Month: May 2022

Categories
Do Good

Enough.

Enough. Phillip Kane's andwin.net blog
Image credit: dimitrisvetsikas1969 | Pixabay.com

Friday, May 27, 2022

This week, an act of pure evil was committed in Uvalde, Texas.

To all who are shouting, “Enough!” I agree.

Enough of politicians using dead children to score cheap political points. It’s gross. It’s dishonest. And it won’t do one thing to fix what’s wrong in this country.

I grew up in a time when there were more guns in every American household than there are today. We also had more people doing a lot more good and raising their children to do the same. And school shootings were a rarity – less than one occurring each two years during my twelve years of elementary, middle, and high school.

In recent decades, though, school shootings have risen into the hundreds. While every household in America has fewer guns in it, these killings have soared. Because what most households in America also have far less of today than they did forty years ago is goodness, civility, and love. These things aren’t taught much anymore – and our kids are dying because of it.

And that’s the point for the week.



Instead of love your neighbor, we teach our children to physically assault anyone who disagrees with them. Instead of educating young people to perform acts of kindness, we teach them to burn down communities. Instead of showing them how to bring people together in awful times like these, our current and a former President model how to sow division, suspicion, and hate. Instead of raising kids to do for others, we urge our next generations to take for themselves. We tell them that there is nothing good about America, its founders, its flag, or those who protect it.

Then the same people fomenting the hate, manufacture more of it and more false outrage aimed at people who have nothing to do with these killings every time one occurs.

So yes, enough! Enough of not doing good. Enough of teaching entire generations of children that distrust, hate and violence are the answer to any perceived slight or injustice. Enough of all of us forgetting that we are all in this together and that the more good there is in the world, the less room there is for evil in it.

And while a little more good from all of us may not stop all of the killing, it’s going to go a long, long way toward it.

I think the English theologian, John Wesley offered the best advice as any I’ve ever heard for us to follow. He said, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

So, do that.

And win.

Enough of all the rest.

To learn more about the author, click HERE.

To purchase a copy of my new book, click HERE.

Image credit: dimitrisvetsikas1969 | Pixabay.com

Categories
Tolerance

Eat Right Twixes

Eat Right Twixes. Phillip Kane's andwin.net blog
Image: Sebbi Strauch | Unsplash.com

Friday, May 20, 2022

This week, while working with a client, one of them brought in a jumbo bag of assorted fun-size candy bars. Included were small Twix bars of both the Left and Right variety. This led to a discussion about Twix’ Left/Right campaign and their suggestion that their customers “pick a side.” I recall that in one TV spot, Left Twix factory workers were shown wondering what the opposite Twix might taste like; the dislike between the sides being so intense that they had never tried the Right Twix or even socialized with their factory’s workers. The whole point of it was the preposterousness of it all. That’s because inside the wrapper, the Left Twix and Right Twix are exactly the same.

It reminded me of a guy I worked with once who would eat nothing green. I’d ask him, from time to time, about specific green foods. I was curious, in each case whether he’d actually ever tried them. He never had. He just didn’t like green food, and so, refused, like the Twix factory workers, to eat it at all, believing every bit of it was bad.

In both cases, these people had made decisions, based on the appearance of something or on the urging or someone of some influence, I suppose, to have nothing at all to do with it. The more I thought about the absurdity of it all, the more it occurred to me that there’s a lot of that very sort of thing going on in the world right now. People are having nothing to do with people they’ve never even met before because they’ve decided in advance that they won’t like them. And it makes no more sense than not liking food because of its color or candy because of its hand dominance. Making decisions to not like people based on the color of their skin, their political leanings, religious beliefs or any other defining factor before you’ve even met them is ridiculous, abhorrent and wrong.

And that’s the point for the week.



The best leaders in the history of the world have been those who have displayed comfort and ease with every manner, sort, color, and creed of person they have had the privilege to encounter. These people don’t judge books by their covers or paint entire races, religions, or political parties with one brush. They know that to do so is not only intellectually lazy but it’s intellectually limiting as well.

By never eating green things or talking to green people, one misses out on the richness of learning and experience that comes from doing those things. By staying in one’s own little world one only ever learns about that narrow little space – an echo chamber where everyone looks the same, sounds the same, prays the same, loves the same, votes the same, and acts the same. Worse, their mind narrows with the constriction of that known world and their tolerance for difference along with it. As a result, their ability to lead anyone but lesser versions of themselves dwindles away.

See, it’s impossible to manage that which you’ve never seen before. It’s equally impossible to lead people you’ve never fully and completely known – or worse, that you’ve presupposed about, particularly when in a wrong-headed and bigoted way.

No one wants to listen to a bigot – of any color, creed, or religion – let alone follow one. That’s because most people want to get along with each other. People want to be around those who lift others up not those who tear people down. Too, most reasonable people don’t believe that all people of a certain race, creed or color are all a certain way. They know better. They’ve lived better. They know that’s as preposterous as believing that a Left Twix tastes worse than a Right one or that all green food is bad. It’s lazy. It’s hateful. And it should have no place in a world where meeting and talking to someone different than you is as easy as walking across the street, down the hall, or to the other side of a classroom.

So, reject the notion that all of anything is bad. Eat Right Twixes, try green food, and occasionally even talk to someone who believes different things than you.

And win.

For more like this, visit https://AndWin.net

To buy a copy of my new book, please follow this LINK.

Image: Sebbi Strauch | Unsplash.com

Categories
Diversity Love

Practice Radical Hospitality

Practice radical hospitality. Phillip Kane's andwin.net blog.
Image: Phillip Kane

Saturday, May 14, 2022

This week, my daughter graduated from The University of Dayton again. She first graduated in May of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. At the time, in an abundance of caution, the school canceled all commencement exercises and simply mailed diplomas to graduating students.

But with fears of COVID-19 now dissipating, UD’s administration decided to do right by these kids and hold their own make-up ceremony this weekend. It was typically Dayton. Run by the Marionist Fathers, community is a big deal there. They preach about, and actually practice radical hospitality – a term attributed to Doris Day, who, along with Peter Maurin, founded the Catholic Worker Movement, known for its social justice campaigns in defense of the poor, forsaken, hungry and homeless. 

Radical hospitality is simply love by another name. It’s about welcoming, embracing and including others unconditionally. And the fact that The University of Dayton lives it is why The University of Dayton is a leader factory. See, true leaders are those who love others without stopping to question whether they deserve it. 

And that’s the point for the week. 



True, caring leaders don’t pay attention to things like race, creed, color, age, gender, hair color, hair length, height, weight, nationality, orientation, body art, or other identifiers because they recognize how little they matter to anything related to winning in life or in business. Because color of anything makes no difference, they are indifferent to more or less of it. The same goes for any other label. These leaders don’t care. Leaders who practice radical hospitality accomplish greater things and win more often because they focus more on the quality of the output than the complexion of the people who produce it. 

They will behave radically hospitable to all comers, because they play by a different set of rules in a game with a significantly longer timeframe than this month, this quarter, this year, or this planning horizon. And because they aim for something of value beyond the here and now, they wind up winning more often here as a simple matter of course – mostly because they attract more people to their cause.

See, people seek to follow these leaders because they make them feel welcome and like they truly matter. These leaders don’t turn people away because they are different or seek to collect up quotas of them because they are either. People flock to be part of what these people are building because they are made to feel individually special by one special individual, not part of some wider, faceless, corporate initiative.

These people have no favorites and they don’t play sides. They believe that true diversity is that which comes from different thoughts, ideas and experiences – not differences in appearance. No voice has more weight, no voice has less. There’s no call for guilt, shame or reparation. Only forgiveness, redemption and love – founded on trust, which bonds their teams together and fuels them forward to win year in and year out – a blurred patchwork juggernaut. 

So be like the gang at UD. Practice radical hospitality. 

And win. 

For more about Phillip Kane, click HERE.

To buy a copy of my new book, please follow this LINK.

Image: Phillip Kane

Categories
Make Others Big

Light a Candle Instead

Light a candle instead. Phillip Kane's andwin.net blog
Image credit: Ben Lambert | Unsplash.com

Saturday, May 7, 2022

As a way to spend time together and to get away from normal life for a bit, my wife, Annie, and I enjoy watching British crime dramas such as you’d find on Acorn, Masterpiece, and BritBox. This past week, we invested three nights of our life in a NetFlix Originals offering called, The Anatomy of a Scandal. It was engaging enough … until the end, when it became apparent why NetFlix is struggling.

The mini-series follows the prosecution of a British MP who has been accused of a heinous crime by a former subordinate. The viewer learns that the crown prosecutor, who seems far too invested in the case, is, in fact, far too invested in the case – having both a story of her own to tell about the man, and an unhealthy obsession with making him pay. Eventually, though, the man is acquitted as the prosecutor fails to make a case. But in an almost unfathomable turn of events, the man’s wife recounts to the prosecutor knowledge of her husband’s and the Prime Minister’s involvement in an even more horrific scandal, bringing down all of (yes, Tory) British government. The film ends with scenes of the man’s (ex?) spouse enjoying life with the couple’s children outside new, posh, but magically affordable, seaside digs near Dover, and of the prosecutor, who had, just before, looked sadly beaten and worn, now shown back at it in court, bright, happy, and confident-looking, shoulders back, with a gleam of satisfaction in her eye, as if riding on a cloud – number 9, no doubt.

While there were near-countless reasons to dislike this mess and to have regretted pouring three nights into it (that I won’t ever get back, mind you), the biggest issue I had with The Anatomy of a Scandal is the moral of its story: that it’s possible to lift yourself up by tearing someone else down. See, it doesn’t work that way. No one ever got taller by cutting the legs out from under anyone else. 

And that’s the point for the week.



It’s not possible to make one candle burn brighter by blowing another one out. Doubt it? Try it sometime. For fun, light three, then blow two out. The one remaining will not provide any more light. Those who go through life believing that it is possible to improve their position at the expense of someone else are the same sort of people that compete with people they work with and the same kind of folks who make films like The Anatomy of a Scandal. It’s the same mentality that fuels cancel culture; the thought that by destroying someone else, I can make myself look better, feel better, do better, or somehow be better. But the only thing that gets better is the likelihood that decent human beings will want almost nothing to do with me.

See, people don’t want to be around negative people, or people who seek to move ahead by tearing others apart. Instead, people want to spend time with, and be led by, people with something positive to say – by people who lift others up and who by their words and actions seek to make others bigger, not smaller. People want to spend time with people who have something to give, not people whose entire persona is built around taking things away from other people.

Most often, despite the fact that these people believe the problem they are having is with someone else, the problem they are having is solely with themselves. It might be some insecurity or grudge that they’ve ascribed to someone else, but the issue they are having exists only in their own mind. They’ve given control over their life to some offending party for some real or imagined slight –  or simply because that person reminds them that they aren’t good enough, smart enough, kind enough, or whatever enough. But that person is going merrily along living their life while the brutish candle-snuffer makes their own life and the lives of every person they touch a living nightmare because of it. Because they become obsessed with the notion that it is possible to make their life better by making someone else’s worse.

But it’s not possible. Not even once. Not ever.

But the good news is, it does not have to be that way. There is a better way to live and to lead.

The alternative to living this life of hate and resentment isn’t hard. Like almost everything else in life, it’s a choice. It’s a simple choice to reject the notion that your life can somehow improve when someone else’s life gets worse. It’s a choice to lift up rather than put down. It’s a choice to build up rather than tear apart. It’s a choice to make others feel big, not small. It’s a choice to give more than you take. It’s a choice to light candles instead of blowing them out. And it’s a choice to start forgiving others for everything. For until we stop giving other people control over our lives, we are not in a position to lead the lives of anyone. It’s no more complicated than that.

So, make the right, better choice. Light a candle instead.

And win. 

PS. It’s apparently also a choice to stop watching NetFlix originals.

For more about me, please follow this LINK.

To purchase a copy of my new book, please click, HERE.

Image credit: Ben Lambert | Unsplash.com