Charles Fleetham

In 1992, Charles "Charlie" Fleetham founded Project Innovations to create and deliver innovative organizational and leadership development solutions flto business and government. Under Charlie’s direction, the company has consulted with many clients and has grown into a multimillion dollar, highly respected consulting practice.

As a successful management consultant, speaker, and trainer for 20 years, Charlie has developed a storehouse of expertise in leadership development. He has created and presented workshops across the country.

Charlie began to integrate the theories of Carl Jung into his leadership development work because he saw two things: most leadership development practices were based on rational thinking and the most powerful sources of creativity and energy were stored in the unconscious. Based on his experience with Jung’s ideas, he identified a need for an approach that leveraged the unconscious in the organization.

He launched his company on a journey that featured a multi-year apprenticeship with a licensed Jungian analyst, a concentrated symposium at the Jungian Institute in Switzerland, training for all consultants in Jungian theory, and the investment of more than a hundred thousand dollars in research, training, creative development, and marketing; the result is "Unrational Leadership™."

A graduate of Michigan State University, Charlie received a BA in English and graduated with High Honors. Considered an expert in group dynamics and resolving organizational conflict, Charlie has broadly implemented the concepts of "Unrational Leadership™" in business and government. Although these ideas are counterintuitive to the organizational mind, Charlie has seen more and more of his clients successfully adopt this innovative way of thinking and doing.

The benefits of "Unrational Leadership™" include: Leading your organization with sound moral decision making from a foundation of integrity, setting goals and fnding the energy and discipline to accomplish them, finding the courage to face the brutal realities confronting your organization, learning how to give back to your organization, your family, and yourself, and embracing the neglected and hidden stores of energy in yourself and your business.

Visit Charlie Fleetham at www.projectinnovations.com and www.rightbrainbooks.us

 

PageOneLit.com: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Please tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and your company Project Innovations.

Charles Fleetham: I am a management consultant by trade and the president and founder of Project Innovations, Inc, Right Brain Books LLC. and the 22nd Century Foundation. Born in Detroit but raised in suburban New York City, I graduated from Michigan State University in 1980 with a Liberal Arts Degree.

After six years as a Logistic Specialist with the US Army and seven years as manufacturing systems consultant, I founded Project Innovations in 1992 to bring innovations to small and medium sized businesses in the field of organizational development. My staff and I have worked across the nation helping firms grow revenue, develop leaders, create breakthrough strategies and solve intractable conflicts.

Project Innovations is one of the leading organizational development firms in Michigan. Through our extensive experience in business and government, we understand the obstacles to growth and change. Our firm has earned more than a million dollars annually for nine consecutive years and was recently selected at one of the Top 100 firms to work for in southeastern Michigan.

 

PageOneLit.com: Please tell us a little about your book, "The Search for Unrational Leadership." And what compelled you to write it?

Charles Fleetham: From my opening line: Unrational Leadership™ is leadership that uses both rational and irrational methods to achieve a desired outcome, I throw down the gauntlet at traditional business practices. Then, I invite the reader on a heroic adventure to become a new person and a new leader – an unrational leader breaking the centuries old myth that rational behavior is key to personal and professional success.

In 1992, I had a large consulting engagement with Ford Motor Company. Steven Covey’s book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" was hot and Ford sent hundreds of people to Covey seminars. I watched them return carrying their planners like Bibles. When I asked them how they liked the training, they said, "Great, but I need time management in order to practice Covey’s method."

As a disciple of Covey myself, I was taken aback by this response. It seemed quite paradoxical. But as I watched these logical, hard working Ford engineers drop Covey and return to checklists on the back of envelopes, I knew that Covey’s methods were missing something. It took me several years to figure out the answer: His methods (and the methods of almost all improvement gurus) are too rational! It was this insight that opened my mind to the concept of Unrational Leadership.

 

PageOneLit.com: What was the writing process like? How long did it take you to write the book? What struggles, if any, did you encounter?

Charles Fleetham: In 2002, I began a book about Unrational Leadership in which I introduced a methodology to integrate rational and irrational decision-making processes in the workplace. As I wrote about and developed this new process, the story of a knight emerged within me. As soon as I drew his character, I knew I had found a source of creative energy. I named him TrueHeart. Then, I developed a series of heroic adventures based on TrueHeart's quest for success. The book turned into a blend of rational explanations of Unrational Leadership and irrational fairy tales about TrueHeart.

In the spring of 2003, I finished this book and hired an editor from New York City to help me polish a final version. Then, I wrote a book proposal, shopped for an agent, and in October 2003, I found one on my first round of queries. He was located in Manhattan, in the heart of the publishing world, and I sat back in Michigan and waited for the offers to come from publishers hungry for the next big thing. On my birthday in March 2004, my agent called me and told me that he didn't want to represent me anymore because he couldn’t find a publisher.

I went through a few months of depression and stabbed around at rewriting some of the book's chapters, when I had a dream that forever changed my approach to the book.

I dreamt I was walking over a large bridge. In the middle of the bridge there was a river, big enough for ocean going freighters and battleships. I managed to get to the other side and saw two men diving into the river. I decided not to try to save them. I was too tired. But, help arrived and the men were rescued. There was a press conference, and it turned out that one of the men was a woman who looked like a man. To complicate the weirdness, they had faces on the front and on the back of their heads. When I awoke, I asked myself what the dream meant, and an answer shot back to me: "Write the book for the executives."

"Of course," I thought. "I have been working with executives for twenty years. I know them and I know what they want." On June 26, I started a furious campaign to rewrite the book. I wrote at home, at work, in airports, on airplanes, and on vacations. The book poured out of me and for the first time, I didn't have to discipline myself to write. I had to discipline my self to stop! Within three months, I had finished The Search for Unrational Leadership™.

 

 

PageOneLit.com: How did you juggle running your own company with writing a book?

Charles Fleetham: I wrote the book at night – after working fifty hours a week, after serving as general manger and president of the local youth football league, after coaching my son’s baseball team, and after being a single parent to my teen age son and daughter. It took a lot of discipline but I trained myself to write anywhere – anytime. I can write before a football game, waiting in the doctor’s office, or for twenty minutes after dinner.

 

PageOneLit.com: What is "Unrational Leadership?"

Charles Fleetham: Unrational Leadership™ is leadership that uses both rational and irrational methods to achieve a desired outcome. Don’t let the word "irrational" turn you off! I know that irrationality implies mental unsoundness or the inability to reason. Unrational Leadership does not overthrow reason! My book is about balance.

Unrational Leadership balances reason with small, manageable doses of irrationality. In fact, Unrational Leadership inoculates and protects you against the plagues of irrationality that sweep through organizations just as an injection of a tiny piece of virus creates antibodies that protect you from a full-blown disease.

I define "unrational" as that which is not rational — either in perception or reality. I developed the term "unrational" to avoid some of the overwhelming cultural prejudice against the word "irrational."

Unrational Leadership is the marriage of traditional rational thinking and the irrational, intuitive mind, that part of our self that emerges in our dreams, that hidden self that can sense when we walk into a room that someone sitting at the table is going to be a friend or a lifelong foe. In my book, I take the intuitive self that has been buried for centuries and bring it to the surface for solving the huge challenges in front of us.

 

PageOneLit.com: You speak of using both rational and irrational methods to achieve results. Will you give us an example these two different methods? And are there times when one is more appropriate than the other?

Charles Fleetham: All modern leaders use rational methods based on drawing logical conclusions from observable data. Examples of rational methods include time management, project management, the scientific method, and the five pillars of modern management: Plan, Organize, Direct, Monitor, and Control. These left-brain processes imply the withdrawal of emotions and intuition from decision-making. These techniques control the way things are supposed to work in business, government, religious, non-profit, educational and even criminal organizations.

Whether they know it or not, leaders also use irrational methods to get things done. These methods are based on the general principle of seeing around corners to arrive at conclusions that cannot be factually proven. Interpreting your dreams, visualizing the future, following your gut, listening to your heart, going with the flow, and praying are positive irrational methods. But, let’s not forget the destructive irrational behaviors in our portfolios: victimizing scapegoats, projecting faults on our competitors and scaring the hell out of people. Unconsciousness is the parent of these right brain behaviors and sometimes, they unwittingly dominate our agendas.

 

PageOneLit.com: In Chapter 9 of "The Search for Unrational Leadership" you talk about conducting a "dream circle." What is a dream circle and how does it help an organization?

Charles Fleetham: A dream circle is a group of people who meet to share and understand their dreams. The circle has ancient roots. In the traditional Hawaiian culture, the entire family would discuss important dreams in the morning. Dream sharing is a key educational tool for the Senoi, a Malaysian tribe well known for tending dreams. I have organized many dream circles for employees and clients. Here is a simple procedure for conducting a dream circle:

* Start the process by inviting five to 15 people.

* Tell the people you want them to ask for dreams about an organizational challenge, a growth initiative, leadership development, etc. It doesn’t matter if their dreams have any relationship to the topic — what matters is patiently recording the dreams.

* Conduct the dream circle in a circle of open chairs or around a circular table.

* Start the dream circle by explaining the rules:

- What is said in a dream circle must stay in the dream circle.

- Repeat the aforementioned rule to make sure people get it. They can’t discuss the dreams with their therapists, their spouses, their mistresses, etc.

- No one has to share a dream.

- No one has to comment on another person’s dream.

* As the host, break the ice by sharing a dream. Let’s say the dream is as short as: "I was rebuilding my house and my best friend from my childhood stopped by and said that it would take five years to finish the job." Here is how the commentary might go:

 

- Debbie: "If I had that dream, I would think about the house that my husband and I remodeled when we first got married. It seemed to take forever."

- Chuck: "If I had that dream, I would be sad. My best friend died when I was 14 and I have never gotten over it."

- Bill: "If I had that dream, I would see the best friend as a part of my personality that I have neglected for too long. I have been looking for the energy to rebuild my life. Maybe this friend can give it to me."

* Stop any comments that smack of an interpretation. The circle gets its power through collective ownership of the symbols and stories, not in figuring out someone else’s dream.

* When all dreams have been shared, close the circle by asking each person to comment on the challenge you posed in the invitation. For example, what has this circle taught you about strengthening our core leadership competencies, what has this circle taught you about intra company collaboration?

Yes, there are always a few people who don’t want to share their dreams. Let them sit in the circle and watch you grow. In my company, we share our dreams monthly to kick off our business development meeting. After each dream, we ask: "How can this dream help us sell more business?" The process has delivered major benefits: Our team has become one mind with one mission in pursuit of a single goal — becoming America’s resource for Unrational Leadership. Key accomplishments on the path to achieving our goal include:

* Creating and rolling out Unrational Leadership marketing collateral, including our new web site (www.projectinnovations.com);

* Shooting an innovative video on Unrational Leadership;

* Developing several unique training programs based on the Unrational Leadership process, including: Innovations in Rainmaking and Innovations in Regional Collaboration;

 

PageOneLit.com: You say that it's important to find a creative practice to energize your journey. Please explain.

Charles Fleetham: The third principle of Unrational Leadershipä is: Creativity Drives Change. What’s creativity? You are the ultimate judge. If you are a professional actress, you might get creative juice from learning how to make furniture. If you are a college professor, you might enjoy building trails for the US Forest Service. If you are a therapist, you might like working the corner at the local racetrack. If it juices you — if it awakens something new within you — then you are on the right path.

When I teach seminars on Unrational Leadership, I always include a creative practice. I have hired artists, poets, singers, and actresses to teach people how to tap their right brains. I have used Legos, Play-Doh, and collages to awaken the lost children in my students. They watch in wonder as works of art emerge from their personalities. Invariably, these searchers begin the program very skeptical about spending any time on creativity. The most common phrases I hear are: "I am not a creative person," or "My company would never let me do that back at the office." Of course, these words stun me, for if they are not creating solutions to problems, what are they doing at work? As I gently unlock the creative energy in the searchers and help them leave their comfort zone, their attitudes transform. Here is one of my favorite reviews of how I use creativity in my workshops:

It does seem strange, to walk into a meeting and be confronted with piles of Legos, boxes of Play-Doh (with or without sparkles). To be asked to draw a picture of a complex business problem with finger paints! And it doesn’t end there. In the membership exercises, you might tell stories about your ancestors, or partner with other people in the room while blindfolded. But by the end of the meeting, we accomplished an amazing feat: A group of 45 people — working together — wrote a partnering agreement. Before then, I had difficulty writing a simple product description with just five people.

 

PageOneLit.com: There are many types of teams (business teams, sports teams, volunteer teams, project teams, etc.). As you've worked with various teams using your "Unrational Leadership" concept, what have been the results and feedback?

Charles Fleetham: Once, a client who ran a large company asked me to work with his troubled and fragmented leadership team to create a powerful and sustainable strategic plan. They had so many strategies they didn’t know which way was up. I sold them on trying the dialogue process, an important tool in any unrational leaders toolbox. At the first dialogue, 15 of us sat around a huge table, and I started the dialogue by showing them a rock and introduced the process as follows:

This is a Magic Rock from the bottom of the Ganges River. When you hold the Magic Rock, deep wisdom emerges from the recesses of your unconscious. Today, you will participate in a ritual conversation of making meaning. You will not create a list of action items. You have already made enough of them and you still don’t use them. Some of you will say: ‘Charlie but we don’t have accountability and this is why we never follow through.’ I say, ‘You don’t have enough meaning.’ And meaning is the only thing you will produce today. There is one important rule: You can’t talk if you don’t have the Magic Rock. No interruptions for clarifying questions. No debates. No give and take or pro and con. You all have diplomatic immunity in this circle, regardless of your position on the organizational chart. The holders of the Magic Rock can speak as long as they want, and when they are done, they can give it to anyone signaling for it. Now let’s check in. I want everyone to hold the Magic Rock and give us a sentence or two on how you are feeling.

After this passionate explanation, I presented the dialogue topic: "What is your ethical responsibility to this company?" I wanted these leaders to wrestle with their responsibility to the company, to their departments, and to their team members. It’s a tough question, and at first, the group greeted it with silence.

As they began to speak, I could almost see the unconscious hopes, fears, and images of success and failure arise and place themselves in the middle of our circle. At the end of 90 minutes, I asked them what meaning they had drawn from the dialogue and most of them said something like: "Now, I know that we are all in the same boat."

Week after week, I started the dialogue with the same question about ethical responsibility. I asked this question about ethics to shift the team from doing to reflecting. I knew that their strategy would become clear after they had swept away their unconscious guilt. Erroneous and loosely held opinions faded away. One leader said: "This process allowed everyone to tap their unconscious whether they talked or not. Even if you just listened, your creative energy increased." Deep passions were shared about lack of follow through and perceived betrayals. Finally, the group centered on a single ethical responsibility: To lead this company to the next level. This deep and commonly held value stimulated the development of a unified strategic plan within a month, an incredibly short time for any company of size.

 

PageOneLit.com: What do you hope readers walk away with after reading "The Search for Unrational Leadership?"

Charles Fleetham: Business leaders struggle daily to find problems, dissect them and then deliver answers. This traditional process will no longer work by itself. Within our organizations we have this incredible untapped energy in our unconscious and it doesn’t work very well with goals, checklists, plans and directed behavior. It needs to be opened up so that it can inspire us. If a leader knows how to tap this force, it becomes much, much easier to solve the big problems.

The unrational leader knows that the secret to success will come from personality. As an unrational leader you can expand your personality because you are on speaking terms with your unconscious. Personality gives you the strength to make tough moral decisions. Personality gives you the energy to change yourself. It provides the courage to walk into the fire when other leaders send in consultants or lawyers. It opens the hidden treasures of creativity. And it, delivers the insight you need to find your true vision.

 

PageOneLit.com: What's next? Do you have any plans for another book?

Charles Fleetham: Teresa Weed Newman, my business partner has joined me in founding the 22nd Century Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to define a vision of a prosperous economy and healthy society for the year 2105. Teresa and I are very excited about the possibility of defining an inspirational vision for the generations that will follow us.

I have recently co-authored a book, with Asya Raines, a Latvian writer who is establishing herself in America. Our book, Asya’s Laws, A Memoir of Loves Lost and Found will be published in July 2006 by Right Brain Books LLC. The book is an utterly captivating and charming memoir with a fresh narrative voice that takes the reader on Asya’s quest for love from the shadowy and repressive bygone days of occupied, communist Latvia in the 1970’s to a happy ending in the United States in 2003.

 

PageOneLit.com: What is your advice to an aspiring writer?

Charles Fleetham:

* Write when you don’t feel like it.

* Find a good question and don’t quit until you answer it.

* Never measure the quality of your ideas by the popularity of your work.

 

 

PageOneLit.com: What book is on your bedside table right now?

Charles Fleetham: "Collapse" by Jared Diamond

 

PageOneLit.com: When you're not working, what are your favorite ways to relax?

Charles Fleetham: Reading the New York Times, going to a café after 11:00pm and having a glass of high quality wine with my girlfriend, playing golf on Saturdays, and making dinner for my friends and watching a movie with them.

 

PageOneLit.com: Any final thoughts to share with us?

Charles Fleetham: We are the canaries of the Rational Age. Life as we know it no longer exists. The New World is upon us. Change now, before we all stop singing.