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Is your team suffering from group think – each member having the same ideas? Are you prepared to stand up fro what you believe it? Do you “cave in” and compromise your values under pressure? These are the thoughts I was having while watching I Just Didn’t Do It, a Japanese courtroom drama. The acting was brilliant and the film was very good but I was distressed at the end, mainly because I know what happened in the film actually happens in real life.

The film is about a chronic problem of sexual harassment on the trains, but the language they use in I Just Didn’t Do It is groping, indecent exposure and so on. The film starts on a crowded train where a businessman is massaging a women’s bum, then he becomes bolder and places his hand under her skirt. She screams out and calls him a pervert and everyone starts looking at him so he lashes out at her and tells her that he would bother with someone like her.

Because of the chronic situation there has been public outcry so the judicial system wants to make an example of the offenders. The businessman is taken in to custody and the detectives are trying to get a confession, but he is being very arrogant until they announce that they are going to check his hands to see if there are fibres that match the fibres of the victim’s underwear. He folds and starts to cry, apologizes and says that if what he did became public it would ruin him. Because he is penitent he gets a slap on the wrist and is let go.

The main story line of the film begins, and once again it’s a crowded train with someone groping a fifteen year old school girl. Immediately behind her is a 26 year old man, who is squirming around because his jacket is caught in the train door. He is very flustered and working desperately to dislodge his jacket. He bumps into the woman beside him, she gives him a look and he apologizes. It takes him about 10 minutes to free his jacket, and during that time because of his flustered state he is unaware of what is playing out in front of him. The only thing he is concerned with is getting his jacket free.

Someone wearing a dark coloured jacket similar to his is the one who is groping the girl. She grabs the person’s hand to see who the offender is, but he quickly yanks his hand free. So when the train stops and she gets off, she assumes that the guy behind her was the offender and he gets arrested. When the metro works accost him, the lady who he bumped into tries to explain that the guy wasn’t a groper, all he was trying to do was pull out his jacket which was caught in the door. They had no interest in her so she left.

I Just Didn’t Do It brilliantly unfolds with the hearing inside the courtroom. The guy maintains that he innocent, but no one wants to listen. They want a confession and the detectives twist what he said, and they embellished in their statement. They didn’t tell him that he gets one call or that he was entitled to get a lawyer. He was violated. Another inmate tells him about his rights and he got a public defender who encourages him to confess because 99.99 percent of those cases that go to trial the defendant is convicted. The guy stands up for what he believes in and refuses to confess to a crime he didn’t commit, and he believed in the justice system.

As the story unfolds you see one obstacle after another, and all the time he maintains his innocence. The detectives convince the victim that it had to be defendant who groped her because it could not have been anyone else. The defendant’s lawyers re-enacted the scene on the crowded train and showed that there was no way it could have been the defendant. And also in the middle of the case they pulled the first judge because they felt that too many of the cases he ruled on were acquittals.

There was one miscarriage of justice after another and he was convicted and the film ends when they have the ruling, and the defendant is told that he can appeal in 14 days and he appeals. It’s a beautiful film that’s worth seeing, and you get caught up in the drama and events as they unfold.

Sexual harassment is wrong, but people need to defend themselves against claims. The situation was guilty until proven innocent. His lawyers, mother and friends believed in him and did everything in their power to prove his innocence. And they did, as a member of the audience you see what the judge and district attorney refuse to see, and that’s the brilliance of the film.

I know it was a film but I was very distressed at the end. And the brilliant acting and the unfolding of the story made it very real, which did not help my situation. It also reminded me of Sean MacDonald, the wrongful dismissal lawyer who we have featured here. If you get the opportunity to see I Just Didn’t Do It, please do so.

For readers who live in Toronto and surrounding areas, The Japanese Foundation has film screenings at the Bloor Street Cinema from December 9 to 12, 2010 and you can see the films for free.

So back to my original questions, is your team suffering from group think – each member having the same ideas? Are you prepared to stand up fro what you believe it? Do you “cave in” and compromise your values under pressure?

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

I’m sure that you have read books and wondered what inspired the author to write them. Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the Best-Loved Books by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy provides context for 50 books. Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy present profiles and the lives lived by the 50 authors included in their book,  and you are transported into their lives and get a better sense of where they are coming from.

The whole process began as a discussion over dinner, when the question was asked, “What is the special ingredient that creates a truly spectacular piece of literature or a work with enduring appeal?” They realized that to answer the question they would have to delve deeper. To choose the 50 books,  Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy started off with books they loved and they expanded by asking their friends and colleagues for recommendations. They also talked to professionals in publishing, book specialists and looked at book sales and “awareness figures in various countries.” They conducted extensive research and found that the special ingredients were passion and struggle.

Books mentioned among the 50 best-loved books include:

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Oliver Twist
3. Jane Eyre
4. War and Peace
5. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
6. The Great Gatsby
7. Winnie-the-Pooh
8. The Grapes of Wrath
9. Casino Royale
10. Nineteen Eight-four
11. Catcher in the Rye
12. To Kill a Mockingbird
13. The Godfather
14. Jaws
15. Bridget Jones Diary
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
17. The Da Vinci Code
18. The English Dictionary
19. Guinness World Record
20. Roots
21. A Brief History of Time

Many of the authors whose lives were delved into had life altering experiences, and many of them used their work experiences to craft the best tales building realistic characters.  Frankenstein was inspired by a nightmare, Oliver Twist was an act of social justice and rebellion against an unfair system. Erich Remarque drew on a lot of his experience when he wrote the war story  All Quiet on the Western Front. As you read Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara, you get a glimpse into the time the author lived in. Not surprisingly, most of them were voracious readers, though they were not necessarily great students. And, it often took them a while to find their true vocation. They kept at it and faced numerous rejections.

For me, reading about the authors mentioned in Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara shows that good things come to those who persist. I recommend this book. For those who are wondering who Pansy O’Hara is, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind was originally called Pansy O’Hara.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Some of the book links are affiliate links

Genghis Khan, Founder and Emperor of the Mongol Empire, in his sixty five years (1162 – 1227) on earth committed a lot of atrocities. It’s believed that at the time of his death in 1227, “he had been responsible for the death of around 20 million people, around one-tenth of the population of the known world at the time.” In a life filled with savagery and brutality, there is much to learn from Khan, even if it is what not to do.

I hesitated before I purchased 100 Tyrants: History’s Most Evil Despots & Dictators (citations in this post are from this book) by Nigel Cawthorne because I didn’t want to pollute my mind. That was a bit arrogant on my part because life isn’t always rosy, and tyrants will always be around us. Books like this one gives us insights into the way tyrants think and behave, and if we stop to look, there are always lessons around us, even from a thirteenth century tyrant. Genghis Khan started his tyranny at an early age, killing his brother in a dispute over a fish at the age of 12. His tyranny continued throughout his life in his quest to expand his wealth and territory. His major goal was to conquer imperial China. Later in his life, he wanted to share his conquests with his people and he did so. He also had great foresight and kept a written record of his legacy.

Seven Lessons From Genghis Khan

1. Honor your words: In more than one instance after giving his word that a city would be spared and the inhabitants unmolested if they surrendered, Khan reneged on his promise and slaughtered the inhabitants.
2. Take the road less traveled: Khan often won the wars he waged because he didn’t do the expected.
3. Don’t be scared to take on the giants in your field, but be very strategic about it: Khan often defeated armies much larger than his because he was strategic and tactical.
4. Be compassionate when dealing with others: People begged for mercy, begged for their lives, but Khan seldom showed mercy
5. How you play the game is more important than winning: If cities opposed Khan, “As well as massacring the inhabitants, he would destroy the irrigation systems that had taken centuries to construct.”
6. Being weighed down by the tools of the trade can give your competitors and adversaries an unfair advantage: “The Russian knights wore steel armour and had shields, axes, swords and lances, but were heavy and slow compared to the Mongol.”
7. In what ways can you be innovative in the way you conduct your work? Back in the thirteenth century, people in Samarkand “Sent melons as far as Baghdad, packed with snow to keep them fresh.” Today this is nothing because we take refrigeration for granted, back then, that was a hugely innovative act. Also when Khan didn’t have any boulders for the catapults, he improvised and used the cut up trunks of the mulberry tree.

Who are some of the most notable tyrants who have walked this earth? What are five lessons that we can learn from?

Action Steps

Read about some of the most known tyrants and see what you can learn from them.

No one is inherently all bad or all good. Each of us possess both darkness and light. According to Wikipedia, “Beyond his great military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways. He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empire’s writing system. He also promoted religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, and created a unified empire from the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia.”

BBC Genghis Khan YouTube Video Part One of Five

If you cannot view the BBC Genghis Khan YouTube Video Part One of Five, click here

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Further Reading

Genghis Khan (from Wikipedia)

BBC Genghis Khan Video Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Photo Credit: Yahoo via Apture

Image by elycefeliz via Flickr

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is a personal account of Frankl’s experience in a concentration camp and a psychoanalytic look at the suffering that took place there. This is a heart rending book and it must have taken a great deal of effort and control for him to emotionally distance himself from his suffering to objectively relate and analyze the events that transpired during the years he “lived” in the concentration camps.

The goal of Man’s Search for Meaning is to “try to answer the question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?” I think that as an author, Frankl answered the question. People were reduced to numbers, and Frankl’s number was Number119,104. When he wrote the book he had no expectations that it would be a bestseller and in fact he wanted to write  anonymously using his prison number. “I had intended to write this book anonymously, using my prison number only. But when the manuscript was completed, I saw that as an anonymous publication it would lose half of its value, and that I must have the courage to state my convictions openly. I therefore refrained from deleting any of the passages in spite of an intense dislike of exhibitionism.”

Would you have had the courage to write about such horrific experiences if you were in Frankl’s shoes?

Frankl identified three phases of the inmates’ psychological reactions to life in the concentration camps:

1. The period following his admission
2. The period when he is entrenched in camp life
3. The period after his release and freedom

One of the most difficult things for the inmates was the feeling  of no end in sight. They didn’t have an end date for their incarceration, and they weren’t like regular prisoners because they hadn’t committed a crime, they were incarcerated because of the “group” they  belonged to.  Because of the indefinite incarceration there was often a sense of hopelessness, and inmates who wanted to commit suicide had to be convinced that there was a why for living. Frankl often assumed the role of psychotherapist even when he didn’t feel like it.

“God knows,  I was not in the mood to give psychological explanations  or to preach any sermons – to offer my comrades a kind of medical care for their souls. I was cold and hungry , irritable and tired, but I had to make the effort and use this unique opportunity. Encouragement was now more necessary than ever.”

The author paints a very graphic picture of life in the concentration camps and you can see in your mind’s eye what happened. And what struck me was even things that most would consider ordinary or even mundane became important for survival. Inmates were exchanging recipes and talking about meals they were going to cook when they attained freedom. Watching the sunset was a simple pleasure for them. Frankl had imaginary conversations with his wife, and in the conversations he asked her questions and she answered,  and she asked him questions and he answered. For him that was a way to maintain his sanity and mental freedom . To some, that may seem crazy, but not as crazy as you may think. In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill consulted with his Invisible Counselors and they too responded to his questions, and he didn’t have to endure living in a concentration camp.

“But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise…The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all [because a man had stumbled]. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoner’s existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one. I asked her questions and she answered, she questioned me in return and I answered.”

The meaning of life

Life means different things to different people depending on their circumstances. “Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.”

5 Great Ideas

1. A sense of humor can get you through tough times
2. You are capable of doing much more than you think
3. Don’t make success your goal because you’ll never attain it
4. “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
5. You may not have a choice in the experiences you encounter in life, but you have a choice in how you react to them

After reading Man’s Search for Meaning,  one of the  core messages that I received is that if you have a why for life you can weather any storm, what’s the why for your life? I recommend that you read Man’s Search for Meaning because it will inspire you, and you’ll realize how much you take for granted. Man’s Search for Meaning is one of those books that transcend time. Though first published in the 1940s, the book is still relevant today. I will leave you with two quotations Frankl mentions, which provide good advice to live by. And, while you are reading the book, answer the question, “What does my life mean to me?”

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Nietzsche

“Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Bismarck

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related Posts

Book Summary and Review: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

In what novel ways have you used information that you came across? What’s one concept that you discovered that has served you well? For me, it’s the creativity model presented in the Art of Thought by Graham Wallas. While conducting research on biomimicry, I came across information about a three-phase, 14-step process designed by Peter Floyd and Stephen R. Grossman that presents animal adaptations as models for problem solving. What got me excited was I had already decided that I was going to look at the idea of Evolution on this blog, which is one of the 50 ideas presented in 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know About by Ben Dupré, and here were two guys who are using Darwin’s three-step process for evolutionary change: extinction, mutation and selection. Floyd and Grossman have taken the three-steps and broken them down into a problem solving model. I thought that was simply brilliant, but I know that you can create a model that’s equally brilliant.

As presented by Ben Dupré, the idea of Evolution is a short read and only four pages in length. He talks about the origin of species, natural selection and the fifth ape.

“In the Origin, Charles Darwin succinctly summarizes natural selection as follows: ‘As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it very however slightly in any manner profitable, to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected . From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.’”

From the information presented in Dupré’s idea of evolution, I have extracted three great ideas that are very useful in a personal context:

1. In nature, resources such as food and mates are limited, so there will always be competition for access to them
2. Some people will be better equipped than others to prevail life’s struggles, and it is these individuals  that will live longer and produce more offspring
3. By minute and gradual changes over innumerable generations, animals and plants become better adapted to their surroundings; some species or kinds disappear, to be replaced  by others that have proved more successful for existence.

Possible Interpretation of These Ideas

• In flattened organizational structures, there are limited opportunities for promotions, therefore those expecting to excel must differentiate themselves and become more valuable to their clients, both internal and external
• The more skilled you become at problem solving, the better equipped you become at overcoming everyday challenges
• The more change resilient you are, and the more more receptive you are to ambiguity, the more longevity you’ll enjoy in the workplace
• Small and incremental changes lead to big changes in your life
• The more adaptable you are to change, the more success you’ll enjoy

As a professional, how can you use the idea of evolution to succeed in work and life? What changes can you make in your life to give you an edge?

Why evolution is one of the 50 ideas you really need to know about

Today you have to change or become extinct, so you have to mutate to be selected, in what ways can you change? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Photo and Video Credit: Apture