My friend Kevin Holland linked to a brilliant idea and one very appropriate for today: thank your first commenter. I remember my first comment and commenter so very well. It was Curt Rosengren and it was he who made a significant impact on whether this blog would keep going. Up to that point, I had very little traffic and no comments. While I knew I had much to give voice to, I just wasn’t sure if a blog was the right forum.

I still have those his comment but its no longer viewable in TypePad (when I was using Blogger, I managed comments and trackbacks using HaloScan):

Hi Christopher. Love the blog. Any possibility of upping the frequency of posts? This blog has some great potential. Keep up the great work!

So, thanks Curt for that little nudge. It made a world of difference.

And my warmest wishes to all of you. Even if you’re not from the U.S., I hope you know gratitude, solace, and love today.

I went to a facilitors workshop this morning and the one thing that the presenter just kept hammering away at was the need to "think outside the box." Can we bury this overused phrase now? Pretty Please? Seriously, if you find that it’s necessary to think outside the box, you better take a good look at the box itself. You may in fact have a circle and don’t know it.

Okay, short rant over. The reason for my lack of writing lately is that this week is Pre-Conference  Week. Next week, I’ll be traveling to Minneapolis for my organization’s Board Meeting and Annual Conference so hopefully that explains why postings will be very, very light until the first week of October. BTW, anyone living in Minneapolis who would like to meet up, let me know.

I’ve been blessed to discover a new blog: 37 Days. A few weeks ago, Patti sent me an email saying that she found my blog through a mutual friend. Turns out we’re both Guilford College alums, have non-profit association experience, and she lives in one of the places that I would dearly love to migrate to: Asheville, NC.

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg. Her blog is one of my very favorite reads and I look forward to each post as if it was a Christmas present. Take this week’s entry, Fund Your Own Revolution. She reminds us that change usually doesn’t happen "out there" by "them" so don’t wait around for it. It happens within us, by own desire to transform our offices, our lives, our world.

Here’s my personal challenge. Her post mentions the seemingly inherent tension between employees and their managers. I am working to create the space necessary for my staff to generate change while maintaining the kinds of boundaries that they need. It comes down to sharing both responsibility and authority for making things happen and then sharing the outcome regardless of whether it’s positive or negative. As I assume a greater leadership position in my organization, I try very hard to not be a "them" in the most derogatory of terms.

My second challenge is to not give in to the temptation of scapegoating "them." No matter where you are within the organization, there’s always going to be a them. But who loses if I give in and forfeit my drive to transform my staff’s relationship to their work, my volunteer’s connection to their organization, my own desire to build a lasting legacy in all parts of my life? Here’s Patti’s idea: We give up our power to the very people who took it away from us in the first place. Ah, but giving it up is always our decision in the first place. It’s time to take it all back.

Finally, what I love is her 37 Days Do It Now Challenge at the end of each entry. This week it’s an appeal for us to stop saying "they;" find the change we can make and must make.

Take some time and visit Patti and her 37 Days blog. You’ll be giving yourself a gift.

A year ago this month, I started this blog with a couple of objectives in mind: to drive traffic to my startup coaching practice and to offer a platform for my ideas. Little did I know it would be the answer to a much greater need in my life: to increase my sense of community. I’ve met some incredible people just because I put myself out here through Alchemy and have been blessed by their presence in my life. And the best part is that I continue to meet fantastic folks with new ideas and perspectives on our world.

There have been hard parts about the blogging experience. Most of these have been the ‘shoulds’ of doing this that seem to plague us bloggers at times. Jennifer Rice most recently wrote about blog depression, that unfortunate state where everything is viewed through the limited lens of whether it is blog-worthy. She’s now come to some very soulful and healthy attitudes about her blogging that resonate with me.

Why do I continue to blog after nearly a year? Well, it has a lot to do with that whole community thing I mentioned earlier. And there’s more…I truly enjoy writing and sharing ideas. I really like the feedback and debate from readers (and do find that I get depressed when I don’t get any comments so for goodness sake stop worrying whether what you want to say is ‘good enough’ and just put something out there, okay It does mean a lot to me). It’s deeply meaningful to know that my words and thoughts have an impact on the lives of others. I get a giddy feeling when I tell people that I’m a blogger. The bottom line is that I do this for me, but that "selfishness" is all about fulfilling a desire to be an activist in helping others see their work, leadership, and rest of their lives in a different way.

Thanks for being here in the journey with me. There’s still much to see and do.

Felix Gerena has a proposal up at ChangeThis! It’s called The Life Cycle of the Creative Soul, which is definitely piquing my curiosity. Here’s the hopeful manifesto’s description:

This manifesto is a way of deepening in the creative dimension of our
souls. It´s a way of recognizing patterns of behaviour and feel
familiar with the creative experience of the soul. This experience can
become the guide of a life but can also lead to suffering and despair.
The manifesto helps you to know better your creative attitudes and how
to deal with them.

C’mon. Not only would I love to see this one get published, I believe we would be enriched by it. So, let your fingers (and mice) do the walking and go vote now.

I’ve been waiting for my blog to pop up on BlogMaps, a new way to find blogs through Blogwise. I’m happy to see that it’s finally there.

I really love all the cool stuff that’s coming out through Google Map’s open API.

…but the flesh has been oh so weak. I’ve got all this really good stuff swimming around in my head, but this week has been a wild one for me. Busy, but good in all the right ways.

Look out for some blog posts exploring the nature of commitment and trust and my learnings from what is turning out to be one of the most useful books I’ve read in quite a while, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work : Seven Languages for Transformation by Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey.

And for those of you who read The Custo/Member Experience, I’m working on some ideas around change management, the slippery essence of the personal experience, and some contrarian perceptions of traditional association tactics. And for those of you who worry that it’s turning into an association-focused blog (okay, I’m getting worried about that), don’t fret. I’m in the process of developing some concepts that can easily be applied across for profit and non profit businesses.

Have patience with me. I promise that it will be worth the wait.

I’ve written before about my dear friend Rosa Say and her book Managing With Aloha. While it is largely intended for organizational managers who want to create vibrant values-based relationships with their staff, I’m beginning to re-read it again from a slightly different perspective.

As an association executive, one of the more challenging relationships we have can be with our volunteer leaders. For instance, there is a different type of connection between executive-volunteer than there is between executive-employee. With the latter, there’s a kind of institutional setup that facilitates an adherence to policies and agreement to action (in other words, you know who to report to and how to get stuff done). On the other hand, in associations the executive understands that the organization “belongs” to the volunteer. That doesn’t mean that the association staff are unimportant and that volunteers make all the decisions. As any association professional will confess, it’s way more complex than that.

Yet, the ability to effectively manage a diverse group of volunteers and member leaders is an essential skill. Enter Rosa’s book and the brief, related Manifesto at ChangeThis. It’s a powerful guide to using some of the best of Hawaii’s values to help recreate the executive-volunteer relationship. There will definitely be more to come.

If you’ll peek over to the right column, you’ll notice a spiffy new blog listed. Today, I’m launching Like Bears To Honey The Custo/Member Experience, a blog focused on helping both for-profit companies and non-profit associations connect with their customers and members in more imaginative and meaningful ways. If you are a professional whose role is in marketing, customer service, membership development, or any other position where you need to build lasting relationships, I think you’ll find it to be a compelling blog destination.

UPDATE (7/10/05): After letting the title run around a little in my head, I decided that I didn’t really care for the whole bears and honey thing. So, I’ve changed the title (and the URL) to what the blog is really focused on: how associations and businesses can create better passion-provoking experiences for their members and customers. Enjoy!

I feel that I have been less than genuine with myself and you, my reader, lately. Occasionally, I’ve written posts that were very prescriptive with ideas and things you can do to pursue your soulful work. The tone of the posts would suggest that I’ve successfully put these actions to work for myself. Sometimes I have and other times I have just regurgitated something I’ve read or thought. Not that the untested idea or action probably wasn’t useful, but I’m the kind of guy who believes that if I’m going to suggest something to a person, I really ought to have at least tried it myself. I’ve been told by more than one person to read some of my own previous writings in response to problems I face. And they’re right…I know some possible solutions, but haven’t bothered to put them into action. There’s a distinct difference between knowing and doing. It’s time to focus myself and this space on the latter.

I also notice that I’ve been less than genuine in how I’ve presented some of my ideas and suggestions. As I already admitted, I’ve been prescriptive to the point of being didactic. I don’t like being fed a load of crap and being preached to so why should I do these things with my blog. I admire those individuals who can help others learn through storytelling. What they are able to do is share an experience or a story and let their audience come to their own learning. That is where the power is.

If anything, it just goes to show how difficult it can be to put knowledge and ideas to practice. It also demonstrates the depth of thinking required to construct a meaningful story. But you know what’s really neat and what separates blogs from almost any other communications medium? We both get to grow together. Thanks for coming along.