How - Dov Seidman [9]
Throughout this book, I show you how qualities most people think of as soft—trust, respect, transparency, purpose, reputation—have become the hard currency of achievement in a connected world—the drivers of efficiency, productivity, and profitability. You will come to understand that the HOWs of human conduct will be the determining factor in your long-term success. At first blush, these ideas may seem to contradict much of what you believe or seem counterintuitive. By book’s end, you might feel differently.
Waves are fun; that is their greatest benefit. Standing up, waving your arms, screaming your head off for the home team, and, most important, being connected to everyone else in the stadium when you do so, that’s fun. But Krazy George told me that the most significant thing about his first Wave, and every Wave he has made since, is how it changes everything that comes after. For the rest of the game, the crowd cheers more vigorously. They are more excited and engaged in the outcome. They feel more a part of the experience. The Wave is not only powerful in itself; it unleashes long-term, enduring power in its wake. That is an essential property of power; once the circuit is complete, the current continues to flow.
There is a Wave pounding through the people who work in companies like UPS and many others that everyone there enthusiastically perpetuates. It represents a sea change, an approach to how we do what we do that generates lasting, quantifiable value. I believe it is a power that every individual and group of people can understand, master, and learn to apply, and this book will try to help you do that. This book is about the tidal power in HOW.
Part I
HOW WE HAVE BEEN, HOW WE HAVE CHANGED
INTRODUCTION: THE SPACES BETWEEN US
Consider, for a moment, our brains. Individual working units in the brain are called neurons. Some neurons are highly specialized to perform certain cognitive functions. Others are arranged in groups of varying size to accomplish more complicated tasks. Some are charged with storing things, and others with just passing information along. Neurons have excitable membranes, a unique cellular characteristic that allows them to generate and propagate electrical signals. When a neuron wants to act, it sends out a small signal, like an e-mail, to the parts of the brain with which it wants to connect. That signal, in order to get where it wants to go, must jump a series of small gaps, each called a synapse, that separate one neuron from another. A child’s brain contains as many as 1,000 trillion synapses, but by adulthood age and decay pare that number back significantly to between 100 trillion and 500 trillion. What occurs in our synapses—in other words, in the space in-between—is a key determiner of successful brain function. So-called strong synapses pass messages—called action potentials—easily to the neurons around them. Where synapses are strong, they allow for the free-flowing transmission of energy from neuron to neuron that enables the vast range of human capability. Where synapses are weak, however, messages don’t get through. A weak synapse drops the ball, so to speak.1
Now, imagine a football stadium, full of people. It functions in a remarkably similar fashion. Each fan is like a neuron. Each has an excitable membrane capable, should the individual desire, of reaching out and connecting with others. The space between them, where one person’s skin leaves off and another’s begins, is like a synapse. It’s the space in-between where we connect. There are places in the stadium where people have strong connections—they know each other, hold season tickets, or share a similar enthusiasm for the home team—and places where the connections are weak. When the space