I just published my first post over at Career Hub where I’ll be writing a few times a month. Here’s the beginning excerpt.

Sometimes I get overcharged,
that’s when you see sparks.
They ask me where the hell I’m going?
At a 1000 feet per second,
hey man, slow down, slow down,
idiot, slow down, slow down.
Radiohead – The Tourist

I fondly remember spending a college semester abroad in Oxford, England. It was a wonderful opportunity to surround myself in a different culture and experience the world from a different perspective. It was also a chance to visit all the places I had read about in books and seen on television. Along with my fiancée (now wife), we discovered ruined remains of long abandoned castles, quaint villages with thatch-covered homes, and charming roadside pubs.

We also made a point to visit London. London is a magnificent city with no lack for things to see and do. If visiting unprepared, it can be overwhelming. So being the kind of guy who wants to be prepared for anything, I made a very detailed schedule for our first visit. When I say ‘detailed’, I mean down to the minute. How else can you see the Tower of London, British Museum, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the National Gallery all in one day? That’s a lot to do and only a detailed plan can make sure it all happens.

The first thing you realize when trying to stick to a very full schedule is that other people may not want to cooperate. Sure, my fiancée was playing along, but the Londoners operating the Underground (their version of our subways), serving tea, and guiding the site tours just wouldn’t keep to my strategically created schedule. I even suspected my fiancée was an accomplice to their desire to subvert my plans. However, despite their best effort, they couldn’t break my resolve and by the end of the day we accomplished my mission of visiting each place on the list. We could leave the city saying that we had been to all the places you associate with London.

You may be thinking, “Sure, you accomplished your objective, but did you really enjoy the experience?” The answer would have to be ‘no.’ And worse, those around me didn’t enjoy it either. Sadly, I hardly remember any of those places on that trip. I was driven by the importance of being able to say I had visited those places.

My mad tourist dash seems silly, yet how many times have we done the same thing in our careers. So many of us race from task to task, project to project, and job to job. Perhaps we do this so we can check them off our strategically created career plans. Or maybe we become seduced by the thought that the next thing ahead is better than what we have right now. Ultimately, we find ourselves trapped by the notion that the destination becomes far more important than the journey itself and we lose ourselves in the process.

So, what can we do?

Find out by visiting Career Hub…

Or it could just be that I’m easily enamored by the latest new cool thing. I’m not sure whether this infatuation with Facebook will go the long haul, but it’s already giving me some clues that I might just be liking it for a while to come. Why?

Reason #1: Because I’ve actually found some old high school friends who I haven’t seen or talked to in ages. It’s a treat to find out how they’re doing and share their life’s journey. There’s practically no way I would have been able to find them and catch up without FB, particularly since I’m 1500 miles from my former hometown.

Reason #2: A lot of my other social networking apps work with it…namely, Shelfari, Twitter, and Delicious. It’s neat to get all of my online hangouts merged into one place where my buds can see them, too. Heck, there are even some new ones like Where I’ve Been and iLike.

Reason #3: It beats the pants off of LinkedIn as a way to build professional contacts. As so many others have noted, LinkedIn is static and boring in the way a one-trick pony is. With Facebook, I have a much greater opportunity to build both personal and professional relationships that have actual meaning. I can related to what my contacts actually like, what they’re reading and watching, what places they’ve visited, and so on.

If you’re interested in connecting through Facebook, visit my profile page and add me to your friends.

As I wrap up for this Monday evening, I keep coming back to an idea that is fairly simple, yet ever so easy for managers to forget. It’s the idea of matter. No, not dark matter hanging out in the cosmos or grey matter hanging out between our ears.

It’s the idea that employees want work that matters.

It’s the idea that employees want to matter.

We all want to feel that who we are and what we do is significant. In the crazy busy world of business, these feelings can get lost in the shuffle of meeting deadlines, making client calls, and other everyday activities. Yet, without being in touch with what matters, we tend to just go through the motions.

Leader managers have a unique role to fill by helping their folks connect with these deep and significant qualities. As a manager…if you don’t already know these things…take some time today to dialogue with your staff and find out what really matters to them.

And take some time to answer: What really matters to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Fer all ye aspiring pirates out there (and ye know who ye are), today is yer day. It’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day. It’s a day to put aside all yer worries, grab ye sword, tell a merry yarn to your best mates, and make some landlubbers walk the plank (I think ye call them managers). Now, maybe ye ain’t sure if ye have what it takes to be a pirate. Arrr…it’s easy.

First, ye start by singing a right jaunty tune. Me mate Cap’n Tom Smith has written a ditty to celebrate our day called Talk Like A Pirate Day. ‘Ere’s a start to help ye along:

Yo, Ho, Yo, Ho,
It’s “Talk Like A Pirate” Day!
When laptops are benches God gave us fer wenches,
And a sail ain’t a low price ta pay!
When timbers are shivered and lillies are livered
And every last buckle is swashed,
We’ll abandon our cars for a shipfull of ARRRs
And pound back the grog till we’re sloshed! Yo ho….

Ye can sing the whole tune.

Remember…any pirate needs a good pirate name. If ye need some help (or your crew insists on calling ye Ole Blackbutt or Cap’n Chumbucket), then thar be help fer ye. Fer instance, it helped me take the fine pirate name of Dirty Harry Rackham. It even told me what this fine name means:

You’re the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean — not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

So, get off yer duff, swash yer buckle, and plunder yonder villages. Take pride in being a pirate today. Or you’ll be sent down to Davy Jones’ Locker.

Tammy Lenski’s writing a series on dialogue jump-starts as guest blogger at Notes on Design. Jump-start #3 is called Go to the Movies. In this post, she offers a fantastic analogy for stepping back and understanding (or at least trying to understand) another person’s perspective.

She presents some clear ideas for getting into someone’s movie:

Listening carefully, just like at the movies. You don’t repeatedly talk out loud there, right?

Getting into their movie isn’t about agreeing with them or suspending your disagreement for good. It’s about creating genuine space for the other’s perspective to reach you and be considered by you before you react, respond, reply.

Getting into someone’s movie is an act of appreciation. It’s appreciating that our own ideas are not universal truths, that our own perceptions are limited, and that our own potential to deeply connect with others is bounded only by our willingness to be open.

I’ll openly admit that I’m not always the best employee. It all relates to a stubborn streak that I inherited from both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family (though Baileys and Garretts often claim the other is worse). The things is that I like to do things my way. I often bristle if someone tells me what I should do, if they tell me the best way it can be done, if they tell me that my way isn’t going to work. See…telling me just isn’t going to work. I’m just going to have to learn on my own. Sometimes it’s a strength and sometimes it’s a curse. Perhaps that’s why Paul Williams’ recent napkin idea on change resonates with me. He offers this quote from Marty Neumeier:

People do like change.
What they don’t like is being changed.

What I like is the simplicity of this idea. In two sentences, he’s able to clearly define why organizational change initiatives fail. Too often, change initiatives are built in black boxes and then sprung on employees. Executives deliver the news which is laden with directives detailing what we’re doing and how we’re going to do it. Great…now prepare to go down in flames. Why? Because the assumption is that change is a rational process that moves in a linear pattern. But what happens when we consider that change is an emotional process? Usually, fear is the emotion we most often connect with change, but that ignores other emotional responses like excitement, happiness, anger, and frustration. A favorite book of mine that has become a well-thumbed reference for organizational change is The Change Monster by Jeanie Daniel Duck. As the book’s subtitle points out, there are human forces that fuel or foil any organizational transformation or change initiative.

If you’re in the process of planning (or to the point of implementing) change, here are some questions to ponder:

• What it will take to get your folks ready for the change?
• How can you help make the decision to change their decision rather than your mandate?
• Are you prepared for the emotional responses that are going to arise?

Thinking through the human factors of change will be critical if your plan succeeds or crashes.

Lorelle laid out another post in her series of blogging challenges that happens to coincide with my upcoming three year anniversary of blogging. Her writing challenge is: Blog about the path your blog took to get to now. Here’s the possibly boring and predictable chronology, but I’ll follow it up with some lessons I’ve learned about not only blogging but myself over the past three years.

Timeline
September 2004: The beginning…I started blogging because I just took the plunge to become a full-time career and leadership coach (back when this blog used to be called imaginactive musings and hosted through Blogger). I wanted a blog as a way to publish ideas as well as use it as a virtual business card and marketing vehicle.
Key post: It’s All Invented…So Have Fun With It

January 2005: When I started drowning after this plunge (the failure to build a viable coaching business is a whole other topic of learning) the blog typically took the form of someone writing about their often painful experiences trying to find work. Sort of blogging as self-therapy. This was about the time I first used The Alchemy of Soulful Work as my blog title.
Key post: The Career Change Blues (And Other Colors): The Beginning

March 2005: It didn’t take long for me to tire of Blogger’s inherent limitations. The blog transitioned to TypePad. Sadly, I lost all my comments from Blogger in the transition. Still trying to find work, though.
Key posts: Hello Typepad… and I Will Be Complacent No Longer

June 2005: I found a job and started to write more about my management and leadership experiences in the non-profit setting. I also started to write about some of the headaches and frustrations with my particular organization which would later get me in a bit of hot water. Oh the things you learn the hard way.
Key posts: Superabsorbant New Director and More On The First Month Of A New Job

June-October 2005: I also attempted to write a companion blog focused on the customer and non-profit association member experience and coined a rather idiotic term custo/member (though, I still can’t figure out a better way to describe these two different groups in the same word…Ben, any help?). I eventually dumped the second blog and integrated it into Alchemy. I now know more about the challenges of keeping more than one blog going.
Key post: The Focus On The Custo/Member

March 2006: With my annual TypePad service coming to a close, I decided to move to a self-hosted solution. I experimented with Joomla and Drupal before choosing WordPress as my blogging platform and baileyworkplay.com as my domain. The whole point was to stake out this online home so that whenever I decide to get my act together and hop back into the coaching/consulting world again I’m fairly well set up to do it.
Key post: A New (New) Beginning With Some More Changes

July-October 2006: I took a hiatus which was necessary due the the big “quickly move everything from Virginia to Texas” decision, but it was extremely hard to rediscover my blogging groove. There were times during this period when I almost closed the door on blogging…thankfully I didn’t.
Key posts: Giddyup Cowboy…We’re Moving To Texas and An Extended Hiatus

April 2007: For some silly reason, I decided to part ways with the blog title The Alchemy of Soulful Work and settled only on Bailey WorkPlay. I’ve recently returned to my senses and reverted back so that Alchemy again is the title of the blog and Bailey WorkPlay is the name of my sidework gig.

July-Today 2007: I think it’s only been in the past couple of months that I’ve gotten playfully serious about my online presence. I’ve challenged myself to be more outwardly focused rather than introspective in my approach to blogging and networking. So far, so good.

Learning
Lesson #1: Be prepared to take the long road
Blogging is not a “If I build it, they will come” type of thing. When I started, it took roughly three months to get my first comment (I’m still very appreciative, Curt). It came just when I needed to hear it and was just the type of encouragement that told me that I was on the right track. Then along came Rosa and an introduction to her growing Ho’ohana Community a couple of months after that. What would have happened if I ditched the whole thing after a couple of months of no comments and practically no readers? Even now, I go through stretches where comments are on the thin side. Fact is that blogging is a journey with several waypoints rather than one final destination.

Lesson #2: Don’t be a blogging shut-in…get out of your own house
Simply put, find like-minded souls and introduce yourself. Write meaningful comments that speak to what the fellow blogger actually has written. Send a personal email if you feel that’s appropriate. Join a multi-writer blog. Get hooked up in one or several of the many social networks out there like Facebook, LinkedIn, Shelfari, Twitter, etc. The important thing that I’m learning is that, while it does take some courage, don’t let shyness get in the way of connecting with others and building some dynamic relationships. I’ve come to realize that blogging is not so much an individual activity, it’s a community activity. Great blogging is knowing how to build relationships with fellow bloggers and readers.

Lesson #3: Know why you’re blogging right now
The times when I’ve struggled most are when I lost sight of my purpose for blogging. For me purpose and passion are intricately linked. I’m like an actor constantly asking the director, “So what’s my motivation?” My purpose can change, but it doesn’t happen that often or dramatically. I blog because I feel I have something unique to add to this world, a different way of viewing work and organizational life. So when you blog, what’s your purpose and motivation? Write it down and keep it in a cozy safe place so that when you get to a place where you lose sight of why you put yourself out there for all the world to see you can have a reminder.

Lesson #4: Don’t force the muse to appear, coax her out patiently
Blogging burn-out is unavoidable. Even if you love writing, there will be times in your life when it bumps against other things. For a three month period in 2006, I pretty much put this blog on ice while I settled into my new home in Texas. When I tried to come back after the hiatus, it was hell to get back into the swing of writing. It was as if I forgot how to put together words and sentences in a sensible way. It was almost painful at times. It was only when I consciously decided to be gentle on myself and not go back to blogging full force that I was able to ease myself out of the come-back funk.

Lesson #5: Mind the gaps
This is partly based on an assumption, but I’m finding that the more posts I write the more readers I get. Here’s the reason why: Have you ever found a blog through another link or Google search which looked promising but found the posting frequency to be infrequent? Or the last post was written a couple of months ago? What did you do? Did you subscribe or did you pass? If you’re like me, you tend to pass on since there’s little sense in tracking a blog that may not be maintained. What I’m trying to do now is not be such a damned perfectionist and simply write. Some of my posts I recognize as instant gold while some are merely okay. I’m not suggesting that you aim for quantity over quality…just be more comfortable with not aiming for perfection with each blog post.

Lesson #6: Evolve
This final lesson is be open to new ideas, techniques, and tools. Be open to learning something new. Even though I’ve been blogging for three years (which most people say is rather long in the blogging world), I’m by no means an expert at this. There are experts out there who haven’t even started blogging. If you’re one of these folks, think about what you might add to the world through your writing. If you feel you’re not a great writer, try your hand at podcasting. The beauty of this time in history is that there’s always something new around the next corner. Just keep your eyes, mind, and soul open to the possibilities that are always in front of you.

Via my favorite corporate bullshit haters, here’s a link to a project called Their Circular Life. Beyond the interesting effect of watching the same scene change through one day, there’s some great learning here to apply in our life.

It’s Flash-based so make sure your browser has the plugin. Once you get to the site, choose Enter with Intro to get a flavor of what’s to come. Take some time to explore each scene and pay attention to the little things that change along with the more noticeable ones. And don’t neglect the tips to the bottom left of the scenes. I like this one, in particular:

Release the pressure of your life and listen to what your surroundings is telling you.

So, take some time right now to stop with all the go-go and slow down. At least for a couple of minutes. Breathe and look around. Even if you’re in your work cube, swivel on your chair and really notice what’s going on. Take in the sounds, the smells, the visuals. What do you notice? What sort of surprises did you find?

And the folks who put together Their Circular Life are hoping to open this project up. If you’re interested in taking part in their idea, they’ve released source files and documentation on how to get involved.

You’ll notice that I’m subtly reintegrating The Alchemy of Soulful Work into Bailey WorkPlay. I never really meant to sweep it aside, but somewhere over the course of the past year I did. Here’s how I see this playing out…

Bailey WorkPlay right now is a project, the foundation for my work and professional identity. It is and will be the home for writings, speaking gigs, coaching, and other business ideas that I continue to hold on to. It symbolizes all the exciting possibilities for what’s next.

The Alchemy of Soulful Work is the blog. Once upon a time, someone suggested that it could also be the title of a book…hmmm. It feels right to bring it back as an ideal to re-engage our thinking of what work can be. Let’s take just a little of that magic that the ancient alchemists pursued and change our perspective of work from a mundane J-O-B to something more meaningful and soulfully satisfying.

Tomorrow is Labor Day in the United States. It’s a day in which its relevance has changed significantly since it was first officially celebrated in 1882. It began as an industrial age idea, when the concept of work was very different from now. Back in the latter portion of the nineteenth century, folks were fighting for the very things we now take for granted like the eight-hour workday, better workplace safety regulations, and child labor laws. We need to give thanks to these individuals and their struggles; if not from them, it’s likely that we would not be able to walk our own path of soulful work.

I’d like to suggest that we re-envision Labor Day and approach it as a reflective moment that can fulfill more of it’s potential in our current age. Rather than think about labor (which honestly doesn’t have the greatest connotation), consider work as a means of releasing our own unique purpose into the world. In this way, work no longer is tied exclusively to whether it is done for economic means. It could be volunteering at a battered women’s shelter. It could be pursuing a hobby like gardening, woodworking, or painting. It could be sharing your ideas through a blog.

On Labor Day, consider what gifts you can give through your work. And don’t be afraid to play a little, too. After all – like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup – work and play are two great tastes that taste great together.

Happy Soulful Work Day!

Update 09.03.2007: Rosa Say has a great dream for what a Soulful Work day might be…
I will know that the Hawaiian value of Ho‘ohana has caught on in the world, when the way that people celebrate Labor Day dramatically changes: It no longer will be a day off, but a day that everyone wants to be at work as a statement of the joy it brings them.