Here is the first in our four week series on “The One Thing You Need to Know” - a powerful principle that enables you to deal with any situation with competence and confidence.

Now before I give you the link, I have to say this: I did not know that we would be moving on a new facility right now. I had planned to put all my energy into preparing for this series. I had meetings scheduled with other preachers to discuss the subject matter and do team preparation. Instead all those plans were thrown into disarray, and I spent the week trying to land the new digs.

So I didn’t actually get any time to do any preparation. I worked six days last week, and on my morning off (Sunday) I did the handout - an important communication to allay certain concerns that people had about the move.

So my preparation consisted, literally, of sitting down at the front of the Sunday feast at 3.30 pm on Sunday and hammering out some slides on Bhakticandrika’s computer to try to get a structure together, and then praying to Krishna.

I wanted so much to take shelter of sleep. I just wanted to go to sleep right there and then, and then just get up early the next day for a fresh start chanting the maha-mantra. But of course I couldn’t, so I had no choice but to surrender.

I stood up with absolutely no opening, a bare minimum of a structure, and no illustrations for my points. You can hear me riff off Vraja’s introduction as my opening, and then tell people they are not the body.

Anyway, because Krishna is God, I did my duty and He contributed something of value. If I could do that again I would like to have a story that runs through it, illustrating the points. I didn’t have time to find one. No time to think. Anyway, Krishna preserves what we have, and carries what we lack.

Here it is:

The One Thing You Need to Know 1 (16MB .mp3)
Slideset (including opening bhajans) (3.3MB .ppt)
Sunday Feast Handout (768k, .pdf)

One of the implications or complications of the expansion to the new facility, is the issue of the Krishna Kids Club - our program for children on Sundays. We have this program for a number of reasons:

1. To enable the teaching to go on in the main space without the interruption of children in the audience
2. To enable people to come to hear, even when they have children they are responsible for
3. To enable us to give the children an appropriate experience of Krishna Consciousness, targeted to their needs
4. To encourage children to drag their parents along

It has actually become a very popular program, and part of the drawcard for many parents. I know that for many months Param or I would walk the streets outside with Prahlad during the teaching. Once we got the Loft facility next door to Govinda’s restaurant, where the Sunday feast is held, we had a space to go with Prahlad during the program, and we knew there were many others in the same boat as us. So we launched the Krishna Kids Club program under the leadership of Channell.

Now there are up to 20 kids there each week. People are concerned about the future of this program now that we are moving out of the Loft space to the new facility.

I don’t have all the answers to everything right now, but we’re committed to this program in the long term. Let’s see what Krishna arranges in the near term. I will probably need to speak about this at the Sunday Feast - perhaps we need more of a committment on the part of parents. Often we don’t fully appreciate something until it is gone.

There is the one who takes advantage of opportunities, and there is the One who creates the opportunities.

Over the past year we have made a number of efforts in different directions. We’ve trekked over town and put in offers on different spaces. We’ve tried to get electrical work and facility upgrades done on the Loft. In spite of so much effort, there has been little to show for it. In spite of doing everything possible, there were no results. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.

Now everything is falling into place. We’re not putting in any more effort. We’ve tried to the best of our abilities before, and we continue to try to the best of our abilities now. Now however, things are happening.

This shows that our effort alone is not sufficient to produce results. The results of our actions are dependent on the superior force of “circumstance”. When Krishna wills it, it will happen.

At the same time, our effort is a necessary ingredient. It is not dependent on our effort. Our effort in fact is useless. It is not what we do, but what we are. What we do, however, is a function of what we are.

Krishna does not need our contribution. The opportunity to give a donation, or to do some voluntary service, is not an opportunity for us to provide something to Krishna that he lacks. There is no benefit for Krishna, or loss for Him if we don’t want to give. The opportunity to give a donation or to give voluntary service is like an amnesty where we can return stolen goods. Krishna doesn’t need us to give. We need to give to Krishna.

Anyway, we keep trying, no matter what result we get. When the results come, we can understand that Krishna is acting. Yesterday as we left the new facility Elliot turned to me and said: “If Krishna isn’t God, then I’ll eat my hat!”

Today Acyuta Bhava called me at work to tell me about the effort to have the electricity connected. We were concerned, because this is a commercially zoned facility, and we have two meters, one for each side of the floor. At the Loft we had to pay $500 as a bond for the electricity. Our concern was that we would be paying at least $1000 for a bond - money we don’t have. Acyuta told them that we were a community-based not-for-profit organization, and they hooked us up for free. When she mentioned the word “Krishna”, the young lady on the other end of the phone started gushing about her visit to India, and the lack of vegetarian food options in Brisbane. When Acyuta told her we do yoga and dinner as a package deal, she took down the address and the hours. She lives in Spring Hill, an inner city suburb close by.

I will not be so bold as to say that I have seen God, but I have seen signs along the way, and I am encouraged.

Scientists are finally starting to come out of the closet on global warming and its consequences, according to this indepth new article on the subject on stuff.co.nz, entitled “Climate change forecast getting worse“.

Here are a few choice quotes:

In recent months, a cascade of new scientific evidence on climate change has made even mainstream scientists increasingly concerned about what lies ahead.

“Over the past few months in particular, knowledgeable scientists have got more concerned that there might not be just a gradual bit of warming, but there could be some more substantial and worrying things happen,” says Dr David Wratt, leader of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s national climate centre.

Among the public, many believe the main scientific debate is whether climate change is for real.

After all, American President George Bush is reluctant to address climate change, so perhaps there is something to what the sceptics say.

But for scientists, the caravan moved on some time ago. Now the most urgent question is not whether climate change is real, but how serious and rapid it will be, and whether it will soon be too late to do anything to stop it.

Look, let’s not argue over whether it is the result of carbon dioxide emissions, or whether it’s caused by human industry or cow farts - the fact of the matter is that it’s happening.

Don’t expect your puny human governments or your kept scientists to be able to protect you either.

Here’s what they have to say on the matter:

Until now the IPCC has assumed it would take thousands of years for even a few metres of sea-level rise. At that rate, humans, plants and animals would have plenty of time to adapt.

But new research is leading some scientists to suggest sea levels could rise over hundreds of years instead of thousands. Studies over the past two or three years have found ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula are rapidly disintegrating, and the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting. Other studies have observed rapid recession of Arctic sea ice.

Anyway, read more of the scientist’s speculation in the referenced article, and then ponder this little point that any geek can tell you - the weather system is chaotic. In fact it was the study of weather systems that first lead to the development of chaos theory. That means that it is a “nonlinear dynamical system that under certain conditions exhibits a phenomenon known as chaos, which is characterised by a sensitivity to initial conditions (see butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of systems that exhibit chaos appears to be random, even though the model of the system is deterministic in the sense that it is well defined and contains no random parameters. Examples of such systems include the atmosphere, the solar system, plate tectonics, turbulent fluids, economies, and population growth.”

Check out that link on the butterfly effect.

Effectively it lets you know that scientifically we understand that we can’t say what will happen, and should prepare for the absolute worst. When scientists say: “Oh, don’t worry, it’s only changing at the rate of x% per year which means that ….” they are spouting nonsense. Chaotic systems can go from one state to a complete different one with a slight change in initial conditions. A change of 0.01 degree Celsius can be the difference between an unusually warm summer and an ice age overnight - literally. And there is no way scientists can predict this.

This is why the Vedas, and Bhagavad-gita in particular tell us not to try to do things based on empirical research, but to live principle-centered lives governed by dharma, or revealed guiding principles that allow us to align ourselves with harmonic systems.

Here are some slide presentations. I made and delivered these slide presentations with OpenOffice.org, a free open source office suite for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Download a free copy now and liberate yourself from Microsoft’s tyranny.

The first one is the presentation that I used to pitch the new facility. I made it on Sunday morning, and gave it for the first time Sunday evening. I then gave it to everyone I met for the next few days.

New Facility Presentation
Slides for OpenOffice.org (20 MB)
Slides for Powerpoint (20 MB)

The second one is the blatant recruiting pitch that I delivered thinly disguised as a report on our activities in Brisbane, at the recent retreat in Taupo, New Zealand 253 slides in under 20 minutes. I’d just put the finishing touches on the presentation the night before so I flubbed it a bit at the end (most people probably wouldn’t notice), but otherwise it went quite well.

Sita-pati’s Report on Preaching in Brisbane
Slides for Powerpoint (92 MB)
Slides for OpenOffice.org (92 MB)
Audio Recording in Ogg Vorbis (10 MB)
Audio Recording in mp3 (10 MB)

I was going to make it into a movie that can play automatically, such as a compressed flash movie, but I haven’t got the skillz or the time. If someone else could do that, that would r0ck! The purpose of this presentation was to inform, entertain, and inspire, as well as allowing me to showcase some of the techniques of slide presentation that we have picked up over 2005.

Sukanthi Radha, our resident photographer, gave a slide presentation this morning at Red Hill and it rocked. She is going to work on it a little more, and then deliver it at the Sunday Feast. After that I’ll put it up along with the recorded audio. Seriously - it’s way better than any of mine so far.

We’re moving!

Today we took possession of our new facility here in Brisbane. It is at 231 Albert St, 3rd floor. It is 220 square meters, an entire floor - with air conditioning throughout.

We’ve outgrown the existing Loft facility, and the lack of facilities there have been very hard for the past year - no discussion room, no dining room, no kitchen (we’ve been sharing with Govinda’s restaurant - thanks guys!), no storage facility. In spite of these obstacles we were still getting 20 - 30 people a night!

With the new place we’ll be able to take it to the next level. Big ups to Param Satya and Acyuta Bhava for scouting the place, and props to everyone who weighed in to help us grab it before someone else could snatch it up - you know who you are.

Along with the move we’re changing the name - “the Loft” is soooo yesterday (as I joked the day we decided to change it). It was good in 1996 when it was a small place upstairs in Newmarket with Celestine Prophecy discussions. Now we need something that more powerfully encapsulates our brand. Right now we’re in negotiations for the Australian rights for a particular name, so I’ll unveil that once we get confirmation.

It feels like 1998 all over again in many senses, when we first opened what is now Gaura Yoga in Wellington. The same challenges - Param Satya will probably come in at the last minute on our opening night with the plates again…

Anyway, Krishna consciousness is ever fresh.

Of course any move means change and uncertainty. There have been some rumours that we will be dropping the Sunday Feast, or moving the Sunday Feast somewhere else, and probably a whole lot of other ideas. Let me clear up any confusion on that right now:

The Sunday Feast continues at Govinda’s, and we’ll continue to contribute as we have been doing, and to move things ahead as they have been moving. There are no plans to drop the Sunday Feast or move it elsewhere. This is not division, it’s multiplication. We are expanding the preaching facility in the city.

So now you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth. Hey, I’m always ready to tell people about what we’re doing. That’s what I do best. If anyone ever has any queries or inquiries, just get in touch with me.

OK, so check out the photos of the new place.

I haven’t posted over the last couple of days.

I will have some exciting news for you tomorrow.

The past few weeks have been very trying, with many challenges and tests. I won’t say that I’ve overcome them and passed them; instead let me say honestly that I’ve gotten a lot of insight into how far I have to go from the way in which I’ve failed so many of them. Despite my being so faulty, Krishna’s infinite mercy is shown in the way that He can still use me as an instrument. The fact that I am engaged in this preaching work also shows how desperate the situation is. In a dire situation of total war, the last line of defense are all the people who were otherwise disqualified to fight - the elderly, the young, the infirm. In such a situation a person, even though so unqualified, must step up and do the necessary for King and Country.

Similarly, at this junction in history, as dark storm clouds surge over humanity’s horizon and blot out the light of divine knowledge, spiritual wisdom, and even mundane reason and commonsense, any and all of us who can, are called to stand forward and do our part, whatever small contribution we are capable of.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

In such a desperate situation the army will accept people that otherwise would be completely disqualified. I am such a person.

Now let me step up and do my part for King and Country - for Gurudeva and the sacred dust of Vraj.

Just clearing up my hard drive and I found this short piece I wrote in New Zealand last year, in December, while listening to a song by local NZ funksters Fat Freddy’s Drop.

It has a repeating loop: “Hope for a generation - just beyond my reach, not beyond my sight”. I was inspired by that to write the following:

Hope for a generation – just beyond my reach, not beyond my sight

This generation is increasingly being lost. Young people are ruining their bodies and minds, scarring themselves with experiences that will permanently impact their psyches and their relational situations.

Impersonal and uncontrollable forces of economic development subordinate personality, community and society to render people slaves to a global juggernaut that is simultaneously destroying the external environment, and laying waste to people’s internal environment.

An increased cultural norm of focus on immediate pleasure and the supremacy of the individual’s immediate sense gratification is destroying the family unit and all social stability.

The prime necessity of this hour is that intelligent and compassionate persons must apply themselves to working to reverse this seemingly unstoppable tide.

One person alone will have limited impact. What is needed is a coordinated effort.

Maintenance of our individual situation must be balanced with the need to apply our energy to making forward progress in institutional development. Institutional development and maintenance must be carefully aligned with mission fulfilment. It is a long term work that involves creating sufficient momentum to progressively counteract the current negative trend of human society.

I have not been born at this time to try to enjoy living in this situation, but because it is my duty to participate in this fight. I have my destiny to fulfil in this work.

Let me maintain my internal conscious state such that I can remain aware of this, and keep my sensitivity to the pathway that I must tread.

I pray for guidance for each of my steps, and for determination to execute the order of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and my spiritual master.

In New Zealand concerned parents are marching across the country to raise awareness of the epidemic of drug use, specifically “P” - NZ’s answer to crack cocaine, which is laying waste to the youth of the country.

Without Krishna Consciousness there is no hope. The nature of this world is of darkness and a tendency toward decay. Both energy and order flow downhill. Systems tend toward disorder and decay.

Without a source of light the very fabric of space in this world is composed of darkness.

Without the organizing intelligence of the living entities the nature of the world is toward chaos.

Only through the energy input of the sun, worshiped as the representation of Narayana, the Supreme Person, and the intelligent organization of the living entities - the spiritual spark in contact with the material elements - is this tendency counteracted.

All the energy that we utilize in the form of electricity or oil etc. comes to us in this world through the medium of the sun. The sun, the source of all energy in the solar system, counteracts the tendency of this world toward energy death. All life in this world, the intelligence that counteracts the tendency toward chaos, similiarly comes from a source. That source is Krishna.

Science fiction scenarios tell us of what will happen after a nuclear war, huge volcanic eruption, or meteor strike that causes a dust cloud sufficient to cut us off from the sun - total devastation. Similarly, when we are cut off from Krishna, we experience the same thing. Without a spiritual focus to human society, civilization will simply crumble into chaos - total devastation.

(via news.com.au)

THE skeleton of an elderly man has been found in a unit in Sydney’s inner-west more than six months after his death.
Police were called to the George Street unit in Redfern about 7.45pm (AEDT) yesterday after receiving information from people concerned for the man’s safety.

“Upon arrival they found the body of a deceased person in the unit,” a police spokeswoman said.

A post-mortem examination was being carried out to determine the cause of death and police were preparing a report for the coroner.

The gruesome discovery comes only a week after the body of an elderly man was found in the Northcott housing commission in Surry Hills.

The man had been dead on his bed for six months, sparking criticism about the lack of support networks for elderly people in New South Wales.

Here is a criticism about the lack of support networks for elderly people:

An increase of unwanted population certainly causes hellish life both for the family and for those who destroy the family tradition. The ancestors of such corrupt families fall down, because the performances for offering them food and water are entirely stopped.

- Bhagavad-gita 1.41

The full consequential effects of the replacement of the family as the basic building block of society with the individual “prosumer” (producer / consumer) are now being felt.

In other news, Australian Prime Minister John Howards says “older Australians need to stay in the workforce, but employees might have to compromise on hours of work and pay. “People between 55 and 65 - far too many of these people leave the workforce far too early.

“When I exhort firms to retain more older workers I also exhort the older workers to accept … perhaps a changed role within the organisation.”

Mr Howard said mature workers might find themselves reporting to much younger bosses or having to accept a rearrangement of remuneration structures.

Welcome to the future - just like the past, only completely different.

Check out my earlier commentary on the issue of support of the elderly.

Next Sunday we start our four week series entitled: “The One Thing You Need to Know”.

A powerful principle that enables you to deal with any material or spiritual situation with competency and confidence. If you know nothing else, this one thing will be sufficient to secure your success. The One Thing You Need to Know.

As an addendum to that last post: credible vision alone is also insufficient for authentic leadership. There have been people who have had credible vision. They have convinced people to join them in their cause, but they’ve gone the wrong way.

One definition of leadership, which I consider to be a powerful but incomplete one, is that it is “simply your ability to inspire the men through your communication”. That’s definitely an important factor, but far from the only one.

Thought for the day:

I heard John Maxwell say once that “previously it was thought that if you could cast vision, you were a leader. But there is more than one thing to being a leader - in fact there are 21″ (a reference to his 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership).

I certainly know some people who can cast vision like anything, but I was left wondering - “why does this person sound like a leader, but have no-one following them, and not inspire me to follow them either?”

I realized that vision is not sufficient - it has to be credible vision to be effective. I wrote about that in a post on Effective Vision in May of last year.

Today’s thought is a re-expression of that.

Vision gains credibility as you execute on it and get results.

In the beginning perhaps no-one else “gets” your vision. No-one else pays it any heed, believes in it, or wants to contribute to it. But you don’t let that stop you (if you do you definitely don’t have a credible vision). You execute on it anyway, because your vision has at least enough credibility to have one person who believes in it (you), and as you execute on it and make it happen, it rises in credibility.

Here is an example:

My first job in the tech industry was assembling PCs in a small firm in Auckland, New Zealand, called Eclipse Technology. After about 6 months there the company went bankrupt. I remember bumping into the CEO, Carmel, in the hallway during the windup process. She asked me what I was going to do. I told her that I thought I’d be a sysadmin, maybe with Unix machines. Six months previously I’d come from a job I’d held for a year washing dishes in a cafe.

She looked at me and scoffed: “You’ll never do that - you’ve got no experience”.

I didn’t want to point out to her that as the CEO of a company that just went bankrupt she didn’t enjoy so much credibility with me. Obviously my vision of my employment future didn’t have so much credibility back then for people other than myself. Three years later, on the cusp of Y2K I was a sysadmin, albeit for Windows machines. Ten years later, I’m working administering Linux systems.

Ok, to round off this post - here’s another thought I’ve been having for a while:

Vision - if you can hold it, you can have it.

The bigger the vision, the more opportunities you’ll get to give it up, before you get it.

Three very inspirational stories for me from the sacred literature are the stories of Dhruva Maharaja as a child, and also his encounter with the mystical illusions of the Yaksas, and the life story of one of my personal heroes, Hiranyakasipu.

From an article quoted by Candidasa the other day:

Prior to the last decades, it was thought that the periods between glaciations and warmer times in North America, Europe, and North Asia were gradual.
…
(however) It turns out that the ice age versus temperate weather patterns weren’t part of a smooth and linear process, like a dimmer slider for an overhead light bulb. They are part of a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage almost overnight. They more resemble a light switch, which is off as you gradually and slowly lift it, until it hits a mid-point threshold or “breakover point” where suddenly the state is flipped from off to on and the light comes on.

And now this, just in via Time magazine:

Climate observers announced a huge surprise yesterday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference, in St. Louis: the glaciers of Greenland, which carry ice from the interior out to the sea, have gone on a tear. They’re flowing, on average, about twice as fast as they were a decade ago — and even back then, says glacier expert Julian Dowdeswell, of the University of Cambridge, “I was telling my students that they were among the fastest-flowing glaciers on Earth.”

Whether it is due to human industry, accelerated by human industry, or a recurring historical natural process unrelated to human industry, the point is moot. Practically speaking: It’s here.

Here are a couple of funny videos about global warming, for your viewing pleasure:

One about George Bush by comedian Will Ferrell, and a lively song and dance routine about Exxon called “Toast the Earth”.

The focus of these types of exposition have been to say that politicians and industry have been ignoring and covering up their possible contribution to the situation by ignoring the situation itself.

The Exxon one wants to pin some blame on Exxon for it. I think that the time for that angle is behind us. It’s much more dangerous than we originally thought. From what the scientists are saying, it looks like it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon that repeats cyclicly. Right now, whether industry contributes to it or not is really irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it is upon us.

I don’t want to sound like a doomsday prophet, but I’m with Kim Stanley Robinson on this one - we really do need to start packaging up human civilization to survive the long winter. It’s not about technology, because that will not survive. The industrial base of human society is about to cumble. It’s about knowledge and culture. As he put it: “All the knowledge of human society should be preserved in books that will last through the winter night”.

The Vedic knowledge is the body of knowledge of human civilisation that has survived these winter nights before. Transmitted by word of mouth across generations, it tells the history of the universe over millions of generations, recounting significant events to highlight the mission and purpose of this universe, and the human form of life.

Archaeological evidence is erased by the shifting sands and winds of time, but the Vedic knowledge, handed from one to another - parampara, travels over millennia to reach us now - perfectly preserved in essence if not in detail.

Sam Kekovich has reprised his role as the voice of Australianism for an Australia Day address this year. I wondered why the Keka became such a big source of Google hits for my blog over the past month, and that’s why.

Keka - you bloody legend mate! Makes me proud to be an Australian.

You can view a video of Sam’s speech online (.mpg).

It’s not quite as good as last year’s one. It’s like a Rage Against the Machine album in that sense. When the first RATM album came out, it was fascinating - it wasn’t like anything we’d ever heard before. When the second one came out, it just sounded like the first one.

Check out my commentary on Keka’s effort from last year.

ISKCON News.Net is starting to fill up with content. I’ve recently added Krishna Kirti’s Hare Krishna Cultural Journal to the feed.

My editorial policy on that site up to this point has been to only add in feeds of people who talk about what they do as well as what they think, in order to have some accountability of authors. I’ve added Krishna Kirti even though he doesn’t do that. Why? Because it’s time to take the site to the next level.

Now that the rate of addition of new content is getting so high, it’s time to start creating different sections. I wanted to have people who posted about what they do in addition to what they think in order to give context to their writing. Now we are going to create context through the creation of sections. If anyone would like to be involved in the graphical design or editing of ISKCON News.Net, then please drop me a line or leave a comment.

If you thought that I sometimes think too big - think again. I felt the people around me stretching when we launched our ten year plan to build an organization that can faithfully steward a yearly budget in excess of $1 million (nine years and counting at Gaura Purnima). Then Krishna helped me put that goal into perspective when shortly afterwards I read about the Billion Soul Campaign - to plant five million churches in the next 10-15 years, in order to win 1 billion souls for Christ. The goal? “No-one Left Behind”.

To plant five million churches what do you need? Five million leaders (at least). So there is the program to create 1 million leaders by 2008 - The Million Leader Mandate. John C. Maxwell is involved in this. When I met with him in Sydney last year at The Leadership Effect, he said that they had already reached their goal of one million leaders trained in their network leadership development program, and they were now aiming for one million leaders per year.

Here’s an update on the Billion Soul Campaign from a recent email:

Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, Faithful Central Bible Church, Inglewood, CA, spoke to the morning crowd of church and lay leaders at the all-day conference. He began by asking for a show of hands while naming more than a dozen denominations - all getting a response from attendees.

“There is a miracle in this room,” Ulmer said. “The sons and daughters of former enemies are becoming friends. Our spiritual ancestors, for all kinds of reasons, would never be in a gathering with this kind of diversity and yet, by the power of the Spirit of God, God has brought us together for the cause of the kingdom,” he said.

Ulmer was one of several speakers at the conference that aimed to further the planting of five million new churches for a billion soul harvest during the next 10-15 years. “We have found a common ground and it does not matter what your tradition is, what your style of worship is,” Ulmer continued during his message. “It does not matter what your doctrinal distinctives are. “At the end of the day, we all agree that if there was ever a time to overcome evil with good, if there was ever a season where the love of Christ is to be shared abroad, we agree it is now. At the end of the day, we are about touching the lives of a billion souls with the love of the One who loved us enough to die for us, he said.

I’m mainly focused on my local area of concern. We have 1,778,840 people living in Brisbane (as of Dec 2005). What kind of facilities do we need to be able to serve these people? I think it will take more than one building. I think it will take more than one center. I think it will take more than one public program per week. I think it will take more than one public program per day. I think it will take more than one leader. I think it will take more than one team.

People - Ideas - Hardware. That’s the prioritization. After one year of work on the Million Dollar Plan (no, it’s not about the money, it’s about measurable goals), the outcome for the year is: “it’s all about the people” (Bg. 1.7).

The goal was to work out how to spend $1 million per year. Getting the money is not the hard part. The money is out there, and we’ve seen it come and go over the years. Figuring out how to spend it wisely is the issue. We figure that if you figure out how to spend it properly, that’s 90% of the work done. Then the money can come later, and you’ll know what to do with it.

My realization is that the money should be majorly invested in people development, first and foremost. If I had to choose between money and hardware and the right people, I’d pick the people everytime.

A nineteenth-century circuit-riding preacher named Peter Cartwright was preparing to deliver a sermon one Sunday when he was warned that President Andrew Jackson was in attendance, and he was asked to keep his remarks inoffensive. During that message, he included these statements: “I have been told that Andrew Jackson is in this congregation. And I have been asked to guard my remarks. What I must say is that Andrew Jackson will go to hell if he doesn’t repent of his sin.”
After the sermon, Jackson strode up to Cartwright. “Sir,” the president said, “if I had a regiment of men like you, I could whip the world.”

Strategic Priorities for 2006:

1. Get the right people on the team
2. Create and Deepen Community
3. Leadership Development

Mothers in Australia are increasingly leaving their children in childcare in order to engage in paid employment, a study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, reported on news.com.au, has found.

Institute general manager of research Ruth Weston said there had been a significant shift over the past decade, with the most common arrangement for married women now to undertake part-time work while their husbands work full time.
…
It is more common for women with children under five to be working than a decade ago, with 52 per cent now undertaking work, compared with 46 per cent in 1996.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of married mothers with children under five who were working up to 14 hours a week and wanted to work more - up from 15 per cent a decade ago to 40 per cent now.
…
Overall, three quarters of mothers with children under 13 wanted to work. The Institute said more children are being put in formal childcare as a result. The mean age for children to start regularly being looked after by someone other than a parent is five months.

Please note that many, if not most, of these children are not being left in the care of an extended family, but in paid childcare.

Children are today viewed as a hindrance to economic development and self-actualization through consumption and sense gratification, and therefore fertility rates are declining in Western countries such as Australia, with many experiencing negative population growth by birth.

In cases where family units do have children, the children are increasingly abandoned to childcare services to allow the parents to do something “more meaningful and rewarding”, such as paid employment. In some cases financial pressures demand that both parents work, or solo mothers need to work to maintain themselves.

At the same time, I personally support my wife and one child on my income, and I know of work colleagues who support two children and their wife, so it is possible.

When children are abandoned at an early age to child care in this manner they grow up with a feeling of being unwanted which affects their psychology and their socialization. Parents who sacrifice their children to childcare in order to work should be prepared to be sacrificed by their children when they grow older. Many advertisements for superannuation play to this, encouraging people to save for their retirement “rather than being a burden on their kids”. In this way they are actually encouraged to abandon their children in order to work.

This is one example of the way in which the family unit is being displaced as the building block of human society and replaced with the individual consumer - alienated, isolated, and vulnerable to exploitation.

An increase of unwanted population certainly causes hellish life both for the family and for those who destroy the family tradition. The ancestors of such corrupt families fall down, because the performances for offering them food and water are entirely stopped. By the evil deeds of those who destroy the family tradition and thus give rise to unwanted children, all kinds of community projects and family welfare activities are devastated.

Bhagavad-gita 1.41 - 1.42

This is Sriman Vamsidhari das, whose kirtan from the Taupo retreat I posted the other day. That kirtan is the number one download from the site so far this month with 59 downloads as of yesterday.

There is a photo gallery online of the Taupo retreat now. Check it out.

Update: a day later it’s at 84 downloads and counting.

Here’s something that we have been discussing this past week: I found it just now in a summary of Major Don Vandergriff’s Raising the Bar: Creating Adaptive Leaders to Deal With The Changing Face of War.

On a more general level, MAJ Vandergriff examines how to train leaders in any organization. Some corporate executives and HR departments still treat expenses associated with the development of leaders as costs, rather than as the investments they are. A company, after all, is its people. They use tools, and they execute strategies, but without people who will seek out and exploit opportunities, it’s all just a pile of bricks, silicon, and paper. People, ideas, and hardware—in that order!—as much in the commercial world as in the military.

This is such an important point. We have to stop seeing people as costs and trying to not spend any money on them. People are assets and money spent on them is an investment, not an expense. Get the people out of the expenses column and put them in the assets column.

Too much money spent on buildings, not enough on staff is a recipe for empty buildings.

I’m learning German (the language) at the moment. We need more Germans in the movement. Germans are very useful. They are a race of ksatriyas.

I’m a great fan of German military doctrine actually. I’ve used some of my bandwidth lately to study the development of their tactical thought.

Central to German military thinking since the 19th century was the idea of Mission-type tactics (Auftragstatik in German).

From wikipedia:

In mission-type tactics the military commander gives its subordinate leaders a clearly defined goal and the forces needed to accomplish that goal with a time-frame within which the goal must be reached. The subordinate leader then implements the order independently. The subordinate leader is given, to a large extent, initiative and a freedom in execution which enables flexibility in order execution. Mission-type tactics free higher leadership levels from tactical details.

For the success of the mission-type tactics it is especially important that the subordinate leaders understand the intent of the orders and are given proper guidance and that they are trained so they can act independently. In contrast to the mission-type tactics is Command and control used by American armed forces.

It’s all about increasing the leadership capability at all levels of the organization.

Auftragstaktik can be seen as doctrine within which formal rules can be selectively suspended in order to overcome “Friction”. Carl von Clausewitz stated that “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult”. Problems will occur with misplaced communications, troops going to the wrong location, delays caused by weather etc., and it is the duty of the commander to do his best to overcome them. Auftragstaktik encourages commanders to exhibit initiative, flexibility and improvisation while in command. In what may be seen as surprising Auftragstaktik empowers commanders to disobey Orders and revise their effect as long as the intent of the commander is maintained.

Remember that scene in The Longest Day when the American commanders realize that they have been dropped on the wrong beach? An American General (shame on me for not knowing who), ends their indecision in how to proceed by saying: “The war starts here.”

Analysis by the US Army of the 1939 German campaign in Poland found that “The emphasis which the Germans placed on the development of leadership and initiative in commanders during years of preparatory training brought its rewards in the Polish campaign. With confidence that these principles had been properly inculcated, all commanders, from the highest to the lowest echelons, felt free to carry out their missions or meet changes in situations with a minimum of interference by higher commanders.” They recognised that “initiative, flexibility and mobility” were the essential aspects of German tactics.

OK, this is a building block. With leadership (independently thoughtful men) at every level of the organization decision-making can be decentralized, as long as vision is shared throughout the organization.

The earlier doctrine of Vernichtungsgedanke or “the concept of annhilation“, which essentially entailed a force-on-force approach with superior momentum to unbalance and subdue an enemy, resulted in the stalemate of the First World War when massively armed forces clashed with no decisive outcome.

In order to overcome this doctrinal failure the offensive operational-level military doctrine that came to be known as Blitzkreig was developed. It is based on a concept of Bewegungskrieg or “war of maneuver”.

The idea of Blitzkreig is to destroy an enemy’s decision-making capability with rapid mobility and deep penetration, destroying their command and supply infrastructure and thereby ending their ability to field resistance in a coordinated fashion, instead of attacking force-on-force. In this way although an enemy may still have significant force, it is unable to be deployed and they must surrender or be destroyed in a mop up operation.

The way that this was implemented was with air superiority providing close support to mobile armoured columns effecting deep penetration, followed by infantry.

With a command-and-control structure that emphasizes centralized decision-making, communication becomes the weak link. By disrupting communications and effecting tactical adaption that outpaces the enemy’s ability to make decisions and disseminate them, the attacking force retains the initiative throughout the engagement. This is in stark contrast to the idea of Attrition Warfare, where you win by basically exhausting your enemy’s forces, never a good idea unless you have massive force superiority, and even then not a good idea. The disruption of communications is effected by deep penetration of armoured elements, and the pace of tactical adaptation is accelerated through local communications networks (a radio in every tank), and, very importantly, Auftragstatik, or Mission-type tactics - local commanders making decisions quickly in response to changing circumstances, rather than radioing reports and awaiting orders.

This was very effective against the Soviets and the Allied forces in France.

If you read the book on Network-centric Warfare that I recommended a while ago, you might recognize these concepts. If you studied the present Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom) you might also recognize the tactics. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Achievement of air superiority (very necessary), followed by a rapid deep penetration designed to destroy the enemy’s command and control capability. Rather than going force-on-force, you blow out their brains.

The defence against this type of attack is Defence in Depth, also known as elastic defense. In this type of arrangement forces are not arrayed in a static front, but are instead deployed in depth in concentric rings in order to prevent an enemy from flanking or attacking from the rear. The forces within this defensive structure then utilize the Hedgehog defense, where they form into perimeters and continue to fight when cut off and surrounded by penetrating elements during a blitzkrieg attack. This defense relies heavily on the initiative of the local commanders, and their awaremess of the doctrine. Elements may be cut off and surrounded, but they should not surrender.

The modern US doctrine of Network-centric Warfare is aimed at increasing the speed of the US force’s decision-making cycle, through shared situational awareness, to such a point where the defender is unable to seize the initiative. This is done through technological communications enabling centralized command and control structures to have increased access to information and communications networks, rather than through Auftragstatik, or empowerment of commanders. This is coupled with the idea of Rapid Dominance, where the idea is to overwhelm the enemy’s ability to resist by attacking all aspects of their will simultaneously. The Shock and Awe tactic of a massive display of firepower is part of this.

This weakness of this system is in an asymmetrical situation where they do not face a conventional enemy who can be conquered by “driving him into the sea”. The system is also reliant on the technological network. If this is disrupted, the effectiveness of the system is severely degraded. Asymmetric warfare is basically the only response to Network-centric Warfare.

With the speed of the intelligence gathering - decision making - decision communication cycle of the US forces you’ll be hard pressed to outpace them. Outgunning them is also out of the question. The only way to really go head-to-head conventionally with current US forces would be if you had a network or superior local decision-making capability, and were able to disrupt their network. That would work.

Otherwise, not allowing them to apply a massed force attack on your own communications network and attacking their will to fight is the only way. The Network-centric Warfare idea assumes an enemy with a centralized command-and-control structure and a massed force that can be overwhelmed with concentrated and coordinated attack by superior forces.

Basically they’ve driven everyone out of the game of conventional military warfare, which is why the war is now moving to the ideological level, attacking the motivation and will of the enemy. This is referred to as fourth-generational warfare,

Anyway, preaching application: I’m a big fan of Auftragstatik. Empower your local commanders to make decisions in alignment with the overall mission. Put people in charge of things and empower them to do the necessary. Give them the freedom to take decisions, and the freedom to make mistakes and to fail. But not continually. If they don’t learn from their mistakes, replace and redeploy them.

There is no “enemy’s decision-making cycle” to get inside of, but momentum is still critically important to avoid your preaching mission getting bogged down in trench warfare. Check out the summary of Andy Stanley’s talk on Momentum at Catalyst 2005. Maxwell calls it “the big Mo”.

Here is a page of leadership articles related to fourth generational warfare.