Your Custom Text Here
Founded in 2002, the blog here continues to be a space of daily conversation about the science of mind and its implications and applications
It's a healthy practice of mindfulness to expect that people can and will shift in their thinking. It is far more useful than the self-limiting assumption that they cannot and will not. It is being curious if and how people's thinking and curiosity may be shifting and changing. Actively inquiring opens possibilitt space in which everyone benefits.
We can cultivate this practice by first noticing what about our thinking do we think is open to shifting, evolving and changing.
Leaders who support other leaders in an organization have a unique opportunity to help those leaders become as empowering and engaging as possible. This is the work of permissions, reminders, coaching and storytelling. Without these supports, leaders could feel otherwise obligated to practice leadership as controlling and non-engaging.
Imagine workplaces featuring spaces for gardening, cooking, brewing, music and arts and naps. Imagine how people would return to work after short breaks in these spaces.
Onboarding works best when it begins with the new team member and volunteer team members sharing and working from their questions about each other, the work and everyone's learning questions.
How much should we worry about how seamlessly integrated phones are into the lives of digital natives? Can they be mindful even with technology so embeddd in their lives and relationships?
Why not? Just because previous generations lived free of these technologies doesn't mean they will inevitably disrupt quality of life, meaning and wellbeing. There is no evidence that living and work with meaning is somehow negatively impacted by tech. It could just as easily be that technology can add another useful dimension, especially socially.
At some point in an ideation process, every group runs dry on ideas. They hit a wall where new and more ideas seem unlikely, at least in the short term.
One of the best ways to get past this wall is to switch gears into question generation. The group identifies and crafts any questions they can think of relative to the focus. The evolution of questions becomes a lens revealing new idea possibilities. It's that simple and powerful.
Trello is one of our favorite organization tools. It is one of the better UI kanban boards that features instantly creatable, adaptive, movable lists and cards.
It is also an ideal collaborative whiteboard space, far more useful than an actual whiteboard. On a Trello Board, we can keep reorganizing lists and cards as our divergent and convergence thinking and learning evolves. We can post images and documents to any cards for further elaborations and iterations of specific ideas. We can have endless conversations abiut ideas on the backs of cards. None of this is possible on a static whiteboard or document.
We use Trello to cultivate and curate new ideas in projects. We use it to construct new proposals and reports. It acts as an optimal space for accelerating creativity and scaling engagement.
As much as higher ed institutions would balk in defense of their own legacies, we should have more conversations about whether students should have at least as many options for work specific training than degrees. We would more rigorously research the short and long term differences in how people work, live and develop.
We're starting to see talk about taxing robots, which would raise funding to support people displaced by them in the forms of basic incomes and retraining. It's not out of the realm of possibilities, and places automating companies in greater proximity to social responsibility,
Who should participate in civic planning? It has long been the purview of public officials and leaders. That was before we had the technology sociology that enables broad community engagement. We now have the tools to engage anyone in the community in any kind of planning, creativity and engagement in projects. This allows the community to own rather than outsource its future.
Should teams choose their own leaders? It's an interesting diversion from the conventional parent-child model where leaders are appointed by more senior leaders. It would require that teams learn what good leadership is, which will make them far more capable of having realistic expectations and meaningful support for their leaders. It would also develop more leadership capacity on the team.
It's time to think about how career preparation in many fields could involve new forms of apprenticeship. This becomes especially more viable when as never before mentors and learners have technologies that make recording, archiving, accessing and sharing of any learning more possible.
A group of Dutch and Italian architects are designing a pre-school that is urban farming centric. The reasons and benefits are many. It is an ideal context for question based learning, teaching social and environmental responsibility.
Why would it continue to make sense for students to do most if any learning in traditional classrooms rather than in the community? Why couldn't community-based and question-organized learning become the new standard?
In the age of Amazons addicted to shutting down as many smaller business as possible, it is less often we hear stories of socially responsible companies helping people grow their entrepreneurial passions and strengths so they can spin off and start new businesses. It is equally rare to hear about colleges and universities more dedicated to graduating new employers than new employees.
Profit and social responsibility can be both-and, to a point. The polarity breaks down into either-or when profit motives become the exclusive intention.
In a workshop yesterday, people remarked how remarkable it was to listen to another's personal success story for their strenths. Usually, we listen for cues to what we're going to talk about next. It's a much more connecting experience for everyone.
Because we put a ton of honest effort into shaping our customers' experience doesn't guarantee the experience will be the quality we want to create. We have to assess their experience at all points of contact. The gold is in mining the unspoken perceptions that influence the customer narrative and levels of loyalty and story sharing in their adoption networks.
An open minded leader welcomes questions, even questioning what appears to be dogmatic truths and imperatives in organizations. People feel comfortable raising any and all questions. These leaders consider learning capacity is the most important and strategic asset in the organization. Only when that wanes, does the organization become at risk.
There are organizations and teams that take the long view. They dream and learn and grow their way into the future using a long view lens. The Agile Canvas supports this by starting off with dreaming out 20 years. This creates a uniquely powerful sense of inspiration and passion that reveals opportunities and engages strenths in ways the short view cannot.
Long view organizations and teams sustain a commitment to the wellbeing of people and planet. The perspective makes this kind of caring possible while doing good business well. It's a both-and approach to the polarities.
IDEO recently reviewed their data on company innovations and realized six variables that played out in the best practices. Any team dedicated to innovation is wise to continuously assess and improve itself in these domains.
Living organisms function, respond to change and grow through the metabolic process of transforming nutrients into energy. Team metabolism is the transformation of useful feedback into energy. Thriving teams have better metabolisms than struggling teams. It is the metabolic wellbeing of a living organism that supports the thrivancy of teams.
Metabolism is catalyzed by enzymes. In the life of teams, good questions are the enzymes that catalyze the transformation of feedback into energy.
These questions come in a variety of forms:
Struggling teams believe the sum of their individual efforts determines how well they function, respond and grow. Thriving teams know it's their team metabolism that makes the difference. They dedicate time daily, every two weeks and quarters transforming useful feedback into the energy that inspires and shapes their progress.
