Leadership Consulting Quotes

Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.

You can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.

The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.

In today's constantly evolving economy, business models cannot be static. The business model of each business must be consistently changing and evolving in order to stay relevant and to succeed.

Every business can benefit from good quality management consulting services. Consultants are able to gather, assemble and utilize data in unique ways. Consultants also have perspectives that are likely to be unique compared to the perspectives you find internal to your business.

When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.

Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.

The first step to solving any problem is to accept one’s own accountability for creating it.

Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.

What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.

True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.

When rewards come from an external source instead of an internal source, they’re unreliable, which means they’re dangerous if you grow to depend on them.

The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. What do you really want from your company?

With a Masters in Management from USC, I did some consultant work in Reorganization, New Products, and Change. Amazon was smart to have me as a Beta and got my advice for free. Amazon was the only company who did because for other companies, it wasn't. But what I got from Amazon is a good understanding of how they operate, the culture, and the people behind the business - Strong by Kailin Gow

With managing a business, you need to Invest in good software and or good data mining systems. Run your numbers routinely. Take a look at your revenues - when is the money typically coming in, from where, can you identify any patterns in your revenues? Then take a look at your expenses - analyze the numbers and identify patterns. Why? Because Identifying patterns and extracting actionable items from your revenue and expense data will result in the clarity you need to make good business decisions.

The worst thing in your own development as a leader is not to do it wrong. It’s to do it for the wrong reasons.

Values are the individual biases that allow you to decide which actions are true for you alone.

Values are deeply held personal beliefs that form your own priority code for living.

A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual & physical commitment combined.

The myth of management is that your personal values are irrelevant or inappropriate at work.

Being relevant to your customers only when you’re trying to sell something means choosing to be irrelevant to them for the rest of the time.

Success means: I want to know the work I do means something to somebody and helps make the world, if not a Better place, not a worse one.

It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.

Your values are your essence: an undistorted mirror showing you at your pure, attractive best.

Success for Managers means: I want to be in healthy relationships. I want a real connection with people I spend so much time with.

Careful now: even a financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating work environment isn’t the same as living your own values.

A company can’t buy true emotional commitment from managers no matter how much it’s willing to spend; this is something too valuable to have a price tag. And yet a company can’t afford not to have it.

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, who run a leadership consultancy, analyzed 3,492 participants in a manager development program and found that the most effective listeners do four things: 1. They interact in ways that make the other person feel safe and supported 2. They take a helping, cooperative stance 3. They occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions 4. They make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths

Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.

You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.

Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.

You don't have to fear your own company being perceived as human. You want it. People don't trust companies; they trust people.

There will be plenty of other problems in the future. This is as good a time as any to get ahead of them.

The economy is in ruins! Bottom line? Good management will defeat a bad economy.

Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.

Any expert will tell you that if you want emotionally committed relationships then people must be allowed to be true to who they are.

When you don’t know what true for you, everyone else has unusual influence.

Let’s get right on top of the bottom line: You must live your personal values at work.

Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.

This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.

Management controls performance in people because it impacts skills; it’s a matter of monitoring, analyzing and directing.

Companies should be the best possible place to practice fulfillment, to live out values and to realize deep connectivity and purpose.

When you’re not on your own agenda, you’re prey to the agenda of others.

One aspect of effectiveness is to simply not do things that don’t contribute to the goals of the business.

Here’s what you need to know most about leadership: Lead your own life first. The only thing in this world that will dependably happen from the top down is the digging of your grave.

People do not recognize that you can do it when you merely tell them you can. Until they see you doing it, they won’t follow you. Leaders who are willing to go further alone today are those to be consulted for solutions tomorrow.

Your company is its own competition and can deliver itself debilitating blows the competition only dreams of.

The company may have captured their minds, their bodies and their pockets, but that doesn’t mean it’s captured their hearts.

Your dreams and the dreams of your company may be different, but they are in no way incompatible.

Providing the ultimate solution to work/life balance: not escaping from work but living the way you want to at work.

Your company really has to work for you before you’ll really work for your company.

Imagine a world where what you say synchs up, not sinks down.

Emotional commitment means unchecked, unvarnished devotion to the company and its success; any legendary organizational performance is the result of emotionally committed managers.

Leaders make a lot of mistakes but they admit those mistakes to themselves and change because of them.

Most managers have plenty of emotional commitment to give to their jobs. If they can be convinced it’s safe and sensible to give it.

Hard-core results come from igniting the massive power of emotional commitment. Are your people committed?

Do you think your people struggle with being true to themselves? Do their values match up with their work?

The heart of a company’s performance is hardwired to the hearts of its managers.

The high quality of a company’s customer experience rarely has anything to do with the high price of their product.

What managers want most from companies they stop themselves from getting. What companies want most from managers they stop them from giving.

To integrate one’s experiences around a coherent and enduring sense of self lies at the core of creating a user’s guide to life.

Leaders are people who know exactly who they are. They know exactly where they want to go. They’re hell-bent on getting there.

Managers know what they want most: to be allowed to achieve success by leveraging who they are, not by compromising it.

Emotional commitment is a personal choice. Managers understand this even if their companies don’t.

A manager’s emotional commitment is worth more than their financial, intellectual and physical commitment combined.

You hire the best people you can possibly find. Then it's up to you to create an environment where great people decide to stay and invest their time.

What companies want most from their managers is what they most stop their managers from giving. What managers want most from their jobs is what they most stop themselves from getting.

In order to be an executive coach with a thriving practice, you need to have been a leader, be fluent in psychology, and have a evidence-based methodology." My book can't help you with #1, but it can help you with the rest.

As Page puts it, “Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.” It’s a principle he’s tried to apply at Google. When Page and Sergey Brin began wondering aloud about developing ways to search the text inside of books, all of the experts they consulted said it would be impossible to digitize every book. The Google cofounders decided to run the numbers and see if it was actually physically possible to scan the books in a reasonable amount of time. They concluded it was, and Google has since scanned millions of books. “I’ve learned that your intuition about things you don’t know that much about isn’t very good,” Page said. “The way Elon talks about this is that you always need to start with the first principles of a problem. What are the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There’s this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what’s possible and interesting. Elon is unusual in that he knows that, and he also knows business and organization and leadership and governmental issues.

Some of his [Chester Bowles's] friends thought that his entire political career reflected his background, that he truly believed in the idea of the Republic, with an expanded town-hall concept of politics, of political leaders consulting with their constituency, hearing them out, reasoning with them, coming to terms with them, government old-fashioned and unmanipulative. Such governments truly had to reflect their constituencies. It was his view not just of America, but of the whole world. Bowles was fascinated by the political process in which people of various countries expressed themselves politically instead of following orders imposed by an imperious leadership. In a modern world where most politicians tended to see the world divided in a death struggle between Communism and free-world democracies, it was an old-fashioned view of politics; it meant that Bowles was less likely to judge a country on whether or not it was Communist, but on whether or not its government seemed to reflect genuine indigenous feeling. (If he was critical of the Soviet leadership, he was more sympathetic to Communist governments in the underdeveloped world.) He was less impressed by the form of a government than by his own impression of its sense of legitimacy. ... He did not particularly value money (indeed, he was ill at ease with it), he did not share the usual political ideas of the rich, and he was extremely aware of the hardships with which most Americans lived. Instead of hiring highly paid consultants and pollsters to conduct market research, Bowles did his own canvassing, going from door to door to hundreds of middle- and lower-class homes. That became a crucial part of his education; his theoretical liberalism became reinforced by what he learned about people’s lives during the Depression.

As we lead organizations—businesses, nonprofits, and churches—size doesn’t matter as much as another crucial factor. The biggest difference between leaders of large organizations and small organizations isn’t their location, the size of their building, the scope of the vision, the number of staff members, or their talent. In fact, some of the best leaders I’ve ever met have small organizations. But in all my consulting and conferences, I’ve seen a single factor: leaders of larger organizations have proven they can handle more pain.

Thus, the top-management approach has these essential characteristics: 1. We make an overall diagnosis before we decide on the specific problems to be solved. 2. We determine the order in which problems should be solved. We try to persuade the client to let us put first things first. 3. In the solution of problems, we take an integrating approach and recognize that: (a) external factors are usually important in the solution of internal problems; (b) very few problems can be solved in any single department or section of the business or government agency.36

...for all my regard for democracy , and my embrace of consultative management, there's a lot to be said for benevolent depotism. My inclination towards that model only increased when I went on to study philosophy and politics and early civilisations. I'm happy to consult broadly where appropriate, to draw in ideas. But when it is clear the direction that must be taken, leadership is about persuading people to come on board to work together on the strategy you believe will work. Sometimes you might get them there through subtle persuasion. At other times, I might still say, as I did so often at fifteen, 'Oh, please, just shut up and let's get on with it.

The prophet died in the year 632 of our own approximate calendar. The first account of his life was set down a full hundred and twenty years later by Ibn Ishaq, whose original was lost and can only be consulted through its reworked form, authored by Ibn Hisham, who died in 834. Adding to this hearsay and obscurity, there is no agreed-upon account of how the Prophet’s followers assembled the Koran, or of how his various sayings (some of them written down by secretaries) became codified. And this familiar problem is further complicated—even more than in the Christian case—by the matter of succession. Unlike Jesus, who apparently undertook to return to earth very soon and who (pace the absurd Dan Brown) left no known descendants, Muhammad was a general and a politician and—though unlike Alexander of Macedonia a prolific father—left no instruction as to who was to take up his mantle. Quarrels over the leadership began almost as soon as he died, and so Islam had its first major schism—between the Sunni and the Shia—before it had even established itself as a system. We need take no side in the schism, except to point out that one at least of the schools of interpretation must be quite mistaken. And the initial identification of Islam with an earthly caliphate, made up of disputatious contenders for the said mantle, marked it from the very beginning as man-made.

HOW GOOD A GENERAL WAS GEORGE WASHINGTON? IF WE CONSULT the statistics as they might have been kept if he had been a boxer or a quarterback, the figures are not encouraging. In seven years of fighting the British, from 1775 to 1782, he won only three clear-cut victories—at Trenton, Princeton, and Yorktown. In seven other encounters—Long Island, Harlem Heights, White Plains, Fort Washington, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth—he either was defeated or at best could claim a draw. He never won a major battle. Trenton was essentially a raid, Princeton was little more than a large skirmish, and Yorktown was a siege in which the blockading French fleet was an essential component of the victory.

But his (Pericles’) successors were more on an equality with one another, and, each one struggling to be first himself, they were ready to sacrifice the whole conduct of affairs to the whims of the people. Such weakness in a great and imperial city led to many errors, of which the greatest was the Sicilian expedition; not that the Athenians miscalculated their enemy's power, but they themselves, instead of consulting for the interests of the expedition which they had sent out, were occupied in intriguing against one another for the leadership of the democracy, and not only hampered the operations of the army, but became embroiled, for the first time, at home. And yet after they had lost in the Sicilian expedition the greater part of their fleet and army, and were now distracted by revolution, still they held out three years not only against their former enemies, but against the Sicilians who had combined with them, and against most of their own allies who had risen in revolt. Even when Cyrus the son of the King joined in the war and supplied the Peloponnesian fleet with money, they continued to resist, and were at last overthrown, not by their enemies, but by themselves and their own internal dissensions. (Book 2 Chapter 65.10-12)

Chronic anxiety is systemic; it is deeper and more embracing than community nervousness. Rather than something that resides within the psyche of each one, it is something that can envelope, if not actually connect, people. It is a regressive emotional process that is quite different from the more familiar, acute anxiety we experience over specific concerns. Its expression is not dependent on time or events, even though specific happenings could seem to trigger it, and it has a way of reinforcing its own momentum. Chronic anxiety might be compared to the volatile atmosphere of a room filled with gas fumes, where any sparking incident could set off a conflagration, and where people would then blame the person who struck the match rather trying to disperse the fumes. The issues over which chronically anxious systems become concerned, therefore, are more likely to be the focus of their anxiety rather than its cause. This is why, for example, counselors, educators, and consultants who offer technical solutions for how to manage whatever brought the family in—conflict, money, parents, children, aging, sex—will rarely succeed in changing that family in any fundamental way. The anxiety that drives the problem simply switches to another focus. Assuming that what a family is worried about is what is “causing” its anxiety is tantamount to blaming a blown-away tree or house for attracting the tornado that uprooted it. As

It's important to remember that having a conversation about us (LGBT) without us will usually be a recycling or preconceived ideas and misconceptions. Can you imagine a group of male church leaders discussing the role of women in the church without females present. We would call that misogyny. Or church leadership discussing indigenous issues without ever consulting with indigenous people themselves to get insight into what their life experience is really all about. We would call that white supremacy/racism/elitism. The church has done a great deal of talking about us but rarely has spoken with us. So when church leaders discuss LGBT people, relationships and the community without speaking with or spending time getting to know LGBT people it does beg the question why. What is there to fear? Why the exclusion? Is this another evidence of homophobia? It's time for the church to invite LGBT people into the conversation. For some this is a conversation about their thoughts and beliefs but for us it is about who we are. You can ask questions. What was it like to sit in church and hear the word abomination to describe your orientation. What was it like to get to the point of coming out knowing you might be rejected by those you've loved and a church you've served.? How did you find resolution of your Christian beliefs and your sexuality? In listening you will learn. That's why it's so important to remember. No conversation about us, without us.

Typically, today, somebody in top management meets with a consultant, reads a book, gets excited about a new idea, and begins to talk about it.

It's important to remember that having a conversation about us (LGBT) without us will usually be a recycling or preconceived ideas and misconceptions. Can you imagine a group of male church leaders discussing the role of women in the church without females present. We would call that misogyny. Or church leadership discussing indigenous issues without ever consulting with indigenous people themselves to get insight into what their life experience is really all about. We would call that white supremacy/racism/elitism. The church has done a great deal of talking about us but rarely has spoken with us. So when church leaders discuss LGBT people, relationships and the community without speaking with or spending time getting to know LGBT people it does beg the question why. What is there to fear? Why the exclusion? Is this another evidence of homophobia? It's time for the church to invite LGBT people into the conversation. For some this is a conversation about their thoughts and beliefs but for us it is about who we are. You can ask questions. What was it like to sit in church and hear the word abomination to describe your orientation. What was it like to get to the point of coming out knowing you might be rejected by those you've loved and a church you've served.? How did you find resolution of your Christian beliefs and your sexuality? In listening you will learn. That's why it's so important to remember. No conversation about us, without us.

In their groundbreaking book, Tribal Leadership, management consultants Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright lay out the five stages of tribal development, which they formulated after conducting extensive research on small to midsize organizations.

In our experience as employees, leaders, and consultants, issues of power and control—more than any other emotions—create the greatest conflicts and most unpleasant work environments. Unfortunately, some individuals are motivated by power alone to seek positions of leadership.

the field of self-styled ‘corporate image consultants’ or ‘leadership consultants’ has numerous practitioners with very little psychological expertise”.

Higher commands must shape the ‘decision space’ of subordinate commanders. They must trust and coach. They must encourage cooperation and consultation among lower levels. They must accept bad news and be open for suggestions, lower-level initiatives and critique. It is thus more a question of leadership and appreciation of what is going on and comparing this to what is expected.

When I consult companies in order to create new or to improve their existing written dress code rules, “respect” is something I recommend to mention at the very beginning of their policy. Because it’s something we all desire, it’s something each and every one of us wants at work, and it’s a requirement most people have within their career: I want to be respected.

Delete, delegate, de-spec, and defer.

MODEL 2: Multiple Stakeholder Sustainability, Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams (2010) PROBLEM STATEMENT How can I assess the most significant organizational dilemmas resulting from conflicting stakeholder demands and also assess organizational priorities to create sustainable performance? ESSENCE Organizational sustainability is not limited to the fashionable environmental factors such as emissions, green energy, saving scarce resources, corporate social responsibility, and so on. The future strength of an organization depends on the way leadership and management deal with the tensions between the five major entities facing any organization: efficiency of business processes, people, clients, shareholders and society. The manner in which these tensions are addressed and resolved determines the future strength and opportunities of an organization. This model proposes that sustainability can be defined as the degree to which an organization is capable of creating long-term wealth by reconciling its most important (‘golden’) dilemmas, created between these five components. From this, professors and consultants Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams have identified ten dimensions consisting of dilemmas formed from these five components, because each one competes with the other four. HOW TO USE THE MODEL: The authors have developed a sustainability scan to use when making a diagnosis. This scan reveals: The major dilemmas and how people perceive the organization’s position in relation to these dilemmas; The corporate culture of an organization and their openness to the reconciliation of the major dilemmas; The competence of its leadership to reconcile these dilemmas. After the diagnosis, the organization can move on to reconciling the major dilemmas that lead to sustainable performance. To this end, the authors developed a dilemma reconciliation process. RESULTS To achieve sustainable success, organizations need to integrate the competing demands of their key stakeholders: operational processes, employees, clients, shareholders and society. By diagnosing and connecting different viewpoints and values, their research and consulting practice results in a better understanding of: The key challenges the organization faces with its various stakeholders and how to prioritize them; The extent to which leadership and management are capable of addressing the organizational dilemmas; The personal values of employees and their alignment with organizational values. These results help an organization define a corporate strategy in which crucial dilemmas are reconciled, and ensure that the company’s leadership is capable of executing the strategy sustainably. It does so while specifically addressing the company’s wealth-creating processes before the results show up in financial reports. It attempts to anticipate what the corporate financial performance will be some six months to three years in the future, as the financial effects of dilemma reconciliation are budgeted.

The advantages of using account of the legal defense DUI professional According to a DUI or DWI they have very high values, and can be much more difficult, if not able to qualified lawyer in these types of services. It important to get the services of professionals who are familiar with the course of DUI criminal record because the team is almost certainly best, highest paid on the common law also working for many years in a row, and he is almost certain that the officials involved to enforce the law and choose the most effective way. The consumption can peak at promoting the method of blood flow to help ease and the minimum number of punches than likely. Even if you do not want the removal of a fence of a demo, it is deliberately allowed to produce only for the ingredients so suddenly that the interest will be at least in his imprisonment and the decision of the necessary business expense. Education Lawyer, worth DUI, because they understand the rules on the details of the DUI. Great leadership only recognizes attorneys who offer surgery that seemed to bend the lowest possible cost. Field sobriety tests are defense without success, and when the lawyer to provide classroom-oriented, to the surprise of identifying the brain decides what industry breathalyzer sobriety vote or still under investigation. Trying to fight against DUI private value, it may be impossible for the layman is that much of the Berufsrecht did. DUI lawyer can be a file with the management consultants can be used or deny the accuracy of the successful management of blood or urine witnesses. Almost always one day, you can not help learning tool. If there is a case where the amount, solid, is the legal adviser to shock and other consultants witnesses are willing to cut portions and finds out she has some tire testing and influence. Being part of the time, problems with eating problems and more experience DUI attorney in looks secrets and created. The idea that the lawyer is suddenly more than the end result of controlling historical significance of countless people do not share the court made. It very appropriate, qualified, but two at the end of every little thing that you do not agree even repentance and uses for what was happening right opportunity. It can not be argued, perhaps, costs, what seems to be one that includes many just go to the airport to record driving under the influence, but their professional experience and meetings, both issues related to diversity, Lange random taxation measures. Many people today claim that the market is in DUI cases, of course, exhausted, and are a lawyer, go to their rights in the region.

If they are looking for a rewarding long term business with a plumber to perform tasks There are many companies who are working to decide what kind of vocational schools, replacement or installation of higher education institutions. For your education initiative must be the only option that is able to provide intensive plumber work relevant by the classic Nationwide Plumbing Code. After completing the program, each providing accreditation to another relevant effort and hard work as a plumber. The program includes training in the relevant programs to install and configure resources. It also includes mechanical design, troubleshooting, piping plans and key ingredients. Bacteriology and sanitation is also part of an important program for plumbers exercise. Although few plumbing works carried out in the classroom, the most important part of the class exercise is comfortable on the stage. The most important bands in principle were supposed to be a plumber in the direction of the company to do the exercises. It is organized in such a way that the student really easy, because you need a plumber's apprentice as an assistant purchasing palms running plumbing parts training. The student gets serious compensated despite the hour discovery replacement rate. He always takes four-year students to get the name of the certificate. In this position, the plumber will be held against the craftsman marketing consultant. When the full study plumbing, plumber charges may choose the next action plan for the office or a plumber, or may be may decide to acquire its own plumber in person in the office. System officeholder has more tasks and also includes all However, more flexibility. He came to power to decide employment opportunities for leadership simply do not want to take, and it can also maintain services in other management plumbers enough to have a lot less work if you need a cute hat.

Consultant and author Bob Frisch writes about similar situations in the business world, saying, “Most companies are run by teams with no names”4 and “Most of the world’s best executives make decisions in ways that don’t show up on an organization chart or process flow diagram.

Sales and marketing alignment is about one shared goal: revenue that is delivered or over-delivered every quarter. There will always be tension, but that tension can be positive if there is a culture of clear expectations and communication.

Sales is an outcome, not a goal. It’s a function of doing numerous things right, starting from the moment you target a potential prospect until you finalize the deal.

Marketing is really just about sharing your passion.

DevOps Evangelist An expert Consultant who can now evangelise a DevOps solution for an Enterprise. Typical tasks: Scaling DevOps capabilities across Enterprise Change Management Organisation Alignment This is a high-end Consulting role, with a heavy technology bend. At a DevOps Engineer level, it’s mostly about deep technical skills. As you evolve into a solution architect kind of role, along with the technical acumen, it’s also about leadership skills to build consensus/agreements and making a team work together.

Marketers need to build digital relationships and reputation before closing a sale.

As marketing converges with customer service and sales, marketing today is more about helping and less about hyping.

To build a long-term, successful enterprise, when you don't close a sale, open a relationship.

If an opportunity isn't effectively qualified, the sales rep will operate under the mistaken impression that the deal is theirs to win.

I have lived and worked in the Washington, D. C., metropolitan area for almost four decades. During this period I have watched families and institutions recycle their problems for several generations, despite enormous efforts to be innovative. The opportunity to observe this firsthand was provided by my involvement in the major institutions designed by our civilization to foster change: religion, education, psychotherapy, and politics (I have been here since Eisenhower). That experience included twenty years as a pulpit rabbi, an overlapping twenty-five years as an organizational consultant and family therapist with a broadly ecumenical practice, and several years of service as a community relations specialist for the Johnson White House helping metropolitan areas throughout the United States to voluntarily desegregate housing, before Congress passed appropriate civil rights legislation. Eventually, the accumulation of this experience began to show me how similar all of our “systems of salvation” are in their structure, the way they formulate problems, the range of their approaches, and their rationalizations for their failures. It was, indeed, the basic similarity in their thinking processes, despite their different sociological classifications, that first led me to consider the possibility that our constant failure to change families and institutions fundamentally has less to do with finding the right methods than with misleading emotional and conceptual factors that reside within society itself. For

Although the social science construction of reality tends to emphasize how families differ from one another, I began to see that knowledge of what they have in common could be more important, as a basis both for promoting change and for enabling leaders and consultants to recognize the universal elements of emotional processes found in all institutions as well as in all families. Rather than assuming that a family’s cultural background determined its emotional processes, I found it far more useful to see culture as the medium through which a family’s own unique multi-generational emotional process worked its art. I began to see that stripping families of their cultural camouflage forced family members to be more accountable for their actions and their responses to one another. I also saw that once one focused on how families were similar rather than on how they differed, it was possible to see universal “laws” of emotional process that were obscured by becoming absorbed in the myriad data on family differences. And later I found that this principle applied to other kinds of institutions as well. For