“Even the most basic outline of his life shows how great he was, because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because [though] he may have surrendered, . . . he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never […]
Flipping the Script
“Man should not be in the service of society; society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that’s what is threatening the world at this minute.” —Joseph Campbell The first mission of any company should be to make work meaningful, rewarding, […]
Set Up to Fail
“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere—it is within each […]
Winning in the Age of Oneness
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” —Henry Ford The traditional definition of winning is Darwinian. Every winner requires an equal and offsetting loser. For me to win, someone else must lose. Picture the Roman Colosseum, where it was kill or be killed—eat or be eaten. According to this view, […]
People Are Good
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” —Romans 5:12 I’ve found a new favorite book. It’s titled Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman. You may have to search for it, because it threatens too many conventional […]
Everyone Is King
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.” —Lucille Ball In January of 1988 I drove from Bowdoin College to Bridgton Academy to interview for a teaching and coaching job. Upon arrival I found myself sitting on the less powerful side of a large oak desk. Bob Walker, the headmaster, sat opposite me. […]
Strength for Your Purpose
Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe. Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He simply reminds people of who they have always been. […]
The Art of the Comeback
“To have a comeback you have to have a setback.” —Mr. T Falmouth High School—January 1983. I jump for a rebound. The next thing I know, I’m lying on the court, clutching my right shoulder in extreme pain. I would learn an hour later at the hospital that I’d dislocated my shoulder. Shoulders are pretty […]
Look at Me, Daddy!
“No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” —John Wheeler, physicist Alison and I have been married for thirty-two years. During that time, we have had four dogs, all yellow Labs. Bowdoin, Tampa, Tucker, and Scout are their names. Only the last of which is still with us today. Most dogs […]
Five Flashbacks
Flashback #1: Our daughter Abby is five years old, and blindfolded. In the middle of the screened-in porch hangs a piñata. It’s a colorful donkey twirling gently in the breeze. In her hands Abby holds a yellow Wiffle bat commandeered from the garage. Abby swings and misses, yet all the other children cheer, confident in […]
Oneness Demands Freedom
“If one person in your family commits a crime, the entire family must be purged.” “When you have food in your stomach you can think about the meaning of life, but when you are starving, all you can think about is hunger.” “I never saw a map of the world. As an Asian I didn’t […]
Practice Accentuates Oneness
“If you want to be a champion you’ve got to feel like one, you’ve got to look like one, you’ve got to act like one.” —Red Auerbach John Kohtala was the best jump shooter I ever met. If he could get his right elbow above your left defensive hand, he was going to shoot, and it […]
Oneness Isn’t Sameness
“It takes a lot of different flowers to make a bouquet.” —Ancient Islamic proverb I can still picture the world from my dad’s shoulders. I’m two and a half years old and he has an ankle in each hand. My head is above his and I feel as if I’m on top of the world […]
Corporate Oneness
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” —Joseph Campbell It would be impossible to acknowledge the oneness that defines our universe and then go back to work as a supervisor, executive, or team leader and manage “employees” the old-fashioned way—barking out instructions with a heavy hand. Workers historically have been commodities. […]
Two Thousand Years of Propaganda
Go ahead and hate your neighbor Go ahead and cheat a friend Do it in the name of heaven You can justify it in the end. —One Tin Soldier Why has acknowledging our universal connectivity and oneness been downplayed for so long? The answer has two parts. First, only recently has scientific understanding advanced far […]
You Get What You Feel
“The earth and myself are of one mind.” —Chief Joseph “Hey, Dad, what’s wrong?” one of our daughters asks. Whenever I’m asked that question, I’m a tad disappointed (in myself), and yet fascinated by the intuition of the person who has spotted what I was trying to conceal. We’re together as a family, so I’m […]
Overreaching In the Age of Shared Leadership
“Winds in the east, mist blowing in, like something is brewing and about to begin. Can’t put me finger on what lies in store, but I think what’s to happen all happened before.” —Bert, Mary Poppins It chokes me up to see news footage of ordinary Ukrainian citizens fighting the Russian army, street to street […]
Planet Earth Needs a Flag
“It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among them men get lost.” —Black Elk In my last post I wrote about what the sandpiper knows, the tiny bird that moves predictably with the unpredictable. No two waves are ever the same, yet the sandpiper […]
What the Sandpiper Knows
“We Indians think of the Earth and the whole universe as a never-ending circle, and in this circle, man is just another animal. The buffalo and the coyote are our brothers, the birds, our cousins. Even the tiniest ant, even a louse, even the smallest flower you can find, they are all relatives.” —Jenny Leading […]
Mitakuye Oyasin
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” —John Muir The most transformative concept I’ve learned from my time at Pine Ridge is “Mitakuye Oyasin.” Each person translates this phrase in their own way, but the essence is always the same: We are all […]
Everyone Has a Valuable Story
“Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you. I am I.” —Osho If we don’t share our stories they die with us, Verola Spider said to me one afternoon as we sat together on the porch at the Singing Horse Trading Post on the Pine Ridge Indian […]
#48 | HOUSTON, WE’VE HAD A PROBLEM
“Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” —Jack Swigert It was April 13, 1970, and the crew of Apollo 13 was in trouble. “This is Houston. Say again, please.” An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks had crippled the spacecraft in mid-flight. “Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B bus […]
#47 | FORTY-SEVEN WEEKS
“You are only ever one decision away from a totally different life.” —Mark Batterson Forty-seven weeks ago I published the first post of this yearlong series on the power and potential of heightened self-awareness resulting in respect for all voices, beginning with one’s own. Next week I will publish the last post of this […]
#46 | THE APOLOGY
“If an apology is followed by an excuse or a reason, it means one is going to commit the same mistake again they just apologized for.” —Amit Kalantri The morning light summons silence and awe as I enter Wind Cave National Park. As I drive, I marvel at the natural beauty that surrounds me. In […]
#45 | BABY STEPS
This blog post is a reprint from an article Kevin recently wrote for The Maine Monitor, published October 24, 2021 ______ There’s a lot to learn from babies, one step at a time The CEO of Hancock Lumber notes that infants learn to walk with minimal training or coaching. Leaders can structure their organizations with […]
#44 | PATH FINDERS
“All this time I was finding myself and I didn’t know I was lost.” —Avicii, “Wake Me Up” How do you find and stay on your path? This is the question often pondered by self-actualizers for which I have acquired five personal tenets: You finding your path may have very little in common with me […]
#43 | JENNY AND ME
“Everyone is beautiful.” — Ariana Grande Jenny Edwards cleans and cares for the Hancock Lumber home office in Casco at night, after finishing her day job. I work an odd collection of hours, which brings me into the office at night once or twice a week. This is how Jenny and I met and then […]
#42 | WHO’S DRIVING THE GOD TRUCK?
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” —Buddha I was driving through Rapid City, South Dakota, when I saw him. Cresting the rolling hill in front of me appeared an all-white Ford pickup truck with a giant cross towering over the cab. Streamers […]
#41 | IT’S WRITTEN IN THE SONGS
“Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that has been given to you from what we call the Muses—or, in biblical language, ‘God.’ This is not fancy, it is fact. Since […]
#40 | THE WATERMELON BUS
“Everything you can imagine is real.” —Pablo Picasso We were driving through rural, agricultural Florida just north of Lake Okeechobee when I saw it. “What is that?” I said, removing my sunglasses for a second look. Several vehicles ahead, on a four-way section of downtown road, was an old yellow school bus with the […]
#39 | FOUL BALL
“The most dangerous moment comes with victory.” —Napoleon Bonaparte Thursday, April 13, 1978 I’m twelve years old, in my bed on a school night. The only light in the room is coming from the illuminated station finder on my alarm clock radio. It’s Ned Martin’s last year calling the Red Sox, play by play, and […]
#38 | PROTECTORS OF THE REALM
“Liberty means responsibility. That’s why most men dread it.” —George Bernard Shaw It was six a.m. when I left Route 44 and passed through the veritable ghost town of Scenic, South Dakota, onto Bombing Range Road. I was on my way to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to have breakfast with my friend Rosie […]
#37 | MISSION CLARITY
“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” —Buddha Earlier this year I shared the following short message with everyone at Hancock Lumber: Hello! I was doing some work with another company in another industry yesterday. The subject of their “mission statement” was on the agenda. […]
#36 | TENT CITY
“The problem with homelessness is not houselessness.” —Matt Haig Eugene, Oregon, is a city like no other. Nestled on the western edge of the Cascade Mountains, it’s surrounded by a valley of agricultural bounty. Sheep graze at the edge of the airport runway. The rivers flow and the flowers grow across a Disneyesque kingdom-like […]
#35 | THE POWER OF PRAYER
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” —Soren Kierkegaard Catherine, speaking only in Lakota, conversed with the buffalo scattered across the high grasslands of what is today Wind Cave National Park in present-day South Dakota. The wind blew as it always does […]
#34 | EIGHT BILLION ENTREPRENEURS
“All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in the human DNA.” —Reid Hoffman Entrepreneur is one of the least-understood words in business, and possibly the entire English language. We tend to equate it with an elite and short list of icons. Bill Gates, Elon […]
#32 | NOMADS
“I am a wild, wandering nomad, I belong everywhere and nowhere all at the same time, and in that gap between worlds, I am free.” —Ritta Klint I’m fascinated by the nomadic past of the Sioux tribes on the northern plains. Before the reservation era, the Sioux moved freely across a vast territory stretching from […]
#31 | THE HUMAN RACE
“A lion sleeps in the heart of every man.” —Old Turkish Proverb At the corner of a serene collection of shops and restaurants in the Park Shore neighborhood of Naples, Florida, stand two twenty-four-foot curved stainless-steel columns. At first glance this giant piece of minimalist art reveals little specific meaning. But upon closer inspection one […]
#30 | THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
“The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution born anew in the brain structure of every individual.” —Carl Jung Speaking mostly in Lakota, Medicine Man begins to talk, then chant, then pray, then sing. Others, circled in darkness, echo in response. The heat within the hut quickly intensifies and the sweat comes […]
#29 | THE PROBLEM WITH IT ALL . . .
“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom.” —Mahatma Gandhi The potential blessing of this essay series is that I am writing from experience. The potential problem with this essay series is that I am writing from experience. * * * When I decided to write this yearlong series about shared […]
#28 | SLOW DOWN TO SPEED UP
“Strange what being slowed down could do to a person.” —Nicholas Sparks Even though the gymnasium was filled with whistles, shouting, and squeaking sneakers, I can still hear the coach’s wisdom nearly forty years later. I was at SWISH basketball camp at the University of Southern Maine, a junior in high school preparing for […]
#27 | THE DIVERSE POTENTIAL OF SHARED LEADERSHIP
“Do not wait for the green light. You are the green light.” —Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana Shortly after participating in the Leadership Learning Exchange for Equity sponsored by the Maine Community Foundation, I received a poignant question from one of my favorite global citizens within our company: What are we doing to bring more underrepresented groups […]
#26 | “TRUST IS THE COIN OF THE REALM”
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” —Ernest Hemingway On December 13, 2020, former secretary of state George Shultz turned one hundred years old. On that day he published an essay musing over what he had learned across a century of living, and a career that included […]
#25 | UNSUBSCRIBE
“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” —Dalai Lama Several months ago I was sitting with the vice chair of our board of directors, Jim Buchanan, at the Hancock Lumber home office in Casco. Across the street logging trucks were arriving, the sawmill was churning, and the smell of sawdust was […]
#24 | HALFTIME
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King This is essay #24, the halfway mark of my 2021 writing project. Two dozen essays have been shared and two dozen are yet to be created. Thank you for engaging and participating. […]
#23 | SOFTENING OUR EDGES
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” —John Green I have trepidations about taking on this topic but even more about letting it go, so I’m diving in. Does civility in human dialogue and interaction matter? If it does matter, what causes it to disintegrate? How might it be elevated? […]
#22 | THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
In 1938 the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was, in fact, “the Greatest Show on Earth.” Their annual tour opened in the spring of that year with a twenty-three-day sojurn at Madison Square Garden. The circus was so popular that it performed twice daily in New York (forty-six shows in all) before caravanning […]
#21 | HOLD THAT DOOR
“Every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration.” —Margaret Chase Smith It can feel overwhelming to take on the subject of advancing social harmony in a delicate and divided world. So I went looking for a simple place to start . . . * * * The Circle K convenience store sits at the […]
#20 | CHINA’S HALL PASS
“A global citizen is someone who identifies first and foremost not as a member of a state, tribe or nation, but instead as a member of the human race.” —Hugh Evans On October 4, 2017, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. “Fight for freedom. […]
#18 | SAWING THROUGH COVID
“For it is dangerous to attach one’s self to the crowd in front, and so long as each one of us is more willing to trust another than to judge for himself, we never show any judgement in the matter of living, but always a blind trust, and a mistake that has been passed on […]
#17 | AMERICA ALWAYS GETS WHAT IT PAYS FOR
“The devil doesn’t come in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you ever wished for.” —Tucker Max On Thursday, March 11, 2020, I left the Wild Dunes Island Resort and headed for the Charleston International Airport. I had just given a talk to the New South Construction Supply management team about […]
#16 | THE FUTURE TRAVELS THROUGH THE PAST
“No future without forgiveness.” —Bishop Desmond Tutu It’s not just those in positions of leadership or privilege who must become more self-aware. In the last two essays I have discussed how it’s important for me as a white, Christian, male CEO to reconcile my inherent privilege in Western society. This is done not to engender […]
#15 | WHITE SPACE
“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.” —Franklin Thomas Everyone I was looking at was white. […]