Anne Giles Clelland

Nudity is the New Transparency

Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough...
- Losing My Religion, R.E.M.

See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me.
- Go to the Mirror!, Tommy, The Who

"What you say on Twitter may be viewed all around the world instantly. You are what you Tweet!"
- Twitter Terms of Service

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, in The Huffington Post

"Corporate transparency is touted as being good for a corporation's image, and is a key ingredient in compliance and governance. Transparent companies inspire more trust...But is such corporate transparency really such a good thing?...Still, opacity (or intransparency) is an even bigger risk. Not showing what you're doing is simply not accepted anymore."
- Frank Buytendijk, Vice President and Fellow, Enterprise Performance Management, Oracle, on his blog

"...there's no use trying to resist. You're already naked."
- Clive Thompson, The See-Through CEO, Wired

"Six drops of essence of terror, five drops of sinister sauce...and now for the tincture of tenderness..."
- Professor Weirdo creating Milton the Monster

"You're only as sick as your secrets."
- Saying known in therapy and recovery circles, probably most famously uttered by Carrie Fisher

As a CEO, how transparent do I have to be? On my corporate bio page, next to the standard shot in the biz suit, will I need a tasteful nude pose like the Ladies of Rylstone?

While “transparency” as a business term became common after corporate financial and ethical violations, corporate leaders themselves have been asked to adopt personal transparency as they blog and tweet.

What is the purpose of personal CEO transparency?

In the business-to-business realm, if people do business with people, and people do business with people they know because they believe they can trust them more than with people they don’t know, and trust is perceived as decreasing risk, whereas not knowing people with whom they might deal is perceived as increasing risk, how much do people need to know about people to do business with them?

If people know not only a company’s mission, products, services, and financials, but its founder and leader - what he or she thinks, feels and does - are they more likely to do business with the company?

If the CEO presents himself or herself beyond “what you see is what you get” to transparency – being able to see through surface appearances – will that engender that "It's who you know" trust that increases the likelihood of business?

If the answer to "Will people do more business with my company if I am a transparent CEO?" is probably "Yes," then it might be time to find a discreet photographer.

If you’re familiar with triathlon togs - trisuits - then you know I’ve already pretty much been nude in public, especially when emerging from the swim, especially when I forgot to lock the porta-potty door in front of lines of hundreds of waiting triathletes.  I’m desensitized.  No big deal.

What I hear fellow CEOs struggle with is nudity of the heart, mind and spirit. I hear their concerns about the consequences of dismantling privacy fences, of secrets revealed, of that deepest fear - of not being accepted for who we truly are.

For me, I’ve had my dark nights of the soul.  I’ll have more.  I’ve had what Schmidt describes as “something that you don’t want anyone to know” and realized I didn’t want to know it, either.  Like the cartoon character Milton the Monster, though, I’m comprised of both the sinister and the tender. Like R.E.M., I’m torn that I’ve said too much and not enough at the same time.  And I’ve experienced, and witnessed, the risk and terrible cost of Buytendijk’s “intransparency,” of the sickness of secrets, almost unto death.

I think a secretive path, corporate or personal, is fraught with peril.

As a CEO, I have chosen a great deal of personal transparency.  Will it result in more business for my company?

Maybe not more.  But I bet my company, and companies with whom we can do good business, will recognize each other. I’m not a fan of attempting to control what others think and feel, of attempting to "make" people accept a "projection of a corporate image," regardless of the reality of the corporation.

From my company, what you see is what you get, and then some, down to the skin if need be.

Circuit Training

I find lessons for myself as an entrepreneur in sprint triathlon training and wrote recently that being able to show up as an entrepreneur - to exert consistent effort - may explain some of the beginnings of success emerging as year two of Handshake 2.0 begins.

Since July, 2006, with few misses or reschedulings, I have shown up for a Saturday, 10:00 AM appointment for personal training with Don Belote at the University Mall location of The Weight Club in Blacksburg, Virginia.

On day two of Handshake 2.0's second year, as I continue to reflect on year one, I am wondering if showing up as an entrepreneur or as a company leader is enough.  The passion of the entrepreneur is spoken and written of frequently.  For me, even passion isn't enough.  I have to show up with intense acuteness.

I began circuit training with Don Belote at the end of 2008.

Several people have asked me about circuit training.  I describe our system below.  My one-hour appointment with Don begins on the hour, so I arrive approximately 30 minutes early to warm up and ready myself. 

The Weight Club has an elevated track 1/9 mile in length.  While I run laps in between sets, Don mans the weight machine we're currently using, or sets up the next one.

Pre-appointment
1 mile run on elevated track.
Stretch.
Up to 5/9 of a mile more if time permits.
Stretch.

On the Hour
Meet Don at first weight machine, an arm press.
Do 12 lifts.
Leave the machine, begin to jog, run up the stairs two at a time to the elevated track, run 1/9 mile, run down the stairs, jog/walk to the machine.
Do 12 lifts.
Leave the machine, begin to jog, run up the stairs two at a time to the elevated track, run 1/9 mile, run down the stairs, jog/walk to the machine.
Do 12 lifts.
Leave the machine, begin to jog, run up the stairs two at a time to the elevated track, run 1/9 mile, run down the stairs, jog/walk to the next machine.

Total:  1 machine, 3 sets of 12 lifts = 36 lifts, 1/3 mile running completed.

Do 12 lifts on second machine.
Leave the machine, begin to jog, run up the stairs two at a time to the elevated track, run 1/9 mile, run down the stairs, jog/walk to the machine.
Do 12 lifts.
Leave the machine, begin to jog, run up the stairs two at a time to the elevated track, run 1/9 mile, run down the stairs, jog/walk to the machine.
Do 12 lifts.
Leave the machine, begin to jog, run up the stairs two at a time to the elevated track, run 1/9 mile, run down the stairs, jog/walk to the next machine.

Total:  2 machines, 6 sets of 12 lifts = 72 lifts, 2/3 mile running completed.

Total when appointment ends:  6 machines, 18 sets of 12 lifts = 216 lifts, 1 8/9 miles.

Personal record (PR) for 6 machines, 3 sets each of 12 on each machine, 1 8/9 miles:  52:30 minutes

Post-appointment
1 1/9 mile run, 10 laps, for a total session run of 4 miles.
Solo core strengthening.
Solo lower body strengthening (minimal to avoid injury after hard running).
Stretch.

Total workout time:  2 hours.

When my PR drops to 50:00 minutes, we can add a seventh machine.

I love my intense, acutely lived life.

Why Do I Do Triathlons?

I am asked this often.

One could argue that I'm too old at 50, the gear is expensive, entry fees and traveling costs are expensive, training takes so much time, traveling to and from events takes so much time, it's self-indulgent, it's "out there."

I offered an attempt at an answer about a year ago in a High-Tech Athlete Profile for Handshake 2.0.

Let me try again by working backwards, from present to past, a reverse timeline:

• I am signed up to do 5 triathlons during the 2009 Virginia Triathlon Series.  I have a paid coach, Kati Derrick, a two-time Lousiville Ironman-finisher, and a personal trainer, Don Belote.  I do 5 to 6 workouts per week, 1 to 2.5 hours each.

• I asked Don Belote, my personal trainer at The Weight Club, if he could use one word to describe me when he first began working with me in July, 2006, what it would be.  He answered, "Fragile."

• I discovered I had three training speeds:  all out, recovery from all out, and daydreaming.

• I began circuit training with Don Belote in January, 2009.

• During the 2008 Virginia Triathlon Series, I planned to do one sprint triathlon as a relay with friends, and one sprint triathlon as a milestone before I turned 50.  I ended up doing one relay and five triathlons, finishing 6th overall in Virginia in my age group, although I often finished near the end of a race with over 600 participants.  Obviously, a factor in the standings is the number of races one completes.  I completed. 

• I became engaged to a guy the day after I saw him participate in the 2007 Angels Race, a sprint triathlon held in Lynchburg, Virginia.  At age 53, he came in 44 out of 188 men.  I said, "Yes," to Clark Kent.

• I met a bespectacled, mild-mannered guy who told me he had done a sprint triathlon the previous year and was getting ready to do his first full sprint triathlon season.  He was 52 when I met him and I felt a little sorry for him, thinking a red convertible might be a better antidote to his mid-life crisis.

• When I decided to move from Tampa, Florida back to my hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, I scanned the faces of the personal trainers on The Weight Club's site. I wanted the one who appeared to know the most about strength training, life, and pain.  I chose Don Belote.  I have had a weekly appointment with him since July, 2006.

• I learned I have an extreme ability to dissociate, to separate myself from my experience, to be able to "do" without consciousness of what I feel.  This would be the opposite of full presence in the moment.  Halved is the opposite of oneness.

• I saw a film on chronic pain sufferers - for which no medical solutions could be found - who were escorted slowly down the hall at the University of Massachusetts Medical School to Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Cried.  Started meditation lessons.

• I showed up on the doorstep of Fitwise, a personal fitness center in Tampa, Florida, owned by Dan Wall, on the first week day of January, 2005.  He told me later I seemed "defeated."  I began full body weight training to make "a tree trunk of muscle."

• I consulted an orthopedist for my back injury.  He told me to create "a tree trunk of muscle" in which my spine could rest.

• I developed a nightmare condition that left me awakening in terror all night, every hour, in 2002.  My physician advised me to "wear myself out" in the day.

• I began the chronic pain sufferer's classic search for relief:  test after test after test, prescriptions, physical therapy, injections, massage, reiki, prayer from me, prayer for me. 

• I was making a bed in December 1998, lifted the corner of the mattress, felt stabbed in the back, and was bed-ridden.  The diagnosis:  a "bulging disc."  I began an almost 10-year stint with new pain.

• I qualified for the state track meet in 1977 in the shot put.

• When the weight room was moved from the boys' locker room in the old high school to a co-ed space in the new Blacksburg High School, the athletic director required a permission note from my mother before I would be allowed to lift weights.

• I tore a hamstring in 1970 while slipping doing a handspring on wet grass in front of Margaret Beeks Elementary School, Blacksburg, Virginia.  I became what is now termed a chronic pain sufferer.

***

Since triathlon as a sport is only 25 years old, very few can say, "I've always been a triathlete."  Most adults came to the sport from having been a swimmer, cyclist, or runner.

I came to the sport from weight lifting.  Because of a guy.

What I have discovered, to my continuing awe and relief, is that, for me, extreme chronic pain responds to extreme training. 

I work hard so I'm "worn out."  Nightmares must work harder than I do these days. 

I co-exist with the discomfort of sitting and ironically, cannot lift boxes or sweep floors without re-injuring myself.

But, the stronger I get - the more oak-like my "tree trunk" becomes - the more my spine can stretch out, ease the pinch on its bulging disc, and rest.

That said, if I were not a chronic pain sufferer, I hope I would have found triathlon somehow.

I got tears in my eyes when I wrote that.

Why do I do triathlons?  Because when I train, when I race, I am with me.  Not halved.  Whole.

An Entrepreneurial Exercise Model

In her series for The Huffington Post, The New Power Girls, Patricia Handschiegel kindly quoted me in The New Power Girls: How to Strike Balance in Business. The experience was rich and I wrote about it on Handshake 2.0.  I also wrote about my cat, about whom my thinking inspired the words that were ultimately quoted.

I am fortunate to be on Patricia Handshiegel's e-mail list of sources for quotes.  Although I was not quoted in her latest entry, The New Power Girls Style: How Today's Business Women Sneak Health and Wellness Into Their Busy Worlds, I was made thoughtful by her questions on "how to make wellness happen" for today's business women.

Handschiegel quotes Kathy Caprino, founder and President of Ellia Communications:  "I struggle deeply with healthy living and eating - and fitting an ongoing commitment to health into my wildly busy life as an entrepreneur and mom," and "I fit a walk in my day whenever possible and drink water every time I'm in the car."

In my work life, I probably did not struggle deeply enough with wellness, going through periods of months, even years, with little, to no, exercise, and long hours at the typewriter, then the computer.  I have been plagued by overuse injuries, the worst of which resulted in chronic back pain from 1998 on. 

Relief from demoralizing pain?  Nicey-nice physical therapy didn't do it.  A walk, "fit in" or not, doesn't do it. 

The only relief I have is when I engage in extreme physical effort day after day. 

As I reflect on my life so far, I see it as one more manifestation of the pattern:  intensity nourishes and sustains me.

So, thanks to Handschiegel's query, I have had these insights:

As an entrepreneur, I thrive on start-up, execution, and exit.  I've found that using an entrepreneurial exercise model - as I use a business model - optimizes my results.

In signing up for a sprint triathlon season - five races, each about a two-hour swim, bike, and run event, over the course of about six months - I revel in the passionate start-up of the season, the intensity of each milestone race, then exiting the season by finishing in the middle or higher in my age group. 

Unlike my work day schedule, the workout schedule isn’t insane - one to two hours per day, five to six days per week. 

The side benefits?  A respite from chronic pain.  I’m fit enough to pass the yearly blood pressure check.  I burn a lot of calories so I get to eat a lot.

And I have think time.  That is precious to me.

***

In the photo, I'm at the Reston Sprint Triathlon in Reston, Virginia, June, 2008.  I am coached by Kati Derrick, two-time Louisville Ironman finisher.