forward work

work
 
We are in a period of redefining “work” as technology continues to drive change… The societal changes we are currently experiencing are in my mind the largest in recorded history. Mobile phones have brought us continual social connection untethered from location. The Internet has seemingly boundless real-time information. Combining their technologies amplifies their effect. The result has been global and it’s not over. The breadth of change connects to all facets of our lives making it difficult to predict a final result.

Technology is no longer a means to an end; it is an integral partnership.  A proactive alliance will empower us (not enslave us) as we develop solutions together that drive change. We are like kids with shiny new bikes; proud of our good fortune and a little reckless with its use. We have yet to find good balance.

Our new age has also brought a focus to design and user experience; as products use this for market gain. This complex period of time has us evaluating what matters and redefining our needs in our new context.  The LinkedIn article “The Future of Work” discusses 3 changes that are reshaping work, and how companies should respond and evolve through cultural change and reinventing management due to a mobile workforce. Indeed the world of work has seen massive disruption in the last decade. The mobile workforce they describe could be an initial reaction to all the changes. And it’s possible that if an organizations location provided the right cultural support and better user/worker experience we’d see less of a mobile trend.

Humans are social before they are workers. The ability to have connection to our social networks wherever we are has changed our expectation of place. Many of us workers/people feel the need to align with others of like mind, as work is no longer just work; it’s our culture.

An article by Arianna Huffington “Burnout: The Disease of Our Civilization” digs into the issues of today offering a holistic approach she calls the “Third Metric campaign — to redefine success beyond the first two metrics of money and power to include well-being, wisdom, and our ability to wonder and to give” This Third Metric addresses balance.

Moving forward…

The future has always stretched us in ways that are often uncomfortable. Whether it’s a new idea or technology threatening the security of what we know. Some of us hold on to what we know, others expand into the newness.

Living successfully in the information age from my purview requires active foresight, steadfast purpose, and balanced agility.

Steadfast purpose comes from defining and aligning with a vision, mission, and goals in service to what is valued. By placing our purpose at the center of every choice, we have 360 degrees from which to engage the world meaningfully. From here we can respond maturely. Asking “what’s changed?” with every problem, approach, or potential solution offered. This lens will help keep us agile in our continually changing world, and bring clarity to what is a trend, what is noise, and what deserves attention and response.

Of course this is just one way to view the changes we face. And one lens isn’t enough for moving forward, we must to consider other perspectives.

It’s not business as usual in the future; we get to create it. Let’s make choices that will benefit us all and tell a beautiful story of how it will be.

Addendum 9/5/13

Steven Sinofsky posted “‘Continuous Productivity’ and the Next Generation of Work and Tools For Work” this has good info and is a nice compliment to the thoughts posted above. Of course I connected with this statement “Business communication becomes indistinguishable from social.” yet would have liked to have seen more emphasis on social and UX roles in business.

The article  is much longer than it needs to be. He belabors the past and present rather than stating everything we know about business and navigating life is up for review.  No doubt today is complex, but his long winded approach dilutes his message of flattening hierarchies, low barriers of entry, mobility, staying aware, and the need for an agile execution focused unstructured strategy that uses the world as a resource. AKA- Be smart about the data you have…which is pretty much everything, in real-time. If you have a clear vision and goals, don’t wait for the committee, just do it.

One way to be execution focused is to take advantage of this disruptive time and get good at perpetual triage in order to stay relevant. Again with continually asking- what’s changed?

Work is love made visible– Kahlil Gibran

forward work

trust

 
I am fascinated with our relationship to structures from physical buildings to mental constructs and how they inform our trust (and identity). I’m pulling together personal stories that touch on the topic and was thinking about the trust between parents and children.

When our kids were little we often gave experiences as gifts for birthdays. A trip to the movies, a special overnight, roller skating…

An experience we gave to our good friend Rowan for his 8th birthday could have burned our relationship had he been not so well behaved.

We invited Rowan to our house to bake whatever he wanted. He chose to bake a cake. Cake baking is a fairly easy yet structured process, and it’s clear where the kids need adult help and supervision, and where they can be trusted to be on their own.

Sometimes trust and assumptions overlap.  I assumed the decorations placed by me in front of the children were appropriate consumables. We had an extensive variety of sprinkles and other decorations, at least 20 in our set.

Being a busy working mother I was adept at multi-tasking. I went to do laundry after I “set them up”.

Imagine my surprise when I came up from the basement to check on their progress and found Rowan had decorated the entire top of the cake with cayenne pepper. Somehow the pepper had gotten mixed in with the sprinkle bottles. Rowan being um, abnormal in his consumption of sweets hadn’t tasted any of the bounty sitting in front of him; even though his fingers were covered in frosting. Had he placed his fingers into his mouth or rubbed his eyes, not only would I have lost his trust forever; he probably would never been allowed over again either.

—

Another Rowan story- His mother, Leska, and I were waiting for our children to come out of their classrooms at the end of the day. This was a treat for me because I was usually working. Anyway, as the children were departing each was bringing out small sculptures they had made in art. Leska trusting her children’s good sense about clutter turned to me and said “Thankfully my kids never bring home stuff like this”. A half second later Rowan appears with a monolith cityscape twice his size. Tee hee.

 

trust

attributes


yes the image is meant to be ironic

Vision; taking advantage of emerging opportunities; creating demand where none existed;  making tough decisions; mobilizing forces;  executing strategies… these are actionable qualities attributed to leadership.  Equally important are attributes associated with emotional intelligence and empathy, the *EQ of leadership.

Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance an article written for the Harvard Business Review describes how good leaders are emotionally intelligent and persist in self-awareness including understanding the impact they have on others.

They describe how moods are infectious, and leaders with a positive outlook coupled with actions in alignment with their organization get the best results. Individuals can gain emotional intelligence through changing habits that in turn changes their brain.

They wrap up the article stating

“…the message sent by neurological, psychological, and organizational research is startling in its clarity. Emotional leadership is the spark that ignites a company’s performance, creating a bonfire of success or a landscape of ashes. Moods matter that much.”

Moving forward…

For all of us living in a global society, our leadership needs today are different than in the past.  We currently have more to wrangle as we cast our nets are across more geographies and demographics.  Successful interaction requires us to cultivate individual leadership as we navigate. More on that later.

…

* Note- There is no correlation between IQ and EQ; they are controlled by different parts of the brain.

attributes

ugh

Informative and unfortunate… around U.S. banking regulation and accreditation with comparisons between the U.S. and Canada.

ugh

reality?

Forbes article Multiple Creativity Studies Suggest: Creating Our Reality Requires Detaching From It  by Will Burns, focuses on creativity’s relationship to reality and logic.

Burns states “Theory: In order to improve our reality through creativity, we must first detach from that same reality.” Then goes on to say “The studies on creativity suggest to me that there are two forces in our brains that are in a constant battle: logic and creativity.”

While I agree with his discussion of logic, I don’t equate reality as logic. That feels like comparing apples to oranges.

Perhaps creativity has to do with how we manage our relationship to the here and now, and the conscious and unconscious filtering or command of our internal and external experience. (This may or may not include logic.)

Of course reality is relative to one’s experience and what they choose to believe.

reality?

july

Below are interesting trends discussed in July.

The 3 Most Exciting Words in Science Right Now: ‘The Pitch Dropped’
In 1944, a colleague of Ernest Walton, the first person in history to successfully smash an atom, began an experiment of a decidedly larger and lengthier variety. In a physics lab at Trinity College, Dublin, the experimenter took several lumps of tar pitch — a hard, carbonic material thought to become viscous under certain conditions — heated them, and placed them in a funnel. And then placed that funnel into a jar. And then placed that jar into a cupboard. And then — after another move of the jar, to a campus lecture hall — left the thing alone. Not for minutes or days, but for years. And then decades.

How and Why to Be a Leader (Not a Wannabe)
We need a new generation of leaders. And we need it now.
We’re in the midst of a Great Dereliction — a historic failure of leadership, precisely when we need it most. Hence it’s difficult, looking around, to even remember what leadership is. We’re surrounded by people who are expert at winning — elections, deals, titles, bonuses, bailouts, profit. And often, we’re told: they’re the ones we should look up to — because it’s the spoils and loot that really matter.

Multiple Creativity Studies Suggest: Creating Our Reality Requires Detaching From It
I pore over studies on creativity, and recently I noticed a consistency across these many creativity studies that took me years to notice, let alone articulate. A consistency that most authors of these studies allude to in some way, and in different ways. I’d like to share a unified way of thinking about creativity, supported directly by these many studies, that helped me to better understand this important skill, but, more importantly, could help us all be more creative in business, marketing, and in life.

Great Leaders Don’t Predict the Future – They Invent It
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”-  Alan Kay, 1971

I spent the day yesterday with one of my favorite client groups.  They’re the senior team of part of a major media company, and they are smart, funny, curious, talented and kind people. The quote above was on the introductory page of a deck they had put together outlining their vision of change for the coming year. In addition to the fact that they’re such delightful human beings, I love working with this group because they’re actually operating according to this quote.

Printable ‘bionic’ ear melds electronics and biology
Using 3-D printing tools, scientists at Princeton University have created a functional ear that can “hear” radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability. The researchers’ primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile method of merging electronics with tissue. The scientists used 3-D printing of cells and nanoparticles — with an off-the-shelf printer purchased off the Internet — followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear.

HEAVEN: The head anastomosis venture Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage (GEMINI)
In 1970, the first cephalosomatic linkage was achieved in the monkey. However, the technology did not exist for reconnecting the spinal cord, and this line of research was no longer pursued. In this paper, an outline for the first total cephalic exchange in man is provided and spinal reconnection is described. The use of fusogens, special membrane-fusion substances, is discussed in view of the first human cord linkage. Several human diseases without cure might benefit from the procedure.

july

clueless

At 22 I visited Vancouver BC and was staying in a hotel downtown.  I awoke one sunny morning and opened the curtains to look out upon the city. I stood at the window and admired the view. The sun shone in on me as I sat back on the bed gazing out the window.

Across the street there was a multi-story office building. I noticed there was a lot of commotion at the windows, mostly business men looking at the building I was in. I thought whatever they’re looking at must be unusual; maybe there was a fire?… I got up to look outside but my perspective was limited.

I sat back on the bed enjoying the sun. I looked back at the business men, by now there was quite a group gathered. As I was rising up again to take a closer look, it dawned on me they were looking at my floor. No wait, they were looking at me.

In the nanosecond it took to get a clue, my primal instincts had kicked in and I was now flat on the floor. Yes, I was naked.

I crawled on my belly to the bathroom, threw on a robe then closed the blinds.

clueless

book motivation

My vision is a joyous and compassionate world.

Before I leave this earth I want to make a positive impact on the future. Because of the complexities of today, the best way I can think of to help us prepare for the future is to encourage connection with our moral centers.  I love storytelling and making connections and want to inspire through sharing my experiences, observations, what I think about, struggle with and aspire to.

 

book motivation

june

Selected trends discussed in June 2013.

DOMA Ruled Unconstitutional By Federal Appeals Court
A battle over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman appears headed for the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruled Thursday that denying benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional.

What Does Human Brain Mapping Actually Tell Us?
Google “brain” right now and you’ll find a mountain of news stories on a development known as the BigBrain project, which came out just yesterday: Researchers in Europe and Canada have just mapped the human brain with a precision that’s so strikingly detailed, that it’s unprecedented in humans – and it’s in 3D.

‘Standing man’ inspires silent demonstration in Turkey
Istanbul (CNN) — A single man stood silently in Istanbul’s Taksim Square for hours Monday night, defying police who broke up weekend anti-government protests with tear gas and water cannon and drawing hundreds of others to his vigil.
For more than five hours, he appeared to stare at a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state. Police eventually moved in to arrest many of those who joined him, but whether Erdem Gunduz — a performance artist quickly dubbed the “standing man” — was in custody was unclear early Tuesday.

Losing my religion for equality (from 2009, but still poignant)
Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God. I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Wireless bio-absorbable circuits could kill bacteria
Remote-controlled, dissolvable electronic implants have been created that could help attack microbes, provide pain relief and stimulate bone growth.
The spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics – popularly called superbugs – is threatening to put the clock back 100 years to the time when routine, minor surgery was life-threatening. Some medical experts are warning that otherwise straightforward operations could soon become deadly unless new ways to fend off these infections are found.

june