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Posts tagged ‘Personal Development’

Aug 9

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Out of the ordinary

About a week ago, I got up at 4:00 a.m. to go with Jon on a photo shoot at Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge. The site of mist over the refuge, the Rocky Mountains glowing in the background, and the noise of hundreds of birds taking flight at dawn was awe-inspiring.

How important is it for us to have new experiences, to break out of the routine? Neuroscience research demonstrates that when we break out of the routine and enjoy something new, our brains reward us with a dopamine flood.  We essentially give ourselves a pat – not on our head, but inside our head. If we continue to do the same thing over and over, the dopamine flood recedes and eventually dries up – the routine deadens the response.

For me, this is a significant argument for the importance of life-long learning. If I am intentional about experiencing and learning new things each day, I will benefit consciously from the new knowledge, the memories of the experience, and from increased well-being.

Creatively breaking the routine in organizations can work to build innovation and organizational energy. For example, want to improve customer service? I can imagine individuals being asked to go out and observe at a variety of retail and restaurant locations, then coming back to discuss their experiences and how they could be applied internally. Or, want to build leaders? I can imagine having individuals interview each other about when they’ve experienced exceptional leadership, then sharing the stories and characteristics of great leaders, and together designing strategies for integrating those characteristics into their own leadership style.

What are you doing to escape the routine as individual? As an organization?

Aug 5

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Idea for reflection – 17

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
  – Richard Feyman

Idea for reflection – 16

Jul 31

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Orbiting thought – Over and out

You may agree or disagree with Gordon MacKenzie’s ideas from Orbiting the Giant Hairball that I’ve been posting. Personally, I find his stories cause me to consider what works and what doesn’t work in organizations as well as my own life. I’ve been asking myself what the unspoken rules and systems are which create the hairball cocoon where it is safe to measure and plan based only on the past. And asking myself just what is invisible leadership?

Jon and I had lunch with one of our Friesen Group advisors last week who told me, “If you’re not a little uncomfortable, you’re not going to grow and make progress.”  He is right. It is time to try something new, push the boundaries, and, just maybe, achieve Orbit.

… if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living.
  – Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Orbiting thought – 7
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Jul 25

Idea for reflection – 17

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.

Idea for reflection – 16

Jul 17

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Idea for reflection – 16

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

 

Idea for reflection – 15

Jul 16

Failure is an option?

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 14

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Orbiting the Giant Hairball

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.

Jul 13

The power of undo

The power to undo has become firmly established in our lives. We press the backspace key or type “Ctrl+Z” to instantly undo typing mistakes. We press the undo button in the word processor to change our minds about what we want to say or how to say it.  If we decide we don’t like a purchase, we take it back to the store. Undo is the power to “make a previous act of no effect.”

I would not want to go back to the days of “white out”. And, I like to be able to return things that don’t fit or exchange them for something more useful. But when we try to transfer the power of undo to our organizations and relationships, our commitments can be conditional; we don’t have to care too much; we don’t have to risk trusting. Indeed, trust may be broken all kinds of ways. A leader offers false praise, gives inconsistent messages, or pretends the elephant in the room doesn’t exist. It can be broken when a customer service representative stonewalls instead of assists or a product fails five minutes after being unboxed.

Yet, no one or thing is perfect. We make mistakes with our clients and employees, families and friends.  And, in our relationships and organizations, there is no undo, no power to “make a previous act of no effect.”  A reader recently challenged me by commenting that we need to do “our best to finish well, especially when we need to ask for forgiveness … understanding and healing should not go undone–if possible.”

Asking for, and offering, forgiveness is part of rebuilding trust. In my experience, repairing trust is possible, but it can take time and requires a change in behavior. Paul Boese said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it enlarges the future.” It enlarges by making it possible for me to again risk commitment, love, and trust, – remembering that the power of undo is limited.

Jul 9

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Idea for reflection – 15

Black Bird and Thunderheads at Sunset

 

Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people all remark
We have done it ourselves
– Lao-tzu

Idea for reflection – 14

A story about this lesson

Jul 1

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Idea for reflection – 14

On the National Mall

My countrymen, … think calmly  and well upon this whole subject.

Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.

If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste,
to a step which you would never take deliberately,
that object will be frustrated by taking time;
but no good object can be frustrated by it.
– A. Lincoln, from first inaugural address

Idea for reflection – 13

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