Napa Valley
Coffee Roasting Company, Napa, California, USA
May 23, 2018
"He
stood
in
front
of us - this tall, slender, immaculately dressed
blue-eyed
man - in
fullview,
for sixteen hours each
day,
two successive
days
in a row. Not once did he leave the room for
food
or rest. Not once did his
attention
or concentration slack. He had virtually total recall of anything
said
to him by a
trainee
and would refer back to things
said
earlier with minute accuracy. He remembered
why
each of us had
enrolled;
and he
knew
what we
thought
our problems were. At midnight he seemed as
clean and well
pressed, and as fresh, as he had been at eight o'clock that
morning.
Like most things he did, this was also a kind of ...
demonstration."
I
knowhowtransformationgotstarted
on
our planet.
I
knowhow
its evolution
began.
It humbles me. It blows me away. When that fish
walked
up on land for the first
time,
it brought with it
elephants
and eagles like a
possibility
- for everyone, with no one and
nothing
left out. And now, nearly fifty years later, it's not only its onset
which blows me away: it's its exponentially expanding
legacy
which continues to blow me away ongoingly.
The impact of
transformation
in the
business
world is just as unmistakable and just as widespread (it's
interesting
to me: that cross-over of
transformation
from the
beingsphere
into the
business
world ...). David Logan, New York
Times
best-selling author, Associate Dean and Executive Director of Executive
Development, and Associate Professor of Clinical Management at
University of Southern California's Marshall School of
Business,
says
"Werner's
thinking
- I don't
know
any nice
way
of
saying
it - is just out there in
the world.
You can't have a
master's
degree in organizational development or
human
resources without picking up some of it. And it's usually not credited
back to him. His stuff is just out there.". What's
extraordinary
is David's
words
would echo just as resonantly in today's
academic
world
as well.
OK, so
now
you
got
me: you can tell that's the first
time
I've mentioned
Werner
in the body of this piece. And for some
people,
that's one
time
too many.
How
so? Well ...
(nothing
sinister about it) it's that
transformation's
legacy
they'll
say,
doesn't belong to any one
person.
I concur with that wholeheartedly: of
course
it doesn't. You'd have to be a
complete
idiot to not recognize that. And yet to not acknowledge
Werner
for
sourcingtransformation,
is so
fundamentally
at odds with the reality and the facts and
the truth
of the matter as to be totally devoid of any and all
integrity.
Look: I want it to be
possible.
But it's just not. I
know
it's not. I need to take a break from it from
time
to
time.
Everybody does. From
time
to
time
I
get
into a mood funk when it's best for me (and for
everyone else too -
believe
me) that I keep a low profile until it passes. Then of
course
there are other important things I have to
attend
to from
time
to
time
- and while I
attend
to them, I have to leave
transformation
on the back-burner.
So it's just not
possible
to live
transformation24 / 7day
after
day
after
day
week after week after week month after month after month year after
year after year. I
know
that.
Werner
didn't explain to me it's
possible.
He doesn't try to convince me it's
possible.
He's never asked me to give up
knowing
it's not
possible.
What he does is he livestransformation
-
24 / 7day
after
day
after
day
week after week after week month after month after month year after
year after year. It's ... a ...
demonstration.