“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…

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“It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those shadows men get lost.” —Black Elk I have dedicated the essays that I write this year to Black Elk, but I have not yet told you why. The answer is that I see deep truth…

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“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…

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2021 IDEA-SHARING ADVENTURE SERIES BY KEVIN HANCOCK “The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.” —John Muir Last week I wrote about the importance of CEOs broadening their roles and seeing the highest calling of free enterprise as the advancement of humanity. This week I…

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2021 IDEA-SHARING ADVENTURE SERIES BY KEVIN HANCOCK “You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. The sky is round, and I have heard that the Earth is round like a ball, and…

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2021 IDEA-SHARING ADVENTURE SERIES BY KEVIN HANCOCK “Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportionate to each other.” —Leon Trotsky What are the origins of bureaucracy? How did “power” historically become centralized in command-and-control hierarchies? How did certain groups come to exert a defining influence over others? The answer, at its most fundamental level, is through…

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Hello! In the spring of this year I am publishing my next book! 48 WHISPERS from Pine Ridge and the Northern Plains is a hybrid of sorts. First, it’s a photography book featuring full-page photos that I have taken at Pine Ridge, the Black Hills, and across the plains. Second, it’s a personal and organizational…

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Hello and Happy New Year! Wishing you and your family a safe and fun holiday!  Looking forward to 2021! Across 2020 I participated in nearly 100 “events” (podcasts, articles, talks, interviews) hoping to advance the concepts of EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT – SHARED LEADERSHIP – DISPERSED POWER – and RESPECT FOR ALL VOICES. My goal is to…

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Election day is finally here and with it I have one wish and one promise… MY WISH… and hope… is that all 565 of us who work at Hancock Lumber VOTE (or have voted)!  That’s your voice / our voice in action! MY PROMISE… While every election is important, America will neither be SAVED nor…

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Kevin Hancock joins What Matters Most host Paul Samuel Dolman to speak about his shared leadership philosophy. They speak about how CEOs and other leaders might elegantly break down the planet’s entrenched, top-down governance model in favor of a new playbook for heightened human engagement, hallmarked by shared leadership, dispersed power, and respect for all voices….

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Kevin Hancock shares a keynote speech with the ProDealer Industry Summit in October 2020. In this presentation, Kevin highlights the importance of culture in the workplace, stressing that it is what makes the difference between companies and performance. The ProDealer Industry Summit is an exclusive three-day educational forum designed to promote the growth of lumber…

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I wanted to take a moment to share a recent podcast I participated in on The Inventions Show with host Tack Lee. Here is his excerpt from our chat: Live with your heart not just your head with Kevin Hancock, a sixth-generation family CEO of Hancock Lumber, one of the oldest companies in America which…

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So the article copied below fascinates me. I’ve been on this theme for a while but have not really known how to approach it. I’m trying to reconcile the following dichotomy – there are lots of American based multi-national corporations that want to lead for social justice in THIS country (which is great) BUT won’t…

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The Wall Street Journal 8/24/2020 Article “New Thinking on Covid Lockdowns: They’re Overly Blunt and Costly” This is the most thoughtful, data driven, reflective, and objective considerations of potential strategic responses designed to achieve maximum and balanced health, economic, and social salvation from COVID that I have read. –Kevin Hancock “400 million jobs have been…

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Hello! Just sharing the following podcast and op-ed piece that I wrote on the importance of shared leadership, dispersed power, and respect for all voices. If you like them, please share! Thank you,     The Enlightenment for Change interview with Connie Whitman was one of my favorite podcasts to date! Connie was a great…

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Kevin Hancock joins the Leadership from the Core “Love in Action” podcast with Episode 53, Finding Your Authentic Voice. Host Marcel Schwantes chats with Kevin, who shares his inspirational story of finding purpose in the midst of adversity and re-scripting his definition of leadership as a result. They also discuss his new book, The Seventh…

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Article published in the April 2020 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.  Click to read complete article “Having found a piece of my own authentic voice, I wanted to help others do the same, and a lumber company in Maine became an unlikely platform where this could occur. The new goal: create a socially transformative…

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In the Workable article “Business Community Building: We’re All in it Together,” Kevin Hancock is interviewed among other business leaders about the importance of clarity in the COVID-19 pandemic. Kevin speaks about the need of the company to follow the lead of the people connected to it. This unification of employees creates a deep connection. The article goes…

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In this article, Kevin weighs in on how to communicate with your manager about balancing work and family. During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people found themselves working from home and finding the work/life balance very difficult. Kevin highlights that no one is alone in this new struggle. Everyone is in this together and experiencing…

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Centralized power and decision-making control is out. Shared leadership is in. In this article, Kevin Hancock is interviewed about his story of finding the employee-centric company model. After listing the 7 signs of great leadership mindset, the article concludes with “dispersing power is not a difficult task, but creating a culture where every voice matters…

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