Thriving is Not a Matter of Luck

Rand Selig, an accomplished entrepreneur, coach, scoutmaster, board member, and roll-up-your-sleeves conservationist, shares his extensive expertise in his book Thriving! How to Create a Healthier, Happier, and More Prosperous Life. With an MBA from Stanford and undergraduate degrees in mathematics and psychology, he excels at managing complex projects globally. He is relentlessly positive and believes he can design his own life and others can, too. Based in Mill Valley, California, he enjoys life’s adventures with his wife of 44 years.

Leaders, managers, and organizations themselves have the enormous power to have a positive impact and make needed changes in the world by making key and specific choices that can be identified and embraced. Personal and organizational life is filled with challenges and occasional setbacks, endings, and new beginnings. We need a compass for navigating all of this!

More about Rand Selig at – https://www.randselig.com 

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou, Founder and President of SynerVision Leadership Foundation, where synergy drives our engagement around the vision that we have for our organization. Today, I have a special guest, and we’re going to talk about thriving. And I’m, oh, wow, live to thrive. This is going to be a really good episode. So thriving is not a matter of luck. We’re going to talk about that in a minute, but my guest is Randy Selig. Randy, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your passion for this topic.

Rand Selig:
Hugh, it’s a pleasure to be with you. Congratulations on all that you’ve been doing over a long period now. I come at this topic of thriving and how I have gotten to this place in life through a very long walk around the block. You know, I can start in several different places, but in high school, I decided I was going to focus on excellence. And I became an excellent student, and that has served me well throughout my life. I treat it seriously in everything I do, whether it’s relationships or projects I take on. And it’s a really big element. I also began in high school by collecting articles and quotes and making notes of just thoughts I had about things. And, you know, all these years later, I had this four-foot stack of papers in my office. I kept looking at it and saying, wow, I know there’s a couple of books inside there and there’s a couple of books inside me. Out of that came, after a lot of thinking and organizing, this book, Thriving, how to create a healthier, happier, and more prosperous life. I have degrees in mathematics and psychology and a master’s in business administration from Stanford. And so my main business career has been as an investment banker. And I’ve handled over more than three decades, more than 250 transactions, complex transactions for companies, and also worked with several nonprofit organizations. One more thing about the high school period. I went to a public high school, but you had to test to get in. You had to wear a tie. It was only boys. Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. Great, great school. And I became editor-in-chief of the yearbook. And I had a vision about this, that we would be able to add color for the very first time in over 125 years of yearbooks. And we would make a profit, which had never, ever happened before. And I’m very pleased to say that vision, we were successful with it. But the difference between being a leader and having a vision and being a manager became very clear to me. I was not a great manager. When I started at the beginning of the year, my senior year in high school, I recruited half a dozen section editors. They were all people I knew well. I would consider most of them friends. By the end of the year, none of them were friends anymore. I had been so tough on them, so difficult in demanding things of them, and not appreciative enough along the way. And this began a lifelong pursuit to distinguish between leadership and management and to become a much better manager. I’ve always been a good leader with vision, but the management side I had to work really hard.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. Wow, you have about a dozen themes that we could talk all day on. You caught on early. I can resonate with Daniel Pink, who said in high school he was part of the graduation class that made the top two-thirds possible. I did catch on. It was as early as you. Let’s jump into this. Thriving is not a matter of luck. Now, you wrote a book. We’re going to talk about the books whenever you want, but we’ll show you your website. Talk about the book and the title and what is Thriving anyway?

Rand Selig:
Well, I talk about thriving as being an integration of several key elements in our lives. Everybody’s a little bit different. So what you put into that portfolio of things will be a little bit different and that makes sense and that’s natural. But you have to be thriving personally. That’s one. That’s half the book because it’s so foundational. Everything else leads to thriving personally. When you’re thriving personally, develop character. You’re somebody who has integrity. You are grateful. You have a sense of purpose in your life. You have your emotions either in check or running in a very healthy, happy way. for yourself. So this is the first part, but then it goes from there because the most important relationship you’ll ever have in your life is the one with yourself. Once you have all that put in place, then you can thrive with others, part two of my book. And part three then is thriving on the world, which means to be engaged, to be of service, to be philanthropic, to be charitable, to take care of mother earth, And the fourth part of my book, and I think this is another key facet to thriving, is that you’re evolving. You’re continuing to be learning about yourself because that doesn’t end. You don’t just do one deep dive. You’ve got to keep going, because you keep changing. But you’re also, the world is changing. So you evolve. The quote I love to talk about this is one from Hemingway, where he says, nobility is not being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self. So you have a chance to continue to evolve and become the better person. that’s inside you and is just waiting to get those rough edges polished off and for you to admit your mistakes and create some humility.

Hugh Ballou:
I got a couple of quotes that are relevant to your topic and You know, it’s so important to work on ourselves. Jim Rohn always said, to work on yourself harder than your business. But here are two quotes from Richard Rohr, transformed leaders, transform leaders. And another one he says is how you do anything is how you do everything. So, I think there’s a big gap in self-care in any leadership field where people think they’re being selfish. But how in the world are you going to lead an organization if you haven’t taken care of yourself? That’s such an important paradigm. I guess you see many examples where people sacrifice themselves for the organization and that doesn’t help them, does it?

Rand Selig:
No, it’s a outstanding point. And there are lots of ways to take care of yourself. One is to become the better self, to be kinder, to listen better, to ask questions rather than do all the talking. There are many elements to that, but there’s also the self-care and the sense of avoiding burnout. A lot of people say, how could you continue to run this firm that last year was named the best sustainable investment banking firm in the San Francisco Bay Area? All the other people crumbled long ago. They burnt out. And I say because I love what I do. I know when to say no. I know when to rest, which I do every week, one day a week. I don’t check emails. I don’t go shopping. I take care of myself. I go out into nature. I go for a walk with my wife of 44 years now. There are a lot of elements to taking care of yourself, and avoiding burnout. And part of it is just saying no. We know, I think, our radar exists that says, this would be a great thing for me to do, but I want the money or something. And you gotta say, it’s better to say no to something bad than, it’s better to avoid those kinds of situations for sure.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow, wow, wow. So you and I talked a little bit before we started this interview about the way we lead. Now, your distinction in leadership and managing is very spot on in my world. You manage things, you manage time, you manage money, but you lead people. That’s a Covey clarification too. But we talked a little bit about the intellectual process of doing our planning. in our visioning. And so how do we organically do this work so it’s not just an intellectual exercise as we lead?

Rand Selig:
Yeah. Well, this is something that everybody knows they need to do. And a lot of people get at it. Sometimes they hire consultants who get busy. And they spend months and months. And the output of it all is a big document. Well, what happens to those documents? Well, I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them in a lot of my clients’ offices, and they’re gathering just up on a shelf. They may have been helpful at some period, maybe in the conversation that was going on as the report was being assembled. But ultimately, they’re not really what they need to be. The tool that I go to, and I recommend, even though it’s not a new book, it is still a very pertinent approach to this question of creating a vision for an organization. It’s a book called Beyond Entrepreneurship. It’s written by James Collins and Porras. Collins and Poore’s two terrific fellows. And one thing I love about this book is it has lots of examples, lots and lots of examples. And sometimes you need an example to make something crystal clear. What they talk about in vision is that vision and words we use and people sort of understand them and sort of sometimes don’t understand them. But what they’re talking about is vision is three parts. It’s establishing your core values and beliefs. It’s then having purpose, writing it down, and then a mission. And these are all three very different kinds of things. The benefit of vision is enormous. It allows extraordinary things to happen. And it puts in context strategic and tactical decisions that need to be made. It’s also a basis then for sharing within the organization and maybe with other parties that are part of, need to be part of the collaboration going forward for the organization to be successful and healthy. Core Values and Beliefs, let me give you a couple of examples of how great this stuff can be, how juicy it can be. And I’m gonna refer to Herman Miller, Herman Miller, the organization. And they have a list of about seven or eight of these core values and beliefs. And I’m just gonna read a couple of them just to make the point. We intend to contribute to society. through our products, services, and the way we deliver them. We are dedicated to quality, quality of product, quality of service, quality of relationships, quality of our communications, and quality of our promises. And we believe that we should be, for all who are involved, a place of realized potential. Well, if they’re living those values and beliefs, wow, I mean, if you’re not interested in that, you shouldn’t work there. But on the other hand, if this does resonate with you, doesn’t this create energy and excitement? So that’s core values and beliefs. And from there, you go to purpose. And I’m gonna again read three examples of purpose because people say they have purpose. The purpose is something that lasts a very long period. I mean, it could be 50, 75, 100 years of purpose, because it doesn’t change. It’s so fundamental. So here’s Schlegg, the lock company, to make the world more secure. Well, so as technology changes, as different kinds of things come up, maybe it’s cybersecurity, something else comes along, they’re in that business. Here’s one from Patagonia, to be a role model and tool for social change. Well, a lot of people think they’re a clothing company. But when this is their purpose, then they can go about it with how they deal with their employees, how they deal with their contractors, their sense of appreciation of the environment. And then here’s McKinsey, to help leading corporations and governments to be more successful. I mean, these are simple, but, for me, they’re extremely juicy. And that gets us to the third part, which is the mission. Now, the mission is something that’s much shorter term. The mission is, as we experienced, those of us who are that old, getting a man to the moon and back safely. This was the mission. This was the mission our country was committed to. The best minds in the country were part of that. It was a very exciting period. So it has to be compelling. It has to create some passion. And once you finish your mission, then you create a new one. So there are lots of ways to say a mission, which is kind of boring and isn’t very, very big. What you wanna do is say something like this. This is Crush Reebok. This is one of the athletic shoes company said, our mission is to crush Reebok. And they rejected the idea of saying that their mission was to make high-end reduced instruction set microprocessors for a wide range of applications. boring. It may be factually spot on, but not cool. Henry Ford said we’re going to democratize the automobile. Well, it just opens up so many ways to engage your team, to create excitement, and to create a rallying point for all the work you do, and to be successful in accomplishing that mission, and then replacing it with a new mission.

Hugh Ballou:
This is good stuff. You and I also talked about the thrive. You just talked about Murray Bowen and his writings, a psychiatrist, Murray Bowen, in Bowen’s Bowen Family Systems Thinking of Guiding Principles. How do we have principles to make good decisions? You start with the values, but then you write them like you just articulated. These are principles to apply those values in how we work together building consensus in our decision making. We don’t know how to do that very well. So we talked a little bit about how we make decisions and all of these principles help us make decisions on how we spend our time. And so it’s a little bit about balance. Now, my four leadership principles or foundations, your clear vision, and your skillset, your team, you know, how you have your team, your systems, how do you do things with really good work and a good team? How do you help have a system that people can work in? And then the fourth one is balance, which is self-care, but it’s, you know, you have this balance and beyond, but How do we make good choices? And we do not. There’s a crisis right now in nonprofit leadership, the burnout crisis. And part of this is, you know, we don’t know how to delegate. So, you know, we’re most of the way through the interview, but I want to get this in before we go and look at your website. But talk about some of these things for just a minute, would you?

Rand Selig:
Well, I think there’s been a lot of thought and a lot of good things written about what it takes to create a, I’ll call it a community. And we use the word community in lots of different ways. But I’ll use it now because it relates to the for-profit world, the non-profit world, the religious world, and so on. And there are some things that are involved with creating what I think addresses the point you’re making, Hugh. We have to realize that when we’re trying to create something like this, there’s a lot to it. This is not snap your fingers because you had a good idea one time or because the work is so important to do, it’s gonna happen. The Dalai Lama said that there are three conditions to make it possible to create a thriving community. Great love, great persistence, and great patience. And he says that patience is the hardest of those three. You have to create division. We were talking about that a minute ago. And one of the things that I’ve experienced is when you know you have done your work on vision and it’s working, The group has a personal and resounding yes to that. It’s not like looking out the window and going, oh, here’s another dumb conversation we’re going to have. You’re engaged with it. That’s important. It’s at the end of the day, I think it’s all about relationships. It’s a relationship with yourself, of course, and Hugh, you’ve mentioned that, and I couldn’t agree with you more about that, but it’s a relationship with others. And I’ve worked with a lot of people. In, my career, and a scoutmaster and serving on, you know, over 18 boards and so on. And it, a lot of people, I have to say have not been successful and people look at me and say well look at, wow, look at there, what they’re driving, look, look at, you know, they’re pretty wealthy. And I go, I cannot say that they’re not, they are, but they’re not successful because they don’t understand that success is so much more than just money. It’s about things like relationships. And if you look at, you know, a lot of people, and they may have a lot of money, they may have a big bank account, but You look around at their relationships and their failed relationships, both on the business side and the personal side. To me, those people are not successful. And we need to exchange our focus around success in this way.

Hugh Ballou:
Absolutely. Absolutely. You can be successful by tearing down all the, you can have the tallest building by tearing down all the others, or you can build a taller building. So let me direct people to your website and it’s your name. It’s randyselig.com. So people is listening to it and don’t see it. So explain it for them as well as the people who are watching. What will people find when they go to your website? There’s the book there, of course.

Rand Selig:
Yeah, no, there’s more information about me. People want to know kind of a little bit about who is this guy who’s talking about thriving. There are some fantastic testimonials in the book. The head of Kaiser Permanente is one. Chip Connolly is another. These are people who are doing really good work, leading big organizations that are important. So there’s that. There’s a discussion and description of what’s in the helpful book. There’s a page of my favorite quotes, which if you put in your email address, you can just you know, download those quotes. People say they love my book because there are so many great quotes in it. And they’re well-positioned to embellish a point that I’m making. So you can have those, they’re organized by chapter. So depending on what you’re doing, you can say, ah, this is the one for me today. There is a media page where there’s, I don’t refresh it very often, but they’re a whole group of podcasts that I’ve been on and you can see whether they’re audio and visual or just audio. If you Google me, Google Rand Selig, you’re gonna see more than 70 podcasts now. and other interviews that I’ve been on. So there’s a lot of material there, and the media page has some of that. And then there’s a Connect, a Connect with Rand page. And in that way, you can say, hey, I have a question for you, or I’d love to invite you into our book group. Can we get 10 minutes or 20 minutes of your time to talk about your book or invite you to a keynote, we’re interested in taking your book and inviting you to do a workshop with us, spend an afternoon with us or a couple of days with us. So you can connect with me in that way as well.

Hugh Ballou:
You’ve given us a wealth of ideas today a lot to think about and a lot to reframe our former thinking. So thank you for that. What do you want to leave people with today?

Rand Selig:
Well, I just want to be a voice for encouragement and inspiration. Everybody ages, but not everybody ages well. There are ways to go about this in life. And I reveal these things in my book. There are a lot of ways that, you know, pain points in life. Everybody has made mistakes. Everybody has had moments of doubt or confusion, transition. you know, transitions are part of life, you know. Life is chock-a-block full of endings and beginnings, and in the middle are transitions. And I talk about getting through those transitions, becoming resilient, having grit, and so on. So I just want to be a voice for encouragement and You know, we can be the author of our own story. We can design our own lives. And I just want to say that as many times as people let me say it.

Hugh Ballou:
That is the closing thought. We are responsible. We can do it. We can do it. Rand Selig, thank you for your gifts of wealth and knowledge today.

Rand Selig:
It’s been my pleasure to be with you, Hugh. Thank you.