Blazing a Trail in Leadership and Life

Posted on September 24, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Linda Cureton, (her blog is here) CIO for NASA, was one of the wonderful speakers at Womensphere. Her subject was change and, being a self-described info-geek, she went to Wikihow to find out how to blaze a trail. Her comments were based on the following WikiHow article:

1. Assess the density and type of foliage the area has growing and equip yourself with the stuff from the “Things You’ll Need” accordingly.
2. Plan the width of the trail.
If it’s a private trail, it only has to be about a foot (30 cm) to a foot and a half (46 cm) wide, just enough for a single file line of people to go through.
If It’s going to be a public trail, make it wide enough for four hikers abreast.
3. Plan the direction of the trail. Check to see if any unmovable obstacles, such as fences, boulders, large trees, or streams will disrupt things.
4. Cut down or flatten all trees and bushes to make the path. Leave some plants growing at the entrances if you want to make it a hidden trail.
5. Clean up the dead bushes. Remove and rocks that could trip people.

Warnings

Watch out for poisonous plants and animals and thorny bushes.
Trails disrupt nature.
Nature preserves are government property.

Things You’ll Need

Hedge Clippers (for smaller bush)
Ax or Saw (for trees)
Shovel (to remove medium sized rocks and roots)

It was a wonderful presentation. Anyone who leads in an organization or carries out a change in their own life can succeed by following these simple steps. How? Stay tuned for my take on this over the next few posts here and on Expanding Your Comfort Zone.

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Random Blogs to Check Out

Posted on September 19, 2011 by | Leave a comment

OK. It wasn’t my intention to read blogs this morning, but while looking for an event to tell you about – and finding out it doesn’t actually happen until March – I got caught up in my own bookmarks and rediscovered The Lazy Way to Success. It’s a quirky take on accomplishing more by doing less.

This led me to check out Orange Herbert, who is featured on the sidebar and from there the homepage of the Offenburger‘s mixed bag of opinions, slide shows, guest posts, and their own journey through cancer. Worth a stop.

I then meandered over to see what Nancy Colasurdo was up to an found that she had posted an interesting quote:

The person who never makes a mistake and always manages to obey the rules is often a compassionless person, because he sees people for whom the wheels have fallen off and he wonders what’s wrong with them. But the person who feels that he has ruined his life often has more capacity for humility and compassion.

What are you reading?

 

 

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Posted in World View

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Maximize … Don’t Compromise

Posted on September 16, 2011 by | Leave a comment

A card from the business game Gold of the Desert Kings reads,

Maximize … don’t compromise. There’s a big difference between playing to win and playing not to lose!

I think about risk often. And I think about ambition and winning and losing. Is there nothing in between those extremes? It sounds like that middle ground is compromise and that compromise is never a good thing.

Then I reread the card and realize this is a comment about attitude. Compromise is not the middle ground. Mutually beneficial is.  Play big or don’t play at all. Be overly enthusiastic, overly generous, overly helpful, overly productive and enjoy every minute of it.

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Posted in Reframing

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The Cafe is Open – See What’s Brewing Now

Posted on September 16, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Well, it’s certainly been an interesting year. I’ve been heavily involved in executive coaching with a major New York City agency and working on Blueprints, a series of workbooks to help women plan their ideal lives and it just didn’t seem I had much else to say.

Natalie Tucker Miller and I have been posting regularly on our joint blog, Expanding Your Comfort Zone, where we focus on stretching yourself without fear as the way to change. Still, there’s this whole area of life and work that doesn’t always fit into the growth and change framework – so the Cafe is back.

You can expect to find an eclectic assortment of tidbits here – random thoughts, the occasional book review, recommended events, places to visit, conferences and events.

Pull up a chair relax, and feel free to speak up!

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FarmVille Frenzy – Life Lessons?

Posted on April 18, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Thousands of intelligent men and women – most of whom have real lives and careers – are spending hours rescuing lost calfs or planting tomatoes on fantasy farms on Zynga’s FarmVille. Why? And why have I become one of them?

Speculation runs from evil plots (remember the Alex Baldwin commercials for Hulu.com?) through relaxation to community-building. Early on, Andy Wibbels remarked early on that he wondered what would happen if he spent as much time on his business as he did to farming. I think he got his answer, because he’s left the farm and his business ventures are thriving.

Most of us were lured in by a friend. Mine was someone who missed her farmland origins. I tried farming, and I was hooked. As an urban dweller, the closest I come to a farm or a farmer on a regular basis is the Union Square Greenmarket. It was peaceful to plant and harvest virtual produce. It didn’t take a lot of time, though, to get caught up in “the sparklies” – all the little extra doo-dads for the farm.

Communities began to grow as farmers acquired neighbors and earned points for performing various chores on each other’s farms. Now, FarmVille has introduced Co-ops. Teams work together to bring in a large harvest. Here’s where teamwork and cooperation really begin to peak. A band of farmers figures out how to work together to plant exactly the right number of items to meet their collective goal.

Insanity? Maybe. But there are life lessons here. As other writers have pointed out, this does build community. If I could cooperate with my real neighbors the same way I do with my virtual ones, we could do wonderful things to improve our community.

If I could build a business team half as efficient as my FarmVille co-op, I would be doing very, very well. And if I were to be half as persistent with working on my blog or my book or workshops as I am with feeding my virtual puppy, I’d be realizing more real dreams than virtual ones.

Will that happen? Well, this post is a start!

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Out of the Shadows

Posted on January 10, 2010 by | Leave a comment

In the shadows has been a safe place to be for a long, long time. I was in second grade. My reading group, the Cardinals (best group), stood up to read. I was immersed in the story and by now was several pages ahead of the group, so, of course, I was not on the right page. For this transgression of being a good reader and going too fast, I was banished to the Starlings (slowest group).

Lesson: it’s not good to be too smart or too fast or too different. It’s safer in the shadows where no one notices you. You won’t get punished there.

But living in the shadows has it’s price. There are secrets in the shadows, and a single ray of sunlight can expose them. You can spend your whole life covering things over and pushing things back and hoping that no one will discover who you really are. Because that would be scary. And nasty. And no one would love you any more. So you stretch your neck out every so often, and then pull it back quickly. You create opportunities and sabotage them. You don’t believe the good things people tell you because, after all, they don’t really know you. What if they knew? So, no one else punishes you. Instead, you punish yourself.

A few moths ago, I was invited to met a friend in Bucks County, where she was visiting her brother and sister-in-law. I hadn’t seen my friend in over a year and I missed her. I love her family, and knew I’d enjoy their company. I wasn’t going to go. I was feeling like a fraud and a failure. My business was comatose. No clients. Contracts falling through right and left. I was broke. My friend’s sister-in-law got on the phone and told me to go pack and get on the train. If I could manage the fare, they’d take care of everything else. And they did. And I wasn’t allowed to feel embarrassed. And I had a wonderful time. No one cared.

Lesson: You miss a lot in the shadows. It may be safe, but you won’t get rewarded there, and you’ll miss a lot of fun!

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Posted in change, Reframing, World View

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Gossamer – Stronger Than Steel

Posted on November 8, 2009 by | Leave a comment

At the recent Womensphere event, Abha Dawesar spoke about spider silk. It is, she said, stringer than steel. Gossamer – doesn’t the name sound ephemeral? Fragile and glistening are words that come to mind. In fact, the U.S. Army is studying spider silk as a material for bulletproof vests.

Spider silk is versatile as well. There are at least five different kinds, each designed for a different purpose. Yes, the spider multitasks. She produces silk for building, silk for nurturing and silk for capturing and storing food.

So many women I know are strong and resilient. They hold many times their weight in responsibilities. They stretch themselves thinner and thinner and bounce back.

Are you made of spider silk?

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Facing Your Inner Demons

Posted on September 27, 2009 by | Leave a comment

This caught my eye this morning:
funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

How are your inner demons doing today? I’ve been busy grappling with mine over the past few months. It’s not easy, is it?

I was thinking about Rick Carson’s Taming Your Gremlin this morning and have just taken it off the shelf to re-read. The concepts are simple and clear to understand. Implementation is a lifetime process; Carson helps me understand that it can be fun. Simply Notice … Choose and Play with Options … Be in Process. Buy the book! I’m off to play with the “You Can’t Do This”  Gremlin.

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Posted in change, Reframing

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Future Search

Posted on September 14, 2009 by | Leave a comment

There are whole organizations dedicated to looking at the future. In fact, rummaging around The Futurist or Trend Hunter is a great way to get ideas and find inspiration. Why are corporations willing to invest thousands of dollars in future research? Because it’s a wonderful day to get a clear picture of how to act in the present.

What about your future? How much time have you spent researching your own life? As an old career planning book said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re liable to end up somewhere else.” If any future will do, stop reading now. If , instead, you have some ideas about your destination, take a few minutes to create three simple scenarios:

In six months, I will be:

In one year, I will be:

In five years, I will be:

How easy was that? Now you have the start of a roadmap. Look backwards from the 5-year vantage point. What does it feel like to be there? What did you have to do to get there?

Go back another step. Look at where you are a year from now. Again, generate some action steps.

Finally, look at your 6 month vision. Ask one final question:

What can I do, starting today, to get there?

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Posted in change, Workplace, World View

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Goals – Out of Fashion?

Posted on September 7, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Robert K. Cooper wrote about goals in a book called Getting Out of Your Own Way. I worked my way through this book slowly, taking time to think about the content and practice what I’d read. I’m once again thinking about goals and Cooper’s notion of Open Space Goals.

Goals can be tricky things. Some experts say that the only way to get ahead is to have specific, measurable goals. Another advocates ditching goals altogether. Yet another focuses on intentions. Cooper does a nice job of resolving this issue by setting up a continuum.

Most people don’t get very far, he says, because their goals are too narrow. He calls the first level of goals “stop goals.” You’re familiar with these — I’m going to stop spending and zero out my credit card balances; I’m going to stop eating. These are limiting because there’s no new state. Once you’ve accomplished the goal, what’s Next?

Usual goals have outcomes, but are still very limiting. If your goal is to save $1,000, what comes next? The solution? Think of some sort of stretch goals — often called Big Hairy Audacious Goals — that leaves you plenty of room to grow. Cooper contends that this is not enough either and can still be limiting. Get thin … win the marathon … become a multimillionaire …. These all sound good, don’t they? These are BHAGs that could take a lot of time and energy.

Go even further, Cooper urges. Set what he calls Open Space Goals. Open Space Goals allow room for creativity and growth in many directions. Open Space Goals allow us to create whole new ways of being. What if your goal moved from becoming a multimillionaire to financial freedom? This would mean that you wouldn’t be limited to the pursuit of money; your goal would also include lifestyle choices. You might decide that riches are less important than quality of life. Or you might want both. Helping the victims of Katrina might grow into finding ways to sustain residents in safe housing in storm-prone areas throughout the world.

Cooper’s model makes me think harder about how far I can stretch. What if we all thought and worked as if there were no limits?

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