Seed Corn in the Information Age

How many people had parents involved in farming? How many people had grandparents involved in farming? Many, many people, isn’t it?

Connected to the way of life in farming, the phrase “Don’t eat your seed corn,” has a distinct meaning. If you eat that seed now, you have nothing to plant for the coming year. We will have nothing to plant for the future.

In the Agrarian Society, seed corn is what you put aside for the coming year to have crops in the future. Public Schools are the “seed corn” of the Information Age. It is from the Public Schools that we grow our future. And if we skimp on our future “seed corn” or don’t preserve it as our number one priority, we sacrifice our future for the comfort of today.

It has taken us many, many years to raise the bar of education consistently pushing it up, year by year. If we sacrifice our Public Schools today, we undo in only a couple of years what it has taken us decades to build up.

It’s important, even today, that we heed the words of wisdom in that we “don’t eat our seed corn.”

Wise Men Still Follow Signs.

Wise Men still follow signs.

In the time before the birth of Christ, Magi from afar, saw the signs in the skies and followed a start. These Magi were men whose job it was to be learned men, men of wisdom knowledge; wise men to advise kings and leaders. These men were the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet’s of their time. They were very smart fellows.

My father had been an educator for most of my life. First as a teacher, then as an administrator and Superintendent of schools. When he retired from the school business, he entered the ministry. As a local minister, he’s part of a group of them who meet regularly to share and support one another.

He tells the story of one of his colleagues, that was getting a tank of gas at the local station. One of those stations that you have to swipe your credit card. If you don’t have a credit card, you have to go in and pre-pay with cash. The man looked across the pumps while he was waiting on his tank to fill and there he saw a mini-van. You know, that soccer-mom type of mini-van. Inside, he could see that there were four kids. All stair stepped in ages, probably from a young teen down to one just getting into school.

He watched as a woman came out from the station and started to pump gasoline. But, it wasn’t long before the pump clicked off, as she’d reached the end of the cash she’d taken inside. Slowly, the woman started to sink down against the pole next to the pump until she was squatted down on the ground, one hand on her head, the other clenched, a look of anguish on her brow.

Crossing between the pumps, the man approached the woman and knelt down, “Is there something wrong?” he asked her. The woman told him that her husband wasn’t in the picture anymore, she didn’t know where he was. She had lost her job when the economy had gone bad and she hadn’t been able to get another one to support her children. She was on her way to Wichita, Kansas, where her parents were. There, at least her children would have a warm place to sleep, food to eat, and there would be love to surround them with.

She had put her last five dollars in the tank, and all she had left was a few coins in her hand. If you know anything about the map, five dollars worth of gas won’t get you from Kansas City, Missouri to Wichita, Kansas.

Without hesitation, the man reached over and swiped his credit card and filled her gas tank with gasoline. He reached into his pocket and took a twenty dollar bill from his money clip and pushed it into her hand with the coins. “Take your children down to the McDonalds and make sure they get some food,” he told her as he smiled.

Looking up at him, she asked, “Did God send you?”

For those who aren’t followers of Christ, the moral to the story is: When you’re in the Right Place, at the Right Time, do the Right Thing.

For those who do follow Christ, the thing to remember is that Wise Men still follow signs. Sometimes, those signs are as everyday, as normal as our gas gauge dipping down towards Empty.

Business Week: Jim Collins on How the Mighty Have Fallen.

I've always found the insight of Jim Collins very interesting. In a Business Week article, he talks about the various stages of how a Good/Great company starts to get into trouble and why.

If you haven't read Jim's book, Good to Great, then you're really missing out on some key ideas that can be applied to almost any company, group or organization. I highly recommend it.

From Business Week:

http://feedroom.businessweek.com/?fr_story=1148b1c2385a2af54c528872d478240e72f62d2f&rf=bm

Freedom is Never Free.

Sometimes we forget just how precious our freedom is. Today is a day to remember those men and women who have served not merely this country, but it's citizens, and the generations that have come since their conflict.

When we forget that these men and women who served, or gave their lives for us, then we will quickly be unworthy of what they have given us.

(Photo by hjelle on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hjelle/)

Doing the Right Thing, even when it's not Easy.

I'm involved with our local Schools as an elected official on our School Board. Recently some of our students in the third grade participated in a Kansas City Royals Father of the Year Essay Contest. This hear we had a very special essay written by a young man named Tyler. Here is what he wrote:

My read dad is [Name]. He was not a very good man. He go in trouble a lot and he had to go to jail for very bad things. My two brothers and I had to spend time in foster care. It made me sad because I couldn't see my friends. However, i have a fantastic Grandpa. My Grandpa took my brothers and me in to stay with him. My Grandpa is so thoughtful and caring because he chose to do this. Last summer my outstanding Grandpa was no longer my Grandpa, he became a terrific Dad. My Grandpa and Grandma adopted my brothers and me. My new Dad is so nice and kind. He does lots of special things to help me grow up to be a wonderful person. My Dad loves me and I am grateful to have him as my Dad.

Tyler wrote the winning essay for our area and was award Royals tickets for his tow brothers, himself and his special Grandparents.

This is, to my thinking, such a wonderful example of a man who knows he should do the right thing, even when it's not the easiest thing for him to do. This man, I suspect, has the heart of a Servant-Leader, and in his time, has been a good leader.

Servan-Leader: The Power of Positive Words

A leader, in general, has a great deal of power within their hands. They can influence those who follow them so easily sometimes, and just as easy influence those who may only be on the outside of their group they lead.

It's important that a Servant-Leader strive to speak the truth with compassion. Without such, we will find ourselves no longer the servant we should be. We must use words to lift up others, make them better than they are. Through positive reinforcement, we build self-confidence in others, and make them stronger team members, and push them further towards being better leaders themselves.

The greatest accomplishment that a Servant-Leader can reach for, is to create a Legacy of Leadership. They groom someone to replace themselves, and set them up to create even bigger success than they have achieved. Imagine, if you will, how successful a group, team or company is, and what it says when they say, "Hey, isn't that the team where we got all those good group-leaders from that Bobby-Joe put together?"

It really wasn't that Bobby-Joe did something more magical than encourage and build people of quality who were confident to lead others. That, is truly a Legacy of Leadership.

Remember to never dress down someone in public, but always give praise for things well done in the public forum. Corrections are always done gently, in private. By doing this, you create more trust with your team. They know if there's a mistake, you're not going to broadcast it as an example to others, but you will help them correct it in a way they will learn from it, and not feel as though they're being beaten with a verbal whip.

Always work to use a calm and steady tone with others, even when you want to raise your voice. This goes a long way to help keep arguments from cropping up. It's just hard to argue with someone who won't keep pace with the level of your voice. More than that, it gives you the opportunity to defuse things before they blow up. Besides, it will give you the chance to offer up alternative suggestions, and help you to steer the conversation to less turbulent waters so meetings don't become unproductive.

By using Positive Words in the way we speak, we build others up. We reinforce their self-esteem, we make them stronger and better and more focused team members. And when we use Positive Words as a matter of course, they become our Culture. If that's the way we do things, it becomes ingraned in us and we carry it out beyond our team, to everything we touch. When we do things the "right" way, people take note, and want to know why we're ...just a little different.

It's good to be different that way.

Servant-Leader: Humility

The place of a servant-leader is one of humility. Without it, we often find that we're going to get our priorities in the wrong order. Maybe not at first, but if we're not mindful, we'll find that we're not really where we should be.

C.S. Lewis indicated that the first step in acquiring humility is to realize that we are proud, "If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."

Harry Joiner wrote, "Humility involves dying to oneself -- Sacrificing oneself to a higher good or yielding to legitimate authority. Quite often it means doing what you don't want to do. sometimes it means going down with the ship so that others may live. And always, it means killing the egotistical, self-centered person inside all of us who wants to be comforted, petted and admired. Humility is a Godly thing."

Some suggestions for practicing humility in the workplace:

• When you're in a contest of will with another person, just stop talking and let the other person be in the limelight.
• Ask others how you are doing. It takes humility to ask the question, and even more to consider the answer.
• Share credit for success with others. By doing this, you set an example of humility that inspires others to follow suit.

Here are some ways that a servant-leader can communicate humility in their organization:

• Invite feedback. Prepare your employees so they won't just tell you what you want to hear. Leaders must make it safe for their people to offer criticism as well as advice.
• Encourage dissent. Accepting dissent is a lesson in humility, you will also get other points of view, which are valuable.
• Turn mistakes into lessons. Don't cover up mistakes in order to look good, admit them. Publicize them as a way to learn from them. It takes humility to admit a mistake, and you can turn that into a success if you learn from it.
• Expect humility in others. If you show humility, you can ask and expect others on your time to do the same.

The dictionary reveals humility such as "the quality or state of being humble"; and humble is defined as "not proud or haughty, not arrogant or assertive, unpretentious, modest, or low in rank." Humble and humility are both derived from the Latin word humus, meaning "earth," a reminder that humility can be fertile soil for a fruitful life.

A humble servant-leader, will bear fruit.