Kathy Kolbe's Blog

Entrepreneurs need all the help we can get on every level we try to go.

Heidi Scott was my first collaborator. When my biz was out of the extra bedroom this wonderful Quick Start niece (then college student working part-time, since a highly successful entrepreneur) was my only employee. I learned a lot from her. She’d walk in the door ready to take on the world, chiming in with opinions, short cuts, and a bravado I could never match (but greatly admired).

 The UPS guy was my next best collaborator. Wish I knew his name. He’d come in (wasn’t supposed todo this, I later learned) and help carry large boxes of educational books and games into his car. Along the way, he’d recommend better methods to taping them together, among other (what I soon recognized) were Implementor tricks.

My first fulltime employees helped edit, package, market, as we learned and worked together – or not. She missed understood collaboration as a “take over”  (after all, SHE didn’t make as many mistakes as I made).

Those who expected me to be an all knowing boss , or one who paid them to do only what was in the job description (which I never wrote, but them sometimes did) never lasted long.

 I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was always looking for collaborators, and those who just wanted jobs were both frustrated and frustrating.

 The best collaborator of all the “blind” hires (people I didn’t know before they came into the business) is James, about whom I write below. He’s a generation younger, but born wise. He’s a primary reason I’m so in love with technology. What I wanted to try, he was willing to teach.

 There isn’t a person on the Kolbe Corp team who I don’t consider a collaborator, whether they’re in operations, finance, technology, sales or delp desk. they all get involved in product development, concept issues, and communications of our mission.

 Too bad government regulations don’t recognize the way collaboration actually works – but that’s for another blog.

Dear James,

How blessed I am that you are my collaborator in product development at Kolbe Corp. In your 10 years here  you’ve made many things possible that never would have happened without you.

I certainly recall the beginning of the journey. You’d heard about what we did and had stopped by to ask for the opporutnity to join us — three times. We didn’t have an opening – but, your sincerity and commitment don’t come along very often, so we created a role that fit your MO.

You worked –I know how very hard you worked –  to learn every aspect you could about the Kolbe concept. You immediately acted like an owner; protecting, cajoling and producing. You not only learned what  we do, but before very long you were helping to fine tune how we do it.

You didn’t turn tail when times were tough and deadlines seemed impossible. You ‘ve been  uncompromising on issues of quality and interity -  remaining  me in the midst of  a  difficult decision that these are the principles we’ve agreed are paramount.

As technology became integral to our product development, you stayed on top of the innovation curve. What I think up, you’ve figured out how produce .

Thank you for never seeing my dyslexia (or resistant Fact Finder) as a weakness — or an excuse. Your sense of humor and of  humanity make our partnership pure joy.

James, trusting my instincts in hiring you is one of the wisest decisions I ever made. We’re a family business — and you’re an important member of the family.

Love you,

Kathy

I know it sounds arrogant when I talk about the truths I’ve discovered. I hate arrogance. But I love truth.

 Conative truths have been there for the world to see. (Oops, there it goes again, the all knowing Microsoft Word Spell Check just underlined the word conative in red as I wrote it. No such word it tries to tell me. Surely I must mean cognitive. )

 Arrogance that’s based on ignorance, now that’s really obnoxious.

(Microsoft, I’m calling you out. Your continued ignorance of the conative domain is unacceptable. Congrats Google for including it in knol.)

 I’m going to risk calling a truth a truth no matter what high falutin’ source tells me I must be wrong…that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

 If people had been paying more attention to people, they surely would have seen what I’ve seen. (If Microsoft spell checkers had read the REAL Peter Roget’s Thesaurus they would understand the origins of the word conative. But then, the Library of Congress never had a topic card for Conation either.)

 It hasn’t been an orderly process of discovery. Is it ever?

 Sometimes it took years for me to do a Note to Self about a person’s action, reactions or interactions. Rarely was I completely aware of a moment of learning. But when a truth became clear it happened in the same way a full moon lights a nighttime scene – a brightness illuminating the darkness.  The disclosure of a mysterious, natural, God-given truth is beyond what a human can control, but available to all those who make the effort to see.

 I don’t own conative truths, but am responsible for sharing them.

 Not in any particular order. Not by following any rules for writing that I’ve been taught. Not by satisfying any one’s expectations.

• Raise your hand if you have complained about competition from the big guys.
• Raise your hand if you have complained about potential clients’ ingrained system & procedures.
• Raise your hand if you have complained about clients’ and potential clients’ having entrenched decision makers.
• Raise your hand if you have complained about gate keepers in these organizations.
• Raise your hand if you have complained about competitors having a leg up.

 If you raised your hand for any of these you should be excited about the opportunity the changing economy is providing you.

Why? Because:

1. Many of your biggest competitors have too much baggage, and haven’t been able to tough it out. They are either gone or marginalized by their lack of agility.

2. Enterprises can’t survive today by operating with the same systems and procedures they used a year ago.

3. Previous top decision makers who aren’t bringing in new solutions aren’t keeping their jobs.

 4. Organizations can’t afford staff positions that don’t add to the bottom line. Exit Gate Keepers.

 5. Yesterday’s competitors are today’s colleagues.

Being Confrontational

I was never confrontational at home. Being the 4^th child, shy, having a mother who was a homeless orphan and needed a safe nest, having an active life going on in my head, being well loved and cared for – I had no need to be confrontational.

 I wasn’t confrontational in grade school. Learning was great fun. I figured out tricks to deal with the odd way others thought I wrote, tied my shoes, and did just about everything else.

 I wasn’t confrontational in junior high, when we could go at our own speed in core subjects and I was done with English by Thanksgiving, and learned not voting for myself in a heads-on-desks vote was stupid, and got to give the graduation speech.

 I wasn’t confrontational in high school, where we had courses that challenged us to the max,  had free-reign to write strong editorial opinions in the school newspaper, and had free run of the place to write and produce a musical comedy in a large auditorium with 300 cast and crew members – without adults hovering.

 I became confrontational in college when the word “can’t” was pervasive.

What was the big deal with prerequisites?

Why couldn’t I take a class outside one of my two majors?

Why on earth did I have to be in the dorm at 10:00, when some of the music school concerts  weren’t over by then?

Who said because I joined a sorority I had to go along with the racial & religious discrimination in selectionof new pledges?

Why would you expect me to be the student government vice president and not stand against misrepresentation of student opinions  at national conferences?

Why are we paying tuition for a class where the professor hasn’t added one iota to what we paid for when we bought his book?

Since when does the May Queen (NOT a beauty contest) have to keep her mouth shut about the way the admissions procedures really work?

Before I graduated I’d been written up by the New York Times as a crusader in national politics and the Chicago Tribune Sunday editorial board as: “Queen with a Cause.”  While in college I had learned that the world didn’t always give every one choices, or freedom, or equal opportunities. I learned first-hand about deceit, most vividly from the student body president who used well-honed debate skills to decimate others’ self-efficacy. (I understand he became a Hollywood divorce attorney). It was sad that he was aided and abetted by one of our professors. It was worse that I was told to “learn from it!” when I criticized the process (but that’s exactly what I did, which has protected me from such abusive techniques on many of occasions).

 I lost my naiveté in college. And found my voice.

There are things in my past I haven’t talked or written about publicly. Some too painful, some too scary, some would hurt other people. However, some need to be shared if I’m truly going to let you in on How I Know What I Know.

Since I was a little kid, people have confided in me. In grade school I wondered why a classmate would tell me his father was cheating on his mother, or his older brother played strip poker in their basement, or his mother was shop lifting. It seemed strange that a girl I barely knew would admit to me that she’d caused the food poisoning that took her rival out of a contest.

I didn’t like knowing all this. What was I supposed to do with what I knew? I tried to figure out how to help – and how it all could be happening. I clued school counselors in when I thought someone was serious about suicide and when I became aware of what I thought were sexual predators. By 6th grade, my rule was  that when others could be harmed, I had to do something.

I can assure all those whose confidences I have kept over the years that I am not about to disclose their secrets now – or ever.

Some of the stories I will tell you (unless I chicken out) include:

• How my “crusading for truth” led the CIA to think I was a double agent (which is peculiar becuz I was debating across the table from Tom Hayden) – & built a large file on my role as a political activist in the ‘60s.

• What I discovered when a dear friend was assassinated in a celebrated case — and some officials ignored what I knew.

• How it felt to fear for my life when people tried to personally harm me in order to get their hands on my intellectual properties.

• What I learned by seeing some of my colleagues on the Governor’s team in Illinois go to jail (and that was one of the few unindicted governors of the era).

• How sorry I was, as a sports and music lover, to discover talent is often not the greatest determinant for success in those fields — just as in business and politics.

• How I learned about the significant levels of corruption in public education – and fought it for a decade without making much of a dent.

• What business gurus did that helped me discover their common weaknesses (affective, of course).

• How the mafia stopped me from selling popcorn at a local public school event – and why that led me to learn more than I wanted to know – again.

Oh, there’s so much more. Life is not simple – even for a resistant Fact Finder. I’m thankful I have my MO. It’s one that doesn’t dwell on the past (and, Note to Others: doesn’t keep grudges because it doesn’t retain all the details).

My purpose here is not to be a tattletale or an historian. It’s to try to clarify what circumstances led me to separate the conative drives that make people act the way they act,  from their cultures, values and preferences.

I’ve known many brilliant people, and they’ve been no less likely to get themselves into plenty of trouble.  IQ,  I’ve found, doesn’t account for nearly as much as our culture ascribes to it. It’s one of the major causes of arrogance, which I now realize is the worse leaning diability of all.

My MO has clearly been relevant to how I got myself into  these situations.  It took being me to get where I’ve gone.

With my theorist nature,  I’ve taken many risks (my mother used to warn me to watch out for bombs under my bed).  Despite being shy, I’ve gotten  myself  into amazing situations . Some because I’m a true risk taker, and some because I’m a crusader.  Perhaps most of all, because I’ve always been on a search for what makes people tick.

(Note to Self: Need more  play dates w/ grandkids).

This blog is KathyKolbe’s Blog, the place where I can most openly write as me — the theorist that I am to my very core.  It isn’t going to be written, edited or proof read by anyone else. This is going to be Pure Kathy. Take it or leave it.

If my free wheeling comments bug you – good. Bug me back. We can get to stuff I can’t say anywhere else. Feel free to egg me on.  I won’t hold back on what I really think or be limited by keystrokes.

This is a free-for-all place for you to ask me anything and everything, and for me not to worry if there are typos (not that I actually do), or swear words (did you read on my tweet that new research re swear words relieving pain has freed me at last), or that my 2 in Fact Finder is being inappropriate (again). Will Rapp, my FF insistent husband, will probably have to avoid reading this.

 The wonderful variety of communications methods technology provides today has come just-in-time to extend my  abilities/desires by another two or three decades.  I can reach so many more people electronically than thru in-person seminars/speeches. Yet, I certainly will keep doing some of those, too.

I may be more determined to keep doing  in-person things becuz a guy at our Professional Growth Seminar in May told me it was “time to get off the stage and let the younger people at Kolbe do the presentations.”

 Don’t tell me “can’t!” Maybe I wasn’t as entertaining as ppl say often say I am.  But  I was dealing with a half dozen broken ribs, a frayed rotator cuff and a broken elbow. (Yes, I’m accident prone, especially when I inappropriately charged off on an electric scooter to entertain a sick kid. That part worked, by the way.).  As the creator of the concepts and the author of the work that was being introduced, we made a decision that I if I could I should  explain its theoretical foundations. Others could train train on the apps.

 Was I angry when he said what he said? No. I knew where he was coming from. So, why am I responding here?  Becuz this blog is going to be very personal. It’s going to give you insights into the mind and heart – and soul of a theorist.  

 We live in a very judgmental culture. Our sociey loves to find faults. Attention Deficite Disability is oh so popular.

Part of my theory is that this affect has been destructive to personal joy, caused millions of people to have unnecessary stress,  and lowered the level of team achievements.

I would give that guy a hug today (although it was giving so many people hugs that day that bruised my ribs further and sent me to get the MRI that confirmed the fractures). Yes. He made me think.

 The key is not to deny your destiny because of detractors and distractors. I need to stay focused on the mission to make a difference in peoples’ lives – all people, all ages and races and  IQ levels and cultures.

I hear those who say Kolbe Corp should have a more targeted market strategy. Maybe it should. I leave that to David Kolbe and Amy Bruske and their management team at Kolbe Corp to whom I have entrusted such business decisions.

 As the theorist on conation, human instincts and the Dynamynd (which will be a favorite topic here, I expect), I do not believe that I have the ethical freedom to keep my work from any segment of humankind that could benefit from it. Including ppl who  diss me.

 A theorist who develops a theory that can help humankind is much like the scientist who develops a cure for disease – the work must be shared without prejudice. All who can benefit must have access to the help it provides.

In this sense, I consider my work – on the theory of human instincts and the conative domain –to be public domain. What’s not available for free are the techniques I’ve developed as business applications of my theories.

 Kolbe Indexes are apps, so are the M0+ , other eProducts, and the leadership and team docs.  

All the products Kolbe Corp publishes and disseminates are applications of my theories. In order to be considered a part of the Kolbe Wisdom anything Kolbe Corp publishes that I have not personally written or edited, must be carefully reviewed and approved by me. A couple of times things have slipped through, but when I catch an error, everyone knows it’ll be corrected ASAP. That’s the deal!

I’ve had to sort all this out in order to keep my perspective, temper, and sense of humor. I wasn’t created to do it all. Neither were you. All of us need to be respected for our innate abilities and to build teams around who share our purpose but bring differing conative abilities to the process of fulfilling them.  

  I look forward to your challenging, intriguing, clarifying, questioning – it will keep me coming back to share stories.

 Hugs, Kathy