Have you ever been good at something, but struggled to perform it under pressure?
I took piano lessons growing up, and can play decently, but found recitals excruciating because my hands shake when I’m nervous. I can speak or sing under those circumstances, but playing the piano is rough. If someone judged my piano-playing ability only on recital day, they’d definitely slot me as a beginner.
Continue reading “Piano Recitals”During COVID, I remember coaching leaders not to open a meeting with some variation of “I know we’d rather be meeting in person, but here we are…” (or any sentence containing the word “pivot”). It immediately sucked out of the room whatever little energy was left. The tone of scarcity was set.
Continue reading “An Uncomfortable Both/And”If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I’m highly in favour of people learning to be more adaptable. Adaptability a skillset that prepares us for whatever the future requires.
I’m a fan.
Except when adaptability is used as an excuse for poor communication or follow through.
Continue reading “Adaptability’s Dark Side”I’ve been thinking about real-life use cases for adaptability.
One is knowing when and how much to “adjust the dial” when something you’ve been doing needs to change.
A friend of mine recently had her first baby, and this weekend we talked about the seismic adjustment of being fully responsible for another human being. I commented that you need to learn constant vigilance when the baby is born, and you need to unlearn it during the emptying nest phase. Dial up, dial down. Both require adaptability.
Continue reading “Adjust the Dial”My strategy clients are often concerned that to be a strong strategist they need to be good at accurate prediction. Let me reassure you that strategic behaviour does not require you to be clairvoyant!
It does help if you can discern signals.
Even better if you can differentiate them from lagging indicators and old news.
Continue reading “Animal Tracks”