A friend from high school asked me a question.
“How do you take that next step when you don’t want to hear the criticisms…. constructive or not? I am a big believer that art, whatever the medium, is a personal expression… So how can one tell you what you created is wrong?”
What a great question as we try to do good work, try to be helpful, and try new adventures.
I have so many thoughts on this. Here are the big three. Continue reading
Life is full of mystery.
We tend to believe what we see and can prove. This is who I am. This is a table. This is what stars are made of. This is how the world works.
Then science and physics open new portals and we can “see” at an atomic level. And we can “see” a billion years ago in the night sky.
We’re living at a time of massive, innovative technological change. And what we “know” changes. Dramatically. Daily. Continue reading
I was giving a talk this week on Organizational Zen and asked the participants to jot down what their intent was for attending. There are a couple of things I like about focusing on intent.
Malcolm Gladwell describes “outliers” as people who are at the ends of the spectrum – the few who stand out for their artistic success, their business acumen, or their athletic achievements. His book, Outliers, studies these winners like scientific specimens and comes to an awesome conclusion: to be successful in any field, you need smarts. You need opportunities. And mostly, you have to work hard. Really hard. Like “10,000 hours” hard.
Great artists, successful business people, and uber-athletes make what they do seem easy. It’s not. Yes, there are savants, but to be a success in any field, you have to be intentional about the work you choose to do. You have to stay focused. You have to prioritize getting your work done.
And you put in those 10,000 hours to get really, really good. Continue reading
I’m working my way through Thomas Friedman’s book, Thank You For Being Late, for the second time in as many weeks, and am struck by the immense power of a connected community.
In the “old days,” we attended K-12 classes. Then maybe you went to college, got a degree, got a job and progressed by working hard or making lateral moves to other companies to get ahead. Throughout your career, you learned from experienced people you worked with, and maybe you got a grad degree, but even with that, you mostly had to figure things out for yourself.
In Thomas Friedman’s new book, Thank You for Being Late, he explains why this learning pattern doesn’t work in a time of super-accelerated technological change. Today, most schools don’t even teach the latest technology because things are happening faster than teachers are being educated. So how are we expected to keep up? Continue reading
If you want to do really good work it helps to understand how you tick.
If you want a snapshot of this that comes right from your gut, try making a soul collage.
You’ll need a few supplies: Continue reading
Close your eyes and picture the last time you were really happy.
[pause to ponder – I’ll wait!]
What were you doing?
Who were you with? Chances are you were with somebody because at our core, we’re social animals and being around people and animals we trust and can laugh with is a big part of what makes us happy.
When you picture that happy time, do you feel an energy bubble in your gut? Continue reading
“The future has an ancient heart.”
I love this line from Italian writer Carlo Levi. The thought is that you are who you are from the moment you’re born, and the future reveals what’s always been there.
If you’re struggling with where you’re headed, look back at where you were when you were 5, 10, 15, 20… Continue reading
Organizational Habits 