As a strategic planning facilitator, whenever someone asks me if it’s possible, useful, or necessary to develop a strategic plan during times of volatility and uncertainty, I always say some variation of “yes.”
Except…
There are three scenarios where a new strategy may actually be unhelpful — or at least not your best investment of time. Maybe one of these applies to you right now?
Continue reading “When not to plan”When she was in kindergarten, one of our daughters brought a Styrofoam cup full of dirt home from school. She was growing a bean plant. The next morning when I came downstairs for breakfast, the seed that had been planted in the cup the day before was sitting bare on the kitchen counter, and my daughter was a puddle of tears. “It’s not working!”
Continue reading “The Fine Line between Dead and Dormant”One theme that has stayed with me from Minal Bopaiah’s book Equity is the pervasive, unhelpful and fundamentally untrue narrative of rugged individualism that implies that people who succeed did so courtesy of their own hard work and resourcefulness. It’s where the expression “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” comes from, and it denies the powerful role of systems, privilege, interpersonal relationships (and even luck) in how our lives unfold.
Continue reading “Group Bootstrapping”I admit to being that student who would quietly approach the teacher after class to double check a mark if I thought I’d been short changed. It drove me crazy when their answer went something like, “Well you already scored well above the class average of 72, so I am not sure why it matters.”
Continue reading “Striving for World Class”“People need spaciousness the way a plant needs water. When you give it to them, they come back to life.”
This observation by a colleague during my time in Fiji last week has me thinking, yet again, about my big word for 2023 which is “spaciousness.” It’s a word that makes me exhale and drop my shoulders — and it’s everywhere.
Continue reading “Well-Watered Plants”