Tim Herd

The killer tornado that struck near El Reno, OK on May 31, 2013 has been reclassified  by researchers (as of yesterday) as an EF5, with winds in excess of 200 mph. It scoured the ground for 16.2 miles and, at 2.6 miles wide, was the widest ever recorded.  My sympathies to its victims and their casualties.

The conventional wisdom in surviving a tornado used to be to open the windows in the house to equalize air pressure, and take refuge in the southwest corner of the cellar. Research has since shown that open windows simply permit the extreme winds to enter the house and sail away with the roof. Studies of the damage shows there’s no statistically safer quadrant of the house, since tornadoes can find you from any direction. The safest shelter is in a basement closet or other small room with four strong walls.

There are a couple things about severe storms worth noting:

• There’s nothing we can do to alter them (try as we might).
• Their exact tracks are largely unpredictable (and only partially conceivable).
• There’s no shortage of them (yikes!).

Severe thunderstorms, hailstorms, flash floods, tornadoes, firestorms, hurricanes and blizzards—they all blaze ragged trails of spoils and damage. Such are not the kinds of predictable paths we plan to follow—these are the kinds that track us down! Moreover, not only can they find us easily enough, they know where we live!

There is no shortage of nagging problems, worrisome conflicts, and overwhelming tempests that can swirl about our lives at any time, in any form, and from any direction. Sometimes we’re forewarned; sometimes we’re blindsided. As leaders upon whom other people depend, how are we to cope and still continue to lead?

When it comes to weathering such crises and problems—whether physical, psychological, professional, pecuniary or preposterous—there are a couple of strategies we can proactively employ:

1. Prepare in advance. Keep a sharp “weather eye.” Anticipate change. What are the trends in your industry, profession, hot-potato issue or celebrated cause? What new paradigms are appearing on your horizon? Study the probabilities of real risk, then solidify your allies, stockpile your provisions, stabilize your operations and steel yourself.

2. Heed the warnings. Seek the wisdom of those who know more. Pursue the counsel of respected thought leaders and those who have survived similar onslaughts. Learn from the fatal mistakes of those who held a hurricane party in a house that vanished with the storm surge. How can you best function should the blast blow your way?

3. Don’t provide cause for escalation. Just as when a real tornado strikes, shut the windows to things that can make conditions worse. Keep perspective to prevent panic. Stay alert to swirling currents and shifting pressures to avoid further misfortunes. Seek ways to mitigate stress, de-escalate danger and prevent collateral damage.

4. Seek shelter. When, as children, my sister and I played outdoors in snowstorms, we would hollow out a hole in the side of a large snowdrift so that when the blizzard blew stinging shards of ice into our faces, we could stuff our heads into our private hidey-holes and wait out the blast. Some calamities can be career-changers, but they need not be career-enders. Hunker down for the duration in a safe refuge.

While there’s no avoiding the storms that bear down on us, do remember this: their twisted tracks only cross our pathways, not become them. Skies clear, lanes reopen, and we may re-emerge intact, to continue on.

MasterPoint: Weather difficult disturbances with proactive preparations.

Trickling runoff from a mountain’s upper reaches coalesces into rivulets, which in turn merge into brooks. Brooks combine to form streams; streams gather into creeks, which build into expansive rivers, whose hydraulic action not only moves bedrock and other so-called immovable objects, but whose flow nourishes and sustains life, land, and the entire watershed.

Such is the combining power of confluence.

Much like the tiny drops that start the flow, your teammates may come from very diverse origins. With them they bring swirling eddies of expertise and experience, bearing diverse backgrounds and beliefs, and packing a plethora of principles, paradigms, and persuasions!

But when they align in a unified flow, their cumulative momentum and empowering force are nearly unstoppable.

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We and the trees have got a lot in common—especially when we compare our inner resources! Working together for our overall growth and development, these intrinsic assets can produce high value in the marketplace:

In the very center of the tree grows the heartwood:  hard, dense wood, usually dark in color that gives strength to the tree.

• Internally, our “heartwood” is our core integrity and inner strength, often formed through years of growth experiences. It’s a flexible stiffness, just like the tree, that overcomes storms and may bend—but not break—from external stresses. What are your unchangeable, core values?

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Today’s vernal equinox briefly bathes the planet in equal amounts of daylight and darkness. And with the shift (in the northern hemisphere) from dark dormancy into animated ambience surges an inner revival for growth and development.

In response to greater sunlight, internal pressures in the trees commence the rising of nutrient-laden sap from storage in the roots upward to fuel the new season’s growth spurt in the twigs.

Biologically, this is an ongoing riot of chemical reactions, motivity mechanisms, physiological changes, and vital exchanges with external resources that together produce the unfolding of buds and leaves, the development and ripening of its fruit, and all eventual successive generations.

It’s time for a growth check. Back yourself up against the wall or doorway—like you may have as an eager youngster—and inscribe a new level against your previous benchmark. What progress have you made since you last checked?

Psychologically, personal growth and development is a direct response to the amount of time spent in the light of new knowledge, building the internal pressure necessary to generate changes in our thinking, actions, and vital interactions with our external resources—that together produce the eruptions of newly developed talents, blossoming of new skills, a maturing of virtues, and an enduring impact on future generations.

Heed this brief missive of springtime revival from the woodlands. What possibilities are you growing?

Run with this idea: The greater our connection to nature, the healthier and happier we are.

According to accumulating research, time spent in green outdoor spaces by children fosters creative play and relieves attention deficit disorders. Among adults, the rejuvenation derived from such outdoor pursuits as trailing a tiny ball through the byways of a golf course—or the hours teasing trout with an artificial fly—are well known. Aerobic activities of jogging, walking, and swimming contribute directly to our physical health. But perhaps surprisingly, studies show that the amazing therapeutic benefit of the outdoors extends even to office-bound cubicle workers with a mere view of trees, shrubbery or large lawns—who experience less frustration and stress than their deprived co-workers!

Time was that all our outdoor activities were subsistence-based. The chores of farming, gardening, hunting, and fishing produced food; walking, snowshoeing, skiing, and horseback riding were for necessary traveling. As such, the inherent benefits of interactions with nature were incorporated into our basic lifestyles.

These days, however, such interactions are usually not found listed on our electronic taskminders. Recreation is crammed into overly-busy vacation days, and the concept of outdoor leisure for the conscientious professional is considered naively quaint. Yet getting out there is neither the unproductive time nor the inconvenience it may seem.

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Full disclosure: I never went to kindergarten. It didn’t exist in my rural township in those dark, early days soon after the ice sheet had receded from North America.

And so I never learned all those things that people learn in kindergarten: Things like… like…

Hmm. Maybe that’s the problem right there.

In the late 1950s, educational progress in our locale consolidated a dozen one-room schoolhouses into a “modern” elementary building. So a few days after I turned six years old, I started First Grade. My teacher, Mrs. Sham, wore what used to be called “coke-bottle glasses” (because the lenses were so thick), and what I called “teacher’s perfume.” (I have never met anyone else so distinctively scented in my life.)

I was an impressionable kid, and I learned many life lessons from Mrs. Sham: (more…)