Archive | March, 2006

Creativity Is An Act Of Courage

by on March 22, 2006 in Creative

Dave Gray at Communication Nation is conducting an experiment in facilitating an asynchonous conversation with Maish R. Nichani who writes the elearningpost blog. I’ve seen just a couple of attempts at creating an open, evolving dialogue like this on other blogs so it will be interesting to see what happens.

What’s particularly interesting are some of the initial comments from Maish about our learned lack of comfort with being uncomfortable. As someone with children just entering the U.S. educational system, his thoughts run parallel to my own – we either need to worrk to change the system (which is an uphill battle and frought with much despair) or change the way we help our kids (which is something specific that all parents have the power to do). Here’s Maish’s thoughts:

It’s one thing to be out of touch, it’s totally another to do something about it. In this day and age, success, I think, comes to those who are comfortable being uncomfortable or those who deliberately practice being uncomfortable. But many of us shy way from being out of touch. A few days ago I had a chat with a friend who runs creativity courses here and he signaled out the education system as the reason for this passive shyness. Right from the start we are told to draw on the lines and color inside the boxes and this conformity mindset has molded us into being passive receivers. But thanks to the Internet, there is hope.

So, let’s encourage our kids to draw outside the lines, wear clothes that don’t match, make messes, make mistakes, think really big things. Build their confidence to be active generators rather than mere passive receivers. And continue to listen and encourage them when an old, industrial-era teacher comes along to squash these better qualities. Because it will happen at some point either as a kid or as an adult. Creativity is an act of open disobedience against the norms. Creativity is an act of courage

Homework For The Weekend

by on March 17, 2006 in Career, Creative

Well, for me at least. I’ve been stopped cold in my tracks today by two deeply probing questions offered by Dick Richards at Come Gather Round:

I need to reflect on the first question because I’m wandering now and not in the good kind of way. After a recent foray in the world of self-employment (and later unemployment), I am most thankful to have stable work that pays…but true to my self and my beliefs that is simply not enough. I’m seeking to rediscover my own soulful work because I am not sure that I’m doing it right now.

Which leads to the issues surrounding the second question. I might even reframe it: Do I really like who I am when I do my current work? I have a feeling that the answer may be hard to confront. But I know that my heart is telling me that its time to reconnect with it; it’s been patiently calling me for some time.

Which reminds me…I need to make sure that I read Dick’s book, Is Your Genius at Work?, very soon.

Taking Charge Of Our Future

by on March 16, 2006 in Career, Work

I have great and constantly growing respect for the work of David St Lawrence who writes at Ripples: Post-Corporate Adventures. His writing about our modern workplace is frank and often not pretty. It reminds me of the times I go for hikes and discover a beautiful stone only to pick it up and see all the worms and bugs crawling around beneath it. I’ll admit that there are times when I enter into a state of denial and think his experiences and outlook can’t possibly be accurate…I mean, are workplaces really that bad? The answer, like most everything else in life, is complex: yes and no with plenty of shades of gray between.

David’s recent post, If you are employed, I am writing from your future…, is an uncompromising reminder that each of us who are employed by a company or non-profit must take care of our own career. That even goes for us twenty- and thirtysomethings. I like this particular quote from David:

Once you take charge of your life and stop expecting someone else to look after you or tell you what to do and when, you may just find that you are enjoying life again and are looking forward to the future instead of dreading it.

Regardless of whether we’re ready to take on our own “post-corporate adventure,” this is sage advice for us to consider. It’s a message of hope for today as well as tomorrow. Each morning that we’re blessed to open our eyes to a new day has the possibility of adding to our knowledge and wisdom. Even on those days when it seems like it would be easier to just hit the snooze and sleep, the ideal of soulful work prods us to peer through the apparent drudgery to the greater meaning. Maybe that meaning is connecting the drudgery to something bigger like building the necessary street cred to start our own business. That’s for each of us to define.

And if we wake to discover that we’re in a soul-numbing job within a soulless organization and the drudgery is unbearable…well no one gets to play the victim here. Taking charge of our work and our life means taking risks, for sure. It also means we get to take on a richer, more human existence.

Reading Anything Good Lately?

by on March 13, 2006 in Media

I came across this article from the UK-based Guardian Newspaper online. Turns out I might not be as well-read as I thought.

Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) in Britain asked librarians around the country, “Which book should every adult read before they die?” At the top of the list was To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, followed by the Bible and then The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Here’s others – both classics and contemporary fiction – that made the list:

  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • All Quite on the Western Front by E. M. Remarque
  • His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
  • Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
  • Tess of the D’urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
  • Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  • The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
  • The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
  • David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • Middlemarch by George Eliot
  • The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

Is There Room For ‘We’ In Your Elevator?

by on March 8, 2006 in Business

Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity recently wrote a post referencing some familiar advice for crafting an effective elevator speech. The latest conventional wisdom would have us believe that the best elevator pitch is not about us, but about the other individual. The principal strategy is to set our needs to the side and focus exclusively on the needs of the potential customer, member, or client. After all, the reason we’re in business to service them, isn’t it?

Well, yes and no. Arnie writes that this strategy misses a greater point:

Business relationships are as much about valuing and evincing our selves as they are about reaching and helping others. Both aspects (self and other) need to be expressed and honored to foster lasting connections for business success and satisfaction.

There seems to be this tacit understanding that relationships in business are different from those elsewhere in life. Perhaps it’s okay to screw over a vendor in your business, but it’s clearly not acceptable to do the same to a friend. Or maybe it’s fine to do everything to make a member happy but necessary to put conditions on making our spouses equally happy. It’s as if we are two individuals merely sharing the same skin, which might explain why we’re so damned unhappy at times.

Like Arnie, I believe there’s a different way…one that accepts that our core values define our relationships regardless if they are business or personal. There is no need for this artificial schism. What if, instead of making the elevator pitch primarily (or solely) about the other person or even selfishly about ourselves, we use the AND proposition and make it about us. The pitch then becomes one for a mutually respectful relationship where the needs of both sides have equal importance.

Not realistic? Think a customer or member is too self-interested, focused too much on what they gain? Maybe, but then, that’s the message they’ve been trained well to absorb. This is an invitation to propose a new type of relationship, one that addresses the client’s needs, but also honors our own goals, dreams, and possibilities. There’s no way to do any of this when the relationship becomes imbalanced and the customer’s needs are always put first. Actually, that’s not a relationship…it’s servitude.

And we have a choice.