Jul 28
Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond “accepted models, patterns, or standards” – all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.
– Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball
Jul 27
If you are in a position of power and want to lead well, remember:
Allow those you lead…
To lead… when they fell the need.
All will benefit.
– Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball
Jul 26
A management obsessed with productivity usually has little patience for the quiet time essential to profound creativity.
… Welcome to the If-we-work-hard-enough-long-enough-burn-ourselves-out-enough-we’ll-succeed-through-control Hairball.
… A healthier alternative is the Orbit of trust that allows time – without immediate, concrete evidence of productivity – for the miracle of creativity to occur.
– Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball
In reflecting on how we access our emotional and social intelligence, how we can gain wisdom – I point my readers to Garr Reynold’s post about lessons from the forest. Here you will find several ideas worthy of reflection on a summer weekend.
Jul 25
Orville Wright did not have a pilot’s license.
– Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball
Jul 24
If an organization wishes to benefit from its own creative potential, it must be prepared to value the vagaries of the unmeasurable as well as the certainties of the measurable.
– Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball
Jul 17
In his op-ed piece, Tweet Less, Kiss More, Bob Herbert tells several stories about those of us who find it difficult to set aside our e-mail, texting, and tweeting. As I head into another summer weekend, I hope to find time for silence, to find a way to escape the velocity of complexity.
Yellow Amaryllis
Failure has been a word of the moment for the past few years: “too big to fail“, Jim Collin’s How the Mighty Fall, and – I can’t count the British Petroleum headlines on the subject. Today, Seth Godin’s blog talks about the “hierarchy of failure worth following“:
. . . frequency = good all the way to please-don’t!
FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.
FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.
FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.
FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.
FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.
I’m reflecting on how this fits into my understanding of organizational and personal failure. Finally, a quote from Michael Jordan:
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
Jul 15
A couple of photos from a Kansas road trip to deliver a client project today . . .
Summer Afternoon in the Flint Hills
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Jul 14
The subtitle of this book, A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace, brings this memoir into the realm of organizations. I am, by far, not the first person to discover this book. Originally self-published in 1997, it is now in its 19th printing. Bob Sutton’s frequent mention in speeches, articles, and his blog provided the impetus for me to get a copy.
I was pulled right into MacKenzie’s orbit and read the book in two sittings. The hairball is “that tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, and systems, based on what worked in the past and which can lead to mediocrity in the present.” While not suggesting that any organization can rid itself of that hairball – afterall, we all have boundaries including cash flow and government regulation – he recommends that from time-to-time we extract ourselves from the hairball and tap into our imagination and creativity.
The memoir asks both sides of your brain to engage. His stories are mingled with drawings and diagrams, which inspired my imagination. From an organization development point of view, there are stories about facilitation methods, perspectives on organizational paradox from the viewpoint of the orbit and hairball, and opinions on leadership. He certainly is not boring! And he will challenge your thinking and imagination.
I’ll conclude with a quote from a 1997 interview with MacKenzie in Fast Company about the obstacles to escaping the hairball and getting to orbit:
Attachment to outcome. As soon as you become attached to a specific outcome, you feel compelled to control and manipulate what you’re doing. And in the process you shut yourself off to other possibilities.
I got a call from someone who wanted me to lead a workshop on creativity. He needed to tell his management exactly what tools people would come away with. I told him I didn’t know. I couldn’t give him a promise, because then I’d become attached to an outcome — which would defeat the purpose of any creative workshop.
Friesen Group 