Thoughts – Page 57 – Reimagine. Strategy.

September 23, 2019May 3, 2022

Brave Benchmarks

You know how it is when you are looking to buy a car, and you find yourself noticing that same model of vehicle on the road everywhere you look?

That’s what’s happening for me on the theme of courageous leadership. We discussed it at Wiser by Choice, and the topics of risk and bravery have emerged in virtually every session I’ve facilitated since, across a wide range of organizations and settings.

Bravery is a relative term. What is considered “courageous” depends heavily on the person and the context. But it also depends on the benchmark. That is, what is your starting point for measuring courage, and how gutsy is your goal from there? Continue reading “Brave Benchmarks”

September 9, 2019May 3, 2022

Safer Decisions Slower

I am a fan of collaboration. I am confident that participatory planning can reduce blind spots and build buy-in.

But I’ve had a couple of recent experiences in my practice that have left me wondering if that insight and engagement have come at the expense of courage and efficiency. Continue reading “Safer Decisions Slower”

August 26, 2019May 3, 2022

Zoom farther out

The facilitation activity I use most often is a spectrum exercise. I draw a horizontal line and label each end, either with opposite words (e.g. proactive/reactive) or happy/sad faces or yes/no. Then I invite participants to mark an X where they sit on that continuum on whatever issue we’re talking about. It makes visible two different things: does the group tilt toward one pole or the other (i.e. “If this line were a teeter totter, would it tilt to the right or left?”), and how consistent are participants in their views (i.e. how spread out or clustered are their Xs)? It takes three minutes and makes lots of good information visible. I love high leverage tools.

Continue reading “Zoom farther out”

August 12, 2019May 3, 2022

There are sharks

We took this picture last week in Cape Cod.

It’s a powerful oxymoron, don’t you think?

Green flag means, “Go ahead and swim.”
Shark flag means…well, you know what that means.

There had been two shark sightings within the previous 48 hours.

There are sharks. Go ahead and swim. Continue reading “There are sharks”

July 29, 2019May 3, 2022

Temporarily Invisible Results

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

~Will Durant (paraphrasing Aristotle)

My husband and son are building a pizza oven in our backyard. It will take them all summer, but I’m told that soon we’ll be producing deliciousness in three-minute increments for our friends and neighbours. One step in the construction recently involved a lesson in precision rock splitting from a friend who’s a stone mason. Tap, tap, tap. Nothing. Tap, tap, tap. Nothing. Eventually…tap, tap…and the rock split right down the line he’d carefully marked.