You Don't Need a Title

Mark Sanborn's book You Don't Need a Title to be a Leader is a great summary of timeless leadership ideas. The book is especially helpful in reinforcing self leadership, the idea that everyone, regardless of formal rank or title, can and should act as a leader. This is precisely the culture I wanted to build back in my former team, and this is what I would like my current team members to realize. They should never wait for the promotion before they act as leaders. They should instead seize opportunities to expand their scope and influence such that the promotion and the title just becomes a formality.

I should continue reading about leadership even if I am familiar with many of the concepts. I felt great reading this work as it reminded me of my mission and my belief in the idea of servant leadership. My superiors will rate me a great leader once I deliver the numbers, but I will only rate myself the way my own people will rate me: by the degree to which I have driven them to become better persons through positive influence.

The Hours

The Hours, the Pulitzer prize winning novel of Michael Cunningham, is depressing, but punctuated by snippets of euphoric celebration of life. And perhaps it mirrors life itself for I myself often feel I lead a life of quiet desperation only to be jolted sometimes by a moment that make it all worth it - the kiss of my child, a quiet moment with my wife, the gratitude of an inspired employee.

I am sad for Virginia, Laura and Clarissa. I feel I have gained some insight into how modern life drives women to insanity or to run away. I will never truly understand the dilemma of asserting the self while taking care of the home. I can only try and help my wife. I do not want us to count the hours and let them pass. I want us to celebrate and savor the hours that make a life.

One Minute Manager

Ken Blanchard's One Minute Manager offers a simple formula for management success: create one minute goals, give one minute praises, and give one minute reprimands. On paper, it does sound simple, but in reality, giving feedback is one of the hardest skills to master for it takes a certain level of self confidence combined with genuine compassion to be able to praise sincerely, and to reprimand without causing offense. It also takes discipline and courage to offer feedback right after the incident rather than wait for the next coaching or appraisal session.

The principles in the book are not exactly groundbreaking, but they remain true and effective. People with exposure to management literature will readily agree with them and recognize that, as in many cases, it is much easier to come up with a theory, and much harder to execute.

Three Minute Meditator

I used to scoff at the idea of reading The Three Minute Meditator by David Harp and all the rest of the spiritual and Eastern philosophy books that my wife owned. But when I felt a deep sense of spiritual emptiness last year, I finally gave it a try.

I have not attained enlightenment. That is too much to ask for. But I am happy I read the book for I feel I now have a tool to observe the mind and, little by little, control it. I never realized how powerful the mind works until I tried meditating. I still find myself surrendering to the emotion instead of observing the thought, but I find the awareness liberating.

Everything that causes mental pain begins with a thought. And if the thought can be observed, then mastered, then the pain itself can be avoided or, at least, mastered. If I can integrate meditation into my daily life, I will react better to setbacks. I will overcome them faster. Not only will be a more effective person, I will also be a happier person because I will learn to live in the now.

On the Road

Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty are today's equivalent of people going through a quarter-life crisis. In their case, however, both having failed at their marriage, they seem to have never overcome the crisis. They are a bunch of beat men, hitchhiking and driving across the country several times just for kicks. Life is a series of adventures with no particular goal except to run out of land and reach the sea, the end of the road.

On the Road is a mad series of journeys across America, taking in the thrills of drinking and drugs and jazz music with little regard for the past or the future or the families left behind. It was great to be part of this journey knowing I myself cannot take it for then I would have to be mad or intoxicated as Dean was. Still, it has kindled a desire to be on the road, to see wide expanses of land, to drive up and down mountains, to reach the sea.

Nihilism and Emancipation

Gianni Vatimo's Nihilism and Emancipation is a work that surprisingly resonates with my own thoughts. A postmodern work that rejects foundations, it does not degenerate into a crass moral relativism nor does it resort to a leap of faith to satisfy the sense of grief after realizing there is no Being. Nihilism is simply the recognition that there is no metaphysics, no essential structure on which to found morality. There is only interpretation.

But I share Vatimo's attitude with Dewey in that they do not despair over the recognition that there is no ground beneath our feet. Paradoxically, he sees nihilism as a path to emancipation, which is the reduction of violence. Emancipation is achieved because most constraints to freedom are based on foundationalist claims of a prior Being, a natural law or a deity, used to silence dissent. But Vatimo argues that the alternative to the oblivion of Being is not necessarily a reversion to the state of nature. Rather, rules that respect and recognize history and context evolve through dialogue.

Thus, one arrives at a world where there is more room for love and kindness, and a recognition that we are all human, all too human, rather than one of rules and codes derived from a discovery of Being.

The Continuing Past

Renato Constantino's The Continuing Past is the sequel to his nationalist and revisionist history A Past Revisited. The book covers the end of the Commonwealth period, the Japanese Occupation, and the Third Republic up to the Macapagal Presidency. It is explicit in its nationalist orientation as a critique against standard texts taking a Western perspective. It is devastating and illuminating in its critique of the megalomania of McArthur and the intervention of the CIA to catapult Magsaysay to the presidency. It is not, however, blindly anti-American for while it criticizes American policy, it is even more unforgiving of what Recto labeled as our mendicant foreign policy. It is understandable that America protects its national interest; it is lunacy for Filipinos to think that our interests coincide with America's.

I disagree with Constantino's advocacy for industrialization and criticism of agriculture. Perhaps his views were viable forty years ago, but in today's globalizing world, it would be suicidal to compete against Chinese manufacturing, and Brazil's successful development of agriculture for export is probably worth emulating.

We continued to act like a lapdog when we supported the US invasion of Iraq and we looked even more foolish when we withdrew our contingent of noncombat troops when a Filipino was held hostage by Iraqi fighters. We obviously did not learn our lessons from the extraterritoriality of American bases when we agreed to a VFA that allowed a serviceman accused of rape to be detained in the US embassy. The removal of US bases did not end the special relationship with the US. In foreign policy, at least, the past truly is continuing.