At the Beginning...

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Frank Herbert: From DUNE copyright 1965, Herbert Properties LLC

My personal understanding of leadership came from Frank Herbert’s Dune series. As a training and development specialist focused on individual, team, and organizational development, I have had to study countless authors and their various theoretical models across multiple disciplines. I was never a purist, always an eclectic. I have always been interested in the all-encompassing integrating theories that cross the sciences. Steven Hawkins, Ken Wilber, Kurt Lewin and Edgar Schein unite! Enter Frank Herbert. Through his Dune series, Herbert connected Politics, Economics, Theology, Biology, Ecology, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and a host of other sciences to create his universe. Leadership theory is the study of people working together within a context to accomplish common goals. That is what Frank Herbert gave us. A study of leadership in its most complex and interconnected form.

One of the first lessons that Frank gave us was to assess the leader’s mindset to determine if they are a true human being, an individual worthy of following. We all have the potential to be good leaders but, do we deserve to have good followers. He made a beautiful distinction between “animals” and “humans” and he was not talking about any 4-legged versions. (Page 6). The Protagonist, Paul Atreides, is tested very early in the story by the Reverend Gaius Helen Mohiam of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. She tells Paul; “Let us suggest you may be human.” (Page 11). Sister Gaius Helen was not referring to any “Ridley Scott” type Alien. The Reverend Mother goes on to say; “You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he or she might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his or her kind.”

From this passage, Frank makes us consider that a human….a true human-being is constantly taking into account the safety and well-being of others above self-interest.

For Frank Herbert, the comparison between humans and animals seems clear. For humans, it is… “To be conscious by choice. One does not obtain food, safety, freedom through animal instinct alone. Animal consciousness does not extend beyond a given moment nor in the idea that its victims can become extinct. The animal destroys, he does not produce. Animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptional. The human needs a background grid with which to see his universe. Focused consciousness by choice; this forms your grid.” I can tell how many

For me, the “grid” is the intersection of Politics, Economics, Religion, Biology, Ecology, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and a host of other sciences; all, of which, need to be taken into considerations in understanding the world and making decisions. Also in my grid are my values and belief and what a good human being is supposed to be.

For me, the “animal” is the person who focuses on “What’s in it for me!” to the exclusion of their impact on the greater good. For me, the animal is the person who is going through life unconscious about the world around them and the impact their decisions are having on the planet and its people. The animal is the person who believes their freedom to purchase cheaply made products and services from third world counties and has no responsibility for the human and environmental crimes being committed on behalf of providing those products and services. The human being is conscious, is aware and makes the best possible choice to mitigate those human and environmental crimes even if they have to pay more for ethical products or pay taxes to make sure that government and law enforcement have the ability to monitor and regulate unethical behavior. I can be a billionaire and be a total animal. I can also be a human-being and be totally homeless. It is totally based on the decisions we make that have implications and impact on my fellow human beings.

Take a journey with me to study the roots of meaning. We can debate facts and research all we want but that is not having the impact it should have on meaning. It should but, if you read the press, facts, logic, and science are not having the impact they should. Everything I write about is based on researched principles, but like my original statements, the soft sciences are gone while the hard sciences struggle to be heard. How do we reach agreement on some assemblies of reality? Take this journey and search for sanity even if the world around us is completely void of it.