DISCOVER A PERFECT SYSTEM

       I was in Chicago this week to work with an elite leadership team at Microchip Technology, a global leader in the field of microcontroller and analog semiconductors. Very exciting.

     What sets that company apart is its deliberately-created culture.  At the heart of it is a commitment to work with systems – and to see the underlying system beneath every phenomenon.

     They stress the use of the word "perfect" when describing a system.  For example, "We have a perfect system for angering the customer, and for producing poor-quality products, excessively long R&D Development cycles, low margins, unreliable computer networks, low productivity, high turnover," and so forth.  (See Driving Excellence by Michael Jones and Steve Sanghi.)

     The point is you'll always get what you've designed the system to get.  Therefore the solution is to design a new system.  As opposed to blaming people and making people wrong. This is called systems thinking and it's a higher order of thinking than we normally do.  We are usually tapped by fear in a very low-level form of judgmental thinking.

     Almost all the companies I have worked with have ongoing problems with politics, ego and the arrogance of certain managers.  The feeling is that you're always going to have that.  It's how well you deal with it.  But at Microchip they see it differently. At Microchip, politics, ego and arrogance are . . .  are you ready for this? . . . "not allowed."  They're not allowed.  In other words, NOT ALLOWED!!!

     That's pretty simple.  And bold.  Can you really do that?  Well, yes, it's called a deliberately-created culture.  The old story that everyone believes is that politics, ego and arrogance will simply be a fact of life.  Grow up!  Get used to it. But at Microchip they are not allowed-----in the same way that wearing a swim suit to work is not allowed.  When it's really clear that something is not allowed, people just don't do it.

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     When you take the linear road nothing will ever be enough.  When you live a story's path from birth to death, nothing you do will ever feel like it's enough. I love the way you've fixed up your house and you say "We're not done yet.  We've just got started.  There's so much to do.  It's really a mess." That's the story you can't get out of.  It's the story of not enough.

I tell you “you've done well at your job.”  You don't agree, you say "I really want a division manager's position.  I should have had it a year ago."

     You look good, though.  You've lost weight.  I tell you “you look like you've lost a lot of weight.” You say, "Not enough.  Not nearly enough!"

     I remark later how well your son is doing in school.  I heard he almost made the honor roll.
"Well. . . yes. . . but he's having some problems in math that we can't seem to solve."

     So he's not enough.  Even your beautiful son is not enough.

     Because the worm can't stand up, let alone fly.  And a linear life, a life that simply lives out a story, is a horizontal, worm's life. Yet we humans learn to get up off the ground early in life.  We learn, as fast as we can, to walk.  So we are no longer physically on the ground all the time.  We are up now.  We rise up so that we are now pointed---our bodies are!---to the heavens.  To the stars.

     We were not meant to be horizontal.  We were born to rise up and take to the stars.  To stand.  To walk tall.  To dance and sing.  To whirl.

     Yet here comes our story and down we go.  "We are all worms.  But I believe that I am a glow-worm," said Winston Churchill. Sometimes just standing up will take you out of your horizontal story and into the universe.  The act of standing forces oxygen into your system that wasn't there before.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, "He who breathes more air lives more life."

     Ask your class to stand and take a breath.  Look how the stagnant story they were stuck in disappears and they look so fresh and relieved.  Relieved!  Relieved of thought.  Relived of a mind mired in the tales from the crypt. So I began to see parallels between the underlying system in a company and the underlying belief system in an individual.

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    Many of you have asked if the free eBook I offered to you could be shared
with friends, family and co-workers...yes....if you could put it on your own blog for your readers...yes...Joe Vitale of The Secret recently did...and you can too...if you can print it out and hand it out on street corners in the big city so people don't worry so much....yes......the feedback I have been getting is that this eBook helps people eliminate worry from their day...worry is so unnecessary...you were born to enjoy yourself, here it is:

   
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                                              POWERFUL GRACEFUL SUCCESS
                                                         By Steve Chandler
                                 The Secret Key to Mastering Time, Love and Money
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Comments

[Teodora]

Monk, you're an uneducated boob. They invtened algebra, geometry and modern medicine. Did you even bother to research this question?Your nation has been meddling in the affairs of others for a long time, which resulted in the attacks of September 11. If your government hadn't been causing problems in foreign lands, September 11 would not have happened. Look to U.S. foreign policy if you want to blame the actual cause for the deaths.Try this: read and learn. Then travel. You'll find the world a much more rich and amazing place, and you'll have less time to harbor grudges against populations of people - the majority of which have never done anything to you.

[steve chandler]

I wanted to write about Powerful Graceful Success as opposed to Powerful Neurotic Success, or Powerful Pushy Success, or even Powerful Destroy My Family in the Name of Ego and Greed Success, all bestsellers in their own right.