to preach in public. In his early years he made no significant impact but was transferred to Florence. There he was exposed to its beauty but was shocked at its worldliness. He witnessed the 5 Laws of Decline in action. He observed enmities among families, political groups, and social groups. Political turbulence was the norm. He saw violence and insecurity. He watched as the people became weary of political responsibility and began to entrust the despotism similar to that of imperial Rome. Savonarola slowly began to build up a following with his ability to preach. His reputation grew until he became the most famous and influential preacher in the city.

The Florentine Golden Age or so it seemed came to an end when Lorenzo de Medici died in 1492.  After Lorenzo’s passing Savonarola’s passion and sermons increased. Lorenzo’s son Pietro succeeded him but was ousted in favor of Savonarola whose influence had risen. When he preached he denounced excess and predicted Florence would be judged and cleansed. Later, Michelangelo said that Savonarola’s voice still haunted him. Savonarola predicted that great tribulation would overtake the city. All this was happening at a time when Charles VIII claimed the kingdom of Naples belonged to France. The French king fulfilled the predictions when he crossed the Alps and swept into Florence with 30,000 men. Savonarola’s congregation became terrified that his predictions came true and began to think he was a prophet. The people revolted against the Medici family and Savonarola’s followers took control of the city. Savonarola intervened and Charles left eleven days later without doing any damage.

The Republic was restored under Savonarola who began to influence legislation for moral improvements and the common good. He urged the adoption of a republic similar to Venice. In the mean time, a Holy league formed by the Pope developed an alliance that included all cities except Florence. The league severed Charles’s supply lines who was forced to return to France. Savonarola who was a severe critic of secular interests continued his attacks on the Pope as well. Support for Savonarola’s influence began to wane as people saw his conflict with the Pope increase. Savonarola’s republic was short lived. The Pope banned his preaching and Savonarola was excommunicated in 1497. Machiavelli wrote about Savonarola, “Thus it comes about that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed.”  Savonarola lost support overnight and was tried for heresy. The city government eventually arrested him and he was burned at the stake.

What appeared to be the end of the golden age actually was the advancement of learning. A network began to spread because of the connection with the northern European states that came as a result of King Charles opening correspondence with Italy after his invasion. A foundation of new schools, and reading was influenced by the ‘German’ art of printing. In the book, ‘Classics and Renaissance Thought’ Paul Oskar Kristeller writes, “Effective preachers made a deep impact all over fifteenth – century Italy, and sometimes led to revivalist movements and political repercussions of which Savonarola is the most famous but buy no means an isolated instance. In Italy no less than in the rest of Europe, the religious guilds directed the activities of the laity and exercised a tremendous influence upon the visual arts, music, and literature.”  

Such is an example of the 5 Laws of Decline in action. It is enlightening and educational when compared to actions in our society today. However, today we have the ability to study the past and respond to our present differently. Since using the LIFE Leadership products many of us believe that results can be influenced in a positive way, only if the knowledge is applied. God Bless,George Guzzardo