Looking beyond the now
Hi,
It’s August 1941—and mere months before the US would get involved in World War II—when the two most powerful men in the world sit down and craft the Atlantic Charter. The Charter itself is intriguing stuff, but how it came about is also relevant for our own work.
The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met secretly off the coast of Newfoundland in the summer of 1941. Churchill arrived on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and Roosevelt on the USS Augusta.
At the time, the US wasn’t yet caught up in the fighting. (That wouldn’t happen until later that year, with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7.) But Churchill had an important objective for the meeting: to secure as much help as possible from the Americans.
Roosevelt? He had something else in mind.
Roosevelt wanted to agree on a number of guiding principles, in the form of a charter that would sketch the desired situation after the war. It was the start of close cooperation across the Atlantic, and the charter was a critical step in setting up what would later become the United Nations.
I’m fascinated by the fact that Roosevelt was capable of looking beyond this immediate challenge and was instead dreaming up a new and better future. It’s a feat that can serve as inspiration for us all.
Here are my three takeaways:
1. Basic tenets or principles are relevant for everyone
It’s easy to point the finger at your boss or the CEO for a lack of guiding principles in your work. I understand how annoying it can be when there are no clear directives, and if that’s the case, finding out what they are should be a high priority. But that doesn’t mean you can’t provide some direction yourself.
You can always draw your own finish line: When is your work a success? What are you working towards and why do you consider it important?
Don’t get bogged down by the rules (like when people insist a “vision” doesn’t describe how you work, but only what you want to achieve.) Write down whatever helps you make progress.
Even the Atlantic Charter is a mix of things that never happened (the US and the UK “seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other”), results that are never fully finished (“They will endeavor…to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, of access on equal terms to the trade and to the raw materials of the world…”), plus some concrete, practical plans (“the disarmament of nations that threaten or may threaten aggression”).
When you do something like this for your own work (or for a particular project or your class, team, or organization) you can include whatever works for you.
And keep it simple. Makes me think of Stephen Covey, who drew up principles with his son for maintaining the lawn: Green and clean.
Doesn’t have to be complicated.
But of course that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
2. It’s not easy to formulate basic tenets
If the tenets you come up with don’t cause some degree of friction, you could argue they aren’t strong enough. Roosevelt was very clear what he thought of the UK’s exploitation of its colonies. And Churchill was not amused. Yet Churchill eventually agreed to the principle of “sovereign rights and self-government” for all peoples. No doubt their talks would have gone more smoothly if Roosevelt had avoided the subject. But pushing for his ideals meant big gains for everyone in the end.
I tend to avoid conflict and look for solutions everyone’s happy with. That works fine most of the time, but it means I sometimes postpone making the tough calls. Formulating basic tenets can make these touchy topics painfully clear, and I can then take that info and follow through.
I don’t always act on it right away, but it gives me insight into how to proceed. I’ve also found that things that irritate or frustrate me are often good indications of where I need to tighten up my guiding principles. Helps me decide what I do and what I don’t do. Perhaps that’s true for you, too.
3. Drawing up tenets almost never seems urgent
In Roosevelt’s case, you could certainly say there were more pressing things to discuss. With war looming, it’s legitimate to question whether it’s really the time for spelling out ideas about peacetime. Odds are, it would also have been useful and productive to brainstorm about more urgent issues and wartime strategies. While we can’t know for sure what the world would be like today without the Atlantic Charter, safe to say it’s had enormous impact.
As for our own work? We’ve got a ready supply of excuses on hand for why we put off drawing up our own set of principles. There’s always something more pressing. But the truth is, I see a big difference when working on projects where the purpose is crystal clear vs. times when it’s not. Clarity means everyone’s on the same page. There are fewer questions to trip us up and more energy and momentum going into the work.
And that’s not only true for teams. My own work is far better (and much easier) when I’m clear on what I want to achieve. So get yourself some clarity:
This week
Can you work out some of the overriding principles guiding your plans this week?
Some questions that can help: What are you promising the client? When would you consider a particular project a success? What would the newspaper headline be for what you want to accomplish?
Have a good week,
Rick
PS The history in this newsletter comes from the book The Mantle of Command, by Nigel Hamilton. Highly recommended if you like history or politics.
produced by the language girl