One day we're gonna live in Paris

One day we're gonna live in Paris
I promise
I'm on it
When I'm bringing in the money
I promise
I'm on it
I'm gonna take you out to club showcase
We're gonna live it up
I promise
Just hold on a little more

This song just hits a nerve. Always wanted to live in Paris. I mean, really live there. Remembering our Monster Europe Trip (8 countries in 2 weeks), the one place I always come back to is Paris. Just so lovely to have a quick coffee/drink at a bistro, getting your cheese and bread at a local store. While, at the same time, you can eat at the best restaurants in this world.
We tend to spend a lot of time in Amsterdam and look back on Berlin, remembering an amazing experience. But Paris is just something that sticks closely to my heart.

Love you can smell

When we put love into our work, it changes everything.

I used to like Starbucks coffee but since I experienced Intellegentsia Coffee, I'm a changed person. Everthing in their store is full of love and passion for coffee. Somehow, when they prepare my latte, their passion is transferred to the end product. (No, I don't get paid by them. Just want to make sure everybody will try their excellent product.)

I feel the same when people cook for me or just make a plain cup of coffee with a french press. Same is true when I go to a local butcher or farmers market. There's more to it than the product, I can take the emotion they put into the product home.

Sure, nobody can create excellent meals each and every day. But just a little effort and thought goes a long way. Small pieces of tomato sprinkled around a plain spaghetti dish can change everything. Or freshly pressed OJ in a champagne. These little things show appreciation and passion for your loved ones. Or your customers.

In the end, it's all about others. And, ultimately, you.

The ability to manage and to believe in the opportunity to make others better and greater than yourself are based in a strong, unwavering belief in humanity.
We often make the mistake to assume that the human experience should be a zero-sum game: When one wins, somebody has to lose. This assumption is not based in reality: When you're happy, I don't have to be sad. My success doesn't require your failure. The human spirit and experience leaves room for all of us to be happy, lead a fulfilling life, and enrich others.

Clearly, this does not happen to all of us. But, there's no law or rule that tells us it can't. Ultimately, our only choice is to devote ourselves to this ultimate goal: mentor and develop those people that will create and achieve bigger things we ever envisioned.

If you try to make others greater than yourself, you create an amazing situation: They become human giants while you morph into a spiritual giant.

Thank you to Steve Garber for this inspirational thought.

Monday Morning Inspiration

Steve Farber is preident of Extreme Leadership, Inc., a leadership consulting company. Below are some remarks he made on the occasion of publishing his recent book, The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership (2004).

Ultimately, the motivator of a leader is love. It comes down to the heart. It's love of something or someone. Love of the cause, of the principle, of the idea, of the future that you're trying to create, love of the people you're serving and the people that you're working with. That's really where the energy comes from.

On the subject of love, one of the characters in the book...says the the ideal is, "Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do." That covers everything as far as I'm concerned.

The first part "do what you love", is your own connection to your work. That's where you get your energy. How can you expect your customers to love doing business with you if you don't love your business yourself? People have a pretty sophisticated bullshit meter and they know when you're faking it. I'm not talking about the metaphysical "do what you love and the money will follow" hoo-ha stuff. If you're in love with your work you're going to bring more energy and imagination and creativity to it. And you're going to have the juice to work through the obstacles. But it's not doing what you love just because. The ethical context or moral context, or whatever you want to call it, is "in the service of the people."

Leaders should see themselves as being in the service of the people that they're leading. You're creating the best possible environment for them to do the best possible work. And it's also in the service of the people that you're selling to, essentially, and those people should "love what you do." That doesn't mean go out and only do business with the people who already love you. It should be at the core of everything that you're trying to create.

When you walk into the reception area of a company you've never visited before, you can tell within 30 seconds whether or not the place is exciting and cool, whether they're doing interesting work, or whether it's a morgue.
As an Extreme Leader, it's your job to generate energy in the environment and in the people around you.
There are people that get very energetic about - from the outside looking in - seemingly mundane things. There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal a number of years ago about how Gillette has managed to create an environment that's entirely energetic about razor blades. They are completely stoked about...shaving!
To hear people talk about the product of developing great shaving technology and how they get so excited about it is really inspiring.

"Extreme Leadership" is a redundant phase, because if somebody's really leading, what they're doing is already extreme. Leadership is the act of transformation. Taking nothing and turning it into something.

My favorite quote: "Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do." Truer words have never been spoken. There are so many leaders out there working for other leaders that don't love what they do. Time to move on, if that's the case. Underappreciation is the #1 reason for leaders to move on. Not salary. Not title. Not bonus. Underappreciation.