My daughter always reads the last page of a novel first.  I rarely even read the book jacket.  Her reading process begins with knowledge of the starting and ending points.  It was an anathema to me.  For me, the pleasure in a good novel is the mystery (even in a standard fiction).   Working through the possible endings on your own.  I enjoy the open ended-ness.

My daughter is also a writer.  She has an incredible facility with language and the ability to weave a story.  So for years I could not wrap my head around why she would take all the fun out of discovering a new story by knowing the end. 

Until I starting counting this year.

We are in the period between Passover and the holiday of Shavuot.  Passover celebrates the freedom of the Israelites from Egypt and our freedom to worship God.  Shavuot marks the receiving of the Torah, the Bible, from Mount Sinai and enhances our ability to live a better life and serve God.  There are 50 days between these two events and some Jews count every day between them.    

We count knowing the beginning and the end.  What’s the point in counting if it’s not to something?  A birthday, the end of school, a vacation.  It’s the bookends that give the days meaning.

Random events only become a story when we have a clear start and finish. 

Otherwise, things “just happen.”   I realize that my daughter’s view of a book is completely different than mine.  I just go for the ride – trusting that the writer will take me to the end.  Then I either recommend the book or not.  As a writer, though, she reads as if she is counting – measuring every detail and plot twist as to how it relates to getting us to the end point.  The “how” is just as important as the ride.  Every detail has meaning because she already knows where she wants to go.

What would our lives look like if we knew where we needed to go?  Every element of existence becomes an integral piece of our story – not random things that just happen to us.  Our lives are stories.  We definitely have beginnings and ends.  Most of us don’t focus on the end and thus don’t pay attention to the detail in the middle. 

Leadership Lesson:  Let’s try to count each day.  Think: how will today fit into the story of my life.

Differentiated Instruction.  This innovative approach started circulating in the education community around the 1950’s.  In brief, it means meeting students on their terms – teaching to the different needs of each individual in a classroom.  Recently this mode of instruction has become the norm.  We are seeing less and less of the “one size fits all” lecture format. 

And yet, while we can all look at teaching and admire this “individualist” approach and we can recognize the celebration of individualism represented by facebook and the internet, somehow we stop short when it comes to our organizations and staff. Leaders, while doing a pretty good job recognizing at least the need to individualize for their customer base, are not looking sufficiently at the need to support differences in their staff.  Why do we still hold so strongly to “policies”? Why do we fear the exception?

Passover celebrates difference within a common cause.  Time after time we are reminded that people are unique.  We have one goal.  To answer – what happened in Egypt?   Yet we have four sons asking variations of the question, necessitating four slightly differing answers.  We utilize many modalities of instruction at the Seder – intellectual, physical, spiritual, oral, participation, verbal, rhetoric, repetition, commonality, mystery…  Our wish is to engage everyone there.  Today, we have enlisted the assistance of web technology to educate.  Some hold Seders over Skype.  Some use YouTube videos – like the new Passover Rhapsody from aish.com.  Some have written new editions to ancient texts – such as the new Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander’s New American Haggadah.  At my seder we can have as many haggadahs at the table as people, all with slight differences in nuance and thereby connecting with the person who brought it.

It is time.  One size does not fit all.  And that’s not a danger.  It’s an opportunity.  Judaism has never allowed one voice to dictate its existence (a human voice that is.)  We are held together by common history, common lineage, and common brotherhood.  But as we know - two Jews, three opinions.  And we have lasted thousands of years.  Organizations should be so lucky.  Leaders – allow for people to be themselves.  Embrace their uniqueness.  Lead them toward a common goal.

Have a wonderful Passover.

This blog will return on April 18.

04/13/2010
This is an interesting period in the Jewish year. The period between Passover and the holiday of Shavuot is literally called "The Count (sefira)." Passover recalls the wonderous story of our exodus from Egypt and all the miracles that accompanied that journey. Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah and the beginning of our national relationship with God.

For many years the idea that these two holidays are inextricably linked by the period of "counting" has intrigued me. Each day we count toward the commemoration of the events of Mount Sinai. We leave the slavery in Egypt only to look forward to binding ourselves to the law of God. There are many commentaries and philosphical ideas (well worth your time if you haven't thought about it recently) dintinguishing between freedom from and freedom to. Passover represents a freedom from slavery and the oppression of others. Shavuot represents a freedom to live your life with meaning and commitment to something greater than yourself, a relationship with God.

But what of the counting? As I watched the Masters (golf tournament) this past weekend - and no I was not one of the Tiger-gawkers -- although as an aside, how awesome (and ironic?) was it that Phil Mickelson won this year - a year in which his wife battled cancer and he stood by her through all the rough stuff??-- but back to counting. As I watched the Masters, I was struck by all the counting they were doing. Golf is a game of counting. It all comes down to the number of strokes. You win, not by besting the course, but by besting the other player's stroke count. The lower the better.

Golf is about counting down - the further negative you go as you near the final destination (the 18th hole), the better your chance of winning.

Our counting period counts up. We start at Day One and count all the way to Day Forty Nine. The higher we have counted, the closer we get to our destination. We aren't losing numbers, we keep gaining.

Leadership lesson: When a goal is truly valuable - when you are inspiring people to attain the goal - work your way towards it. Let everything you do and say build toward the goal. Counting down points in the other direction. True, we are so used to it sometimes we don't think about the psychological impact of our counting direction. New Year's Eve we count down to the new year. But what are we saying? We are saying "goodbye". Goodbye to the old year. We are looking back expressing that we are happy to have it over. It's complete. It's finished. We got to zero. No where left to go. Counting up indicates just the opposite. We are looking forward. We have reached the target - but that target is not necessarliy the end. There are always more numbers - more places to go. We achieved this goal - let's celebrate - but let's also inspire each other to continue growing. What's the next goal?

While many of us are up to our ears in cleaning, shopping and stressing over the impending holiday of Passover, let’s take a minute to remember that this holiday is about more than cleaning our homes – it is about cleaning up our lives.

What are we pursuing in our lives?

I know that sounds a bit funny.  Most of us aren’t “pursuing” anything.  Life is pursuing us.  And that’s the point.

We need to take control of our direction.  What is it that we care about?  What do we want to accomplish?  What effect do we want to have on the world?  Passover is the holiday of freedom.  Freedom allows us to decide for ourselves.  Are we pursuing wealth?  Are we pursuing fame?  Are we pursuing revenge?  Are we pursuing good?  In what manner do we wish to spend our time here?  What do we wish to leave behind?

Leadership Lesson: As leaders we should recognize the freedom to choose our path.  We have constraints to be sure, as all of do in every area of our lives, but the choice remains ours.  What is our organization pursuing?  Ask yourself – do you know what reputation your organization desires? Do you know your vision of “success”?  Are you keenly aware of who benefits from your work?  Do you know who you are not servicing? 

I realize that’s a lot more than four questions for this holiday. 

Freedom means choice. 

We can’t have it all.  So choose mindfully.  If we try to be everything and help everyone we will wind up helping no one.  Sometimes we need to “pass over” opportunities in order to pursue our path.  Clean out the areas that are distracting you from your true objective.  Then have a great holiday!

What do you think?

Is Passover a celebration of the past?  It makes sense.  So much of the Holiday is about remembering.  We say over and again “zecher l’tziyat mitzrayim” remembering the exodus from Egypt.  Seder night is one story after another.  All that happened many years ago. 

Is Passover about remembering our shared history?

Where does our past get us?  Stuck.  At least according to Eckhart Tolle.  In The Power of Now, A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Tolle argues that the only relevant time for us is now.  And what about the shared occurrences that made us a nation? “Nothing ever happened in the past, it happened in the now.”  The past is only a memory trace – a former now.  When we try to do anything it must be in the now.  No other time exists for us.  Even remembering happens now.

We say in the Hagaddah, the canonized sequence of the seder, that we should feel on Seder night as if we ourselves were leaving Egypt.  When my kids were young, we translated this as getting everyone up from the table and literally throwing satchels over our backs and walking around the room as if we were part of the caravan leaving Egypt.  But the Hagaddah had something much less concrete but more profound in mind.  We must bring the past into the now.  Our memory of the event brings it into the present.  Then we are being freed at that moment.

What would our Seders look like if we were able to bring a little of that moment to life in the present?

Imagine the conversations that would take shape, the attitudes that would adjust if we let ourselves feel that moment of freedom.  Two hundred years of slavery and we are walking out.  Can I tap into that sense of joy?  Sometimes I think of Natan Sharansky walking over the bridge out of Soviet Russia.  Or maybe it’s just Kramer’s “Serenity now!”  I want to be fully present in that happiness and fulfillment.

I think this year we will walk around the table again.  But this time we won’t carry satchels, we’ll carry our new awareness of how free we are privileged to be.

Leadership Lesson: We all have pasts.  Our organizations have pasts.  In order to fully learn from and appreciate that which went before us, we must bring that past into the present.  Don’t leave it to be “remembered.”  Search for the relevance to our now.  It could change everything.