Tonight, in my Radical Hope community of practice, we explored the Law of Least Effort — showing up across Taoism (Wu Wei), physics (Least Action), and psychology (Zipf’s Principle). I kept noticing how clearly this connects to patterns I see every day in leaders and organizations. In fact, it would have been useful just hours earlier [...]
See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It: HERE From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching: Names fail describing Tao. Never, always— in all ways, It unspoken, It spoken, arising together. Nowhere, everywhere— in everything. Everywhere, nowhere— in nothing. Without grasping, the secret reveals. Forms appear with grasping, meaning disappears. Silent—chorus. Empty—fullness. Partness—wholeness. Infinite—source. [...]
See Patterns And Hold Mystery. Just Tao It is my attempt to put words to a thread that’s been running through my life for almost forty years. I stumbled into the Tao Te Ching in 1987, at a time when certainty felt thin and my inherited faith tradition felt…let’s say “under renovation.” I didn’t have [...]
I’m not the brightest tool in the deck, but I know one thing…when something that’s supposed to help us starts to cause a new problem, it’s probably because we didn’t see there was a Both/And need -- for both a Value AND its interdependent Value partner. I’m part of a small online community of practice [...]
I’ve been struck by the image of Buddhist monks walking—slowly, deliberately, and quietly—across the distances in a world that’s all about the hurry-up, the take sides, and the win. They’re not trying to convince anyone of anything. They’re not carrying signs. They’re not shouting slogans. They’re just walking, step after step, holding their own center [...]
I’m not the sharpest tool in the deck, but I know this much: when people at work start talking about pendulums swinging and driving from one ditch to the other, something important is trying to get our attention. You hear it all the time. “We’ve overcorrected.” “Now we’ve gone too far the other way.” “This [...]
What’s being asked of leaders right now isn’t simply better behavior or stronger values — it’s steadier judgment inside tensions that don’t resolve. Leaders are expected to move quickly and think systemically, to show conviction and remain open, to deliver results and preserve trust, to leverage AI and protect human responsibility. None of these are [...]
There’s an old Chinese story about a farmer whose livelihood depends on a single horse. One day the horse runs away. The neighbors stop by and say, “That’s bad.” The farmer replies, “Maybe.” A few days later the horse returns—bringing several wild horses with it. The neighbors return and say, “That’s good.” The farmer replies, [...]
Check out the full article here It’s always with a mix of excitement and a bit of apprehension that my attention sharpens when a credible source like Harvard Business Review or MIT Sloan publishes an article on polarities. The excitement: Finally, broader attention and value recognition. The apprehension: Was it represented well? In this HBR [...]
(This is a follow-on to PART I Cliff’sNOTE inspired by the book, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. That one focused on the two “core” polarity tensions he implicitly discusses: Moral Intuition AND Moral Reasoning … Belonging AND Truth-Seeking.) There’s a part of most of us that still believes this quiet fantasy: if I just [...]