AT ANY RATE
Which Economic Stimulus Package Is Right?

FACE TO FACE

A New Mindset for Getting Organized: An Interview with Marilyn Paul
by Kali Saposnick

No matter how hard she tried to get organized—despite applying tips from countless books and hiring personal organizers—organizational consultant Marilyn Paul could not make a dent in the clutter that surrounded her. A disorganized person for many years, Marilyn's chronic messiness adversely affected her work, relationships, home, and health. "I knew the source of my disorganized state was coming from me," Marilyn admitted, "but I didn't know how to access and change it." She finally decided to write a self-help manual—for herself. In the process, she realized that her systemic approach to getting organized could be a powerful tool for others as well. Her recently published book, It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys: The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized (Viking Compass, 2003), offers hope for people who know that getting organized is key to doing what they most want in life.

Deep-Rooted Beliefs
True change began when Paul decided to examine her deep-rooted belief that messiness and chaos were signs of creativity and that being organized indicated stuffiness and rigidity. She explains, "I thought being disorganized was a critical part of my creative identity and that by adding structure to my life, I would lose my creativity. No wonder I didn't want to get organized." When she mustered the curiosity to test this assumption, Marilyn quickly discovered its flaws. She discovered a plethora of creative yet "organized" people whom she admired, such as the extraordinary painter Barbara Cassel. "Once I saw how primitive my thinking was," she says, "I began to unpack other unexamined beliefs that were holding me back. Soon I realized that the most difficult challenge to becoming organized is changing our mindsets about organization."

Another belief Marilyn exposed was that she was too busy to handle little tasks in the moment. Repeatedly allowing folders and unopened mail to stack up instead of refiling or reviewing them immediately, she attributed this behavior to lack of time. But she soon discovered that restoring order often takes only a few seconds or a few minutes. "What we don't realize is that each of those few seconds accumulate to create large barriers if we don't address them in the moment," explains Marilyn. "It's a myth that we don't have time to organize things every day. Of course we can't always address something immediately, but most of the time we can. And filing, for example, in the present moment turns out to be easier than filing later when we are faced with a huge pile."

Read the complete article.

For resources by Marilyn Paul, see "Pegasus Highlights."

LEARNING LINKS
From Hero As Leader to Servant As Leader
by Ann McGee-Cooper and Duane Trammell

Servant-leadership is a practical philosophy that encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment. It contrasts markedly with common Western ideas of the leader as a stand-alone hero. Especially when we face organizational crises, we tend to long for a savior to fix the messes that we have all helped create. Even in impressive corporate turnarounds, we tend to look for the hero who single-handedly "saved the day." But this myth causes us to lose sight of all those in the background who provided valuable support to the single hero.

Seeing the leader as servant, however, puts the emphasis on very different qualities. Servant leadership is not about a personal quest for power, prestige, or material rewards. Rather than controlling others, servant-leaders work to build a solid foundation of shared goals by awakening and engaging employee knowledge, building strong interdependence within and beyond the organization's boundaries, meeting and exceeding the needs of numerous stakeholders, making wise collective decisions, and leveraging the power of paradox.

A growing number of industry leaders, including Southwest Airlines and TDIndustries, have practiced servant-leadership for several decades. As they experiment with unprecedented and accelerated changes in how they define leadership—in whom employees choose to follow, what it takes to effectively lead others, and how individuals can come together to address constant flux—these companies are overcoming their limitations and accomplishing a true and lasting transformation within their organizations.

Read the complete article, or see The Systems Thinker,
Vol. 10, No. 3 (April 1999).

For additional resources on Servant-Leadership, see "Pegasus Highlights."

AT ANY RATE

Which Economic Stimulus Package Is Right?
by Bill Harris

As elected officials debate which stimulus package would most benefit the United States' economy, many citizens are struggling to understand the long-term implications of each proposal on the floor. Republicans, led by President Bush, are proposing tax cuts to free up cash for people and businesses to spend, claiming that only long-term cuts can lead to true recovery. Democrats are suggesting a one-time tax rebate to get things moving without worsening the debt. Which is the right course to take? Which policy will truly stimulate the economy?

In the "At Any Rate" column "Can We Budget for the Future?" published in Leverage Points Issue 18, Chris Soderquist and I developed a model that takes a systemic approach to reducing the U.S. federal debt and deficit while stimulating the economy, and we invited you to try your hand at testing solutions on our model. While the simulation does not provide the "answer," it offers a framework for improving the dialogue about the issue.

In addition, in a posting on the Pegasus forums, I offered my own thinking on how the economy could work—a short-term government stimulus to boost the economy now and reduce the debt later—and that approach achieved both goals on our model. I encourage people concerned about the U.S.'s economic future to make their thinking operational by exploring their ideas on our model—or by creating their own—and sharing the results with others. In this way, we can raise the rigor of discourse in society and improve the decisions we make collectively.

Read the column and test the model.