The Power of Understanding Yourself

Chapter 4 Core Ideology The Crush of Juice, Stems, Skins, and Seeds

In victory, you deserve Champagne. In defeat, you need it!

– Napoleon Bonaparte

There are several exciting occasions when you live in wine country. There is the spring release, generally a coordinated weekend when nearly all the wineries in the area make available their new wines for public consumption. This event is repeated in the fall, when it is rather obviously called the fall release. The most exhilarating of all the moments for me, however, is the harvest. Although not a precise point on a calendar, it reflects a moment in time for all winemakers when the grapes are picked in the vineyard, transported to winery, and subjected to the crush. The crush generates the must – a mix of juice with the solid components of the grape like stems, seeds, and skins. It is the raw material from which wine is made.

The crush is an obvious metaphor for distilling one’s core ideology. It occurs after the grapes have been picked and sorted, so many of the inputs have been firmly established. It occurs before the grapes have been converted to wine, and have therefore not yet been linked to the outputs. The crush reflects the first big connection of inputs and outputs. It is the core ideology of winemaking. It is here and in the execution that follows that we will determine if we are indeed aligned.

As we explored in Chapter 3, an understanding of the concept of horizontal alignment in organizational psychology lends itself ...