Misfit
Are you a misfit?
Maybe you don’t fit the status quo?
Are you sometimes “non-compliant” compared to those around you?
Do you see truth outside the system?
When you bear witness to truth outside the system, do you face resistance or get thrown out?
Have you experienced a system having an autoimmune response to your voicing an alternate truth?
You likely have something to say.
It my be unknown if any others need to hear it.
It is probably unclear if it has value to others.
Yet, your bones vibrate as if voice is required.
You don’t struggle with the choice to speak it… anymore.
You search to the find the fewest words.
You find truth can speak volumes
in service of healing and advocacy.
Yes, you are a misfit.
Celebrate!
Secret Mental Health Spot
I was in a conversation with a coach recently and I was briefly describing my favorite spot to grab a healthy salad. It turns out that, if I time it right, in the early afternoon most weekdays, things really slow down.
This allows me to hang out for a couple hours to work on my side projects, draft out some ideas I’ve been thinking through or just catch up on some reading and connect to the local community.
It’s a fantastic restorative space with a great atmosphere. Something about the space fosters the relaxation of life demands and tension. It’s my version of an afternoon at a spa but without the cucumber juice in my eyes.
It occurred to me that it’s become my own secret mental health spot and we all need one. Yes, you too!
Find a place to be still, shed the noise of the previous few days and let what matters most rise to the top.
A good mental health spot will lighten your load, help with clarity, and help you feel human in good ways. We all need a secret mental health spot to help us get there and maintain ourselves today so we can keep going and growing tomorrow.
“Oh behave!”
The bottom line: Leadership begins with your behavior.
A leader who who tells you the right thing to do is not exercising the same strength of the leader who who shows others how to live and work by example. The leader who shows instead of tells are is exponentially more powerful and impactful.
It turns out that people gravitate toward the standard a leader sets, not the standard a leader requests.
If your organization, leaders, managers, teams, and individuals are not effecting the change, growth, or forward movement you hope for, there is bad news and good news.
The bad news is that you likely play a significant factor in that unwanted equation.
The good news is that changing the directional current of your organizations effectiveness starts with your own behaviors. You do have choice and influence so show the away!
Space Architecture
Physical space has impact. This is a core tenant of traditional architecture. Research indicates that the spaces we occupy account for 30% of our overall human experience regardless of the type of space, such as an office, home, or commercial space.
How a space is specifically shaped, organized, or utilized, will communicate a set of values.
A given space can generate an opportunity or it can fail to create one.
An intentionally defined space becomes a container, holding and delivering an intended experience and function.
Spaces are capable of resonating with people in both positive and negative ways.
A space can engender comfort, order, clarity, and simplicity but it is also capable of hosting a chaotic experience of eclectic complexity like Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, whatever the architect of the space is looking to create.
Intention and care should be applied to space and the structures you put into it as they determines flow, interactions, and experiences, both internal and external to that space.
Keep in mind that space is more than the sole dimension of the physical world. Space impacts all five senses and those senses are primary influencers shaping the social, emotional, and psychological experience.
Architecting spaces where there is human interaction and experience involves a recognition that it’s an entire ecosystem that needs to be designed with these things in mind.
Points Theatre
Employees in many organizations experience organizational systems that are fundamentally designed to “get more points” for creating what you could call “productivity artifacts”.
We are all familiar with them. Artifacts such as emails, meeting with their agendas and action items, and PowerPoint slides typically full of way too many words and overstuffed data charts instead of effective visuals.
There can be an institutional addiction to collecting the most “points” for starting initiatives but not really ever finishing them.
To be fair, this is how we often incentivize our people, painting a certain picture of what achievement should look like. A key challenge comes in the way this fosters a form of productivity theatre. It may hold some value but is often not the greater, as in better, value.
Designing, creating and curating healthy performant environments need to turn this points game towards thinking deeply, questioning the status quo (not status quo building) and adaptive behaviors needed for creating change.
Moving payload, A.K.A. the work, is most often a productivity and efficiency game of volume. More is better. Bigger is better. You know the mantras.
I’d suggest that designing the system around people, mission, and organizational purpose is another issue, entirely. It requires an alternative people architecture that, among many things, will increase the clarity about what an organization is trying actually accomplish and how to do it with increased speed, quality, and value.
Leading Success
Success as a leader is not…
A thing you do
Something you find
An outcome from an equation or recipe
Success is the space where you arrive in concert with others.
Success is an orchestration.
Don’t mistake being “first chair” with being the entire orchestra.
Being first chair is simply holding the flag for others to follow, learn, grow and become greater.
In this way, leading is the act of facilitating community.
Curiosity
Curiosity is like a summer experience of your youth. Growing up experiencing summer is often infused with the freedom of riding a bike and a breeze in your face, or stopping in at the corner store and browsing a choice selection of candy to spend a kid’s summer budget on.
Summertime is also notable as a time of transition for pushing boundaries, experimenting, and developing skills and strength through challenges, some won and some lost. Newfound personal agency, exploration, and curiosity serve as a flywheel that fuels the summer season.
Then we grow up, falling into our “adult” patterns that focus us on following a fixed script. Our responsibilities increase and our ability to be curious tends to be pushed down below the surface.
Remembering that being curious offers many benefits, it is possible to reach down and pull it back up into play. Personal and professional growth, as well as meaningful connection to others, can ignite curiosity. Be intentional about exercising curiosity as an adult and it will generate the same opportunity and energy. Where do you once again need to become curious?
Half Baked
Typically, when someone refers to someone or something as “half baked”, it’s not a particularly positive comment. It usually implies something essential is incomplete or missing. In contrast, Seth Godin posted a contrary suggestion on his blog advocating for the idea that the value of creating the conditions for doing great work involves considering just that.
When you leverage the creative tension inherent in putting work out there while it’s still in process, you just might create something spectacular or genius.
Whatever you may be engaged in creating, consider this concept. Exercise both your courage and your freedom. It will be fine! Put down those censoring constraints that have nothing to offer you tomorrow as they are only invested in protecting yesterday.
“Half-baked work, shared in a trusting environment, is the fuel for the system that created the works of genius.” - Seth Godin