Circular Thinking
Aug 21, 13
read more
Recent Posts
Business: Maintenance or Progress?
Aug 12, 13
What’s the difference between maintenance and progress in business? When I’m doing the day-to-day operations of my business, I’m just maintaining. If I step outside of the day-to-day and develop a vision of how to make the business better, then I am making progress. The same is true at my house and in my garden. Sometimes I am making the property “better.” Occasionally we add something new or improve the property in some way. This year I added some lovely flower boxes in all the windows. One year we installed a larger hot water heater so we stopped running out of hot water. Sometimes we don’t do anything to make the property better–like the year we went on sabbatical and didn’t do all the little projects we usually do to make our home feel good. But aren’t most of the tasks maintenance, really? If we spend a year without doing any big projects, even if I continue fixing or improving routine things, then the paint will be a year older, things will be a little more worn. No big projects mean the house looks older and older, it just doesn’t stay the same. I believe a similar reality applies to leadership and people development in organizations, too. Taking a year away from developing people doesn’t leave you where you were, it takes you backward–just a little. Skills become a little less current, the dialogue in the organization gets a little more stale, and people have a little more distance from company values and purpose. Having learning projects engages staff, channels their energy, and keeps them moving forward. I know the philosophy for many in this economic downturn has been “all hands on deck.” Focus has been on sales and marketing, and on bringing in as much business as possible. I hope the time has come to look around to see how to tend to the people in the organization. How can their development support the bottom line? What are the projects your house needs...
read more
Family Shame
Aug 05, 13
“I am ashamed of you.” I can hear it rattling around in my head, feeling my face get hot. The feeling of not enough.
read moreGad-Boodness
Aug 02, 13
Note: This article is long and has several fun video clips. I recommend you get a cocktail, take your time, and prepare to laugh. The Question: I was never very keen on Mrs. Kindt (our high school history teacher), but I also have to admit I wasn’t a particularly good history student. However, she said something one time that really stuck with me. She was discussing two political principles that are commonly presented as polar opposites. (I’ve forgotten the exact topic, unfortunately.) She argued that while the two were, indeed, opposing viewpoints, one could actually become the other if taken to a far enough extreme. Rather than thinking of the two things as a bar magnet, she suggested a clock instead. I thought that was a fascinating idea. Let’s say, for example, we wanted to use the clock model to describe whether something is good or bad. Assume that 12:00 PM represents the absolute best. 3:00 PM would be good, but not great. Things that are perfectly mediocre would be plotted at 6:00 PM. 9:00 PM would be crappy, while things that are horrifically terrible would be found at 11:59 PM. Bad, of course, is diametrically opposed to good, but viewed through the clock model, something could be so bad that it becomes good (The clock would roll over to 12:01 AM and suddenly fall into good territory). That bizarre area would be a counter-intuitive subversion of good and bad: gad-bood. I’ve thought quite a lot about this, and I’m sure people can come up with many examples of gad-boodness. This clip, in my opinion, is a wonderful example of gad-boodness: It’s a promotional video for a neti pot. I’m disappointed to report that it has been edited; the original ended with the creepy non-blinking robot doing stretching exercises to ensure that all of the snot gets out of her head. True story. The video is so bad it is actually good. Importantly, gad-boodness has to be created by accident. Satire, for...
read more
