Which path to choose?

Happy new year. This year a lot more space and time opens up for me, as I step down from my role as the director of training at the Process Work Institute. But I’m finding that the freedom of having more space and time comes with a huge challenge. Do I use this time for what’s most important?  How do I know which one, of the many paths, I should pursue? (more…)

As I wrote in one of my last posts, I’m working on my seminar, The Leadership Lab, in Australia at the end of the year. I came across this interview this morning with Sally Jenkins, award winning sports journalist and author, with  Lance Armstrong, of the best-seller, It’s Not About the Bike. She talks about performing under pressure, and  compares writing to sports. I love how she makes the link between the body and mind in the writing process. Read the full interview here.

I can’t say for sure, but I’ve either developed a competitive spirit as I have gotten older, or, I’ve just become less self-conscious about it. It’s become most evident when I cycle in large group events. While some riders have to tune out the others and focus on their own pedaling speed, I do the opposite. I quickly notice the more competitive riders and pace myself according to their speed.

In some areas, competitiveness is seen as a good thing. But where I come from – the peace and love era of the 70s, a progressive liberal college, the experiential psychotherapy culture – competition was a bit of a no-no. So noticing my burgeoning competitive spirit made me curious. What is it? What does it do for me? (more…)

I’m in Toronto this week doing a bit of training. With the Anima Leadership Institute, I’m offering a two-day training on Deep Democracy II: From Conflict and Collaboration. And on Monday, I’ll be speaking at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering’s Summer Leadership Institute on Tools and Techniques for High performance, Cross-Disciplinary Teams.

The case for collaboration doesn’t need to be made. It’s obvious that everything that needs to get done in an organization gets done through people working together. And to solve the pressing problems of today, we need cross-discipline collaboration. Complex problems stem from multiple causes, involve numerous stakeholders, and concern knowledge from across several disciplines. (more…)

I came across these two stories on the same day, and though these two women are worlds apart in who they are, and what they are about, they struck me as similar in their courage

Patti Smith belongs to my youth. Because the Night was an electrifying anthem to something I felt but couldn’t name. She was to me a punk Janis Joplin for my generation, raw and honest but unlike Joplin, showed a comfort and confidence in herself. Smith just published Just Kids about her relationship with Robert Maplethorpe, their friendship and devotion, to each other and to their art. In Maureen Dowd’s piece on it, Because The Night Belongs to Her, she quotes Smith, who wrote to Maplethorpe when he was dying of AIDS. Smith reminded him that he once said to her art “was like ‘holding hands with God.’ Urging him to grip that hand hard, she concluded: ‘Of all your work, you are still your most beautiful.’”

Flash forward a few decades. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, whose credentials include serving as Chief of Staff to then U.S. Secretary of Treasury Larry Summers in the Clinton Administration, gave this TED talk below on the disheartening statistics of women at the top. Statistics show that progress for women (and Blacks, and other minorities) is not just lagging, but in some cases, moving backwards. Something is clearly not working. I like what Sandberg says. It’s time to look at hidden factors, at things we might be missing, including ourselves. Sandberg focuses on how women think about themselves. It’s not punk rock, but it’s bold and controversial because her critics could say she’s putting the blame on women. Like Smith, this is honest and real, and shows real devotion to her ‘art.’ When things are clearly not improving, it’s not time to play it politically correct, but to leave no stone unturned in finding solutions.

I’m doing my end of year planning for 2011, and as I do every year, I struggle to carve out time for creative work, while trying to satisfy the demands of my work life. Writing, for instance, requires a lot of time for cooking and cogitating. It just can’t be done between 2 and 3 on Thursday afternoon. It needs long stretches of uninterrupted time.

There are some wonderful sites out there that offer tips on productivity, not just how to get things done, but how to carve out time for creative work, work that requires time to think, ponder, stew and meditate. The site http://the99percent.com/ is full of articles on creative productivity, or how to make creative ideas happen. Another great source of inspiration is the work of Jason Fried, co-founder of 37Signals (I’m a huge fan of their web-based applications Basecamp for project management and Backpack, their tricked-out to-do list application). Fried is also something of a social activist intent on changing the landscape of the work place, and challenging the status quo on how work gets done, and how it can be restructured to allow for more creativity and productivity. He wrote Rework, and recently gave this Ted Talk on “Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work.”

What are your secrets for being more creatively productive?

Last March I posted The Reading Roundup. I got a lot of comments and suggestions from readers, and so I’d like to make this a regular feature, perhaps once a quarter, provided I’ve actually read enough.

So, here is a list of some books I’ve enjoyed since the last Roundup, though a few which I forgot to include in the last list. As I did with the first Round Up, I’m including here where and how I came across the book. And, still, all non-fiction. Not sure what that means. Except that there’s an awful lot of good non-fiction out there. (more…)

Just when we thought we couldn’t take another heated public debate, immigration reform is up next in Congress. I can only imagine the nightmare scenarios, scare tactics, fear mongering and isolationism that’s going to be bandied about. So here’s a little something to balance the debate.

I.M. Pei, Madeline Albright, Albert Einstein, John Muir, Joseph Pulitzer, Felix Franfurter, Hakeem Olajuwon, Irving Berlin, Ang Lee, Moritz Diamond, Elizabeth Mirsky

Familiar names? All made incredible contributions to this country, and all of them were immigrants. The last two you might not recognize: my paternal great grandfather who emigrated from Kiev and my maternal great grandmother who came over from Lithuania. They’re not famous, nor are they geniuses, but they certainly changed my world.

As for thinking that immigrants take jobs away from Americans, nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s something: the immigrants that comprise 12% of our population earn a staggering 47% of the nation’s science and technology PhDs and pioneer new innovations by filing for 24% of US patents.

And Vijay Govindarajan posted this last week:

Consider that the co-founder of Google is Sergey Brin, a Russian. The co-founder of Sun Microsystems is Vinod Khosla, an Indian. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar, who is French. The co-founder of Juniper Networks is an Indian, Pradeep Sindhu. YouTube was co-founded by Steve Chen, who is Chinese. Yahoo! was co-founded by Jerry Yang, a Chinese immigrant. Andy Grove, a Hungarian, co-founded Intel. The companies these highly skilled immigrants co-founded account for many, many jobs. There are many more such Silicon Valley startups established by immigrants, from WiChorus, founded by Rehan Jalil and acquired by Tellabs, to Hotmail, founded by Sabeer Bhatia and acquired by Microsoft.

What immigrant brought you here?

There’s a problem in learning theory called transfer. How does a student learn something and then transfer that knowledge or set of skills to the appropriate context? In common sense terms, how does book learning become a real world skill? I’m still waiting for algebra transfer to happen. My 9^th grade algebra teacher, Mr Eastman, really knew his algebra, but didn’t know much about transfer. I learned enough algebra to pass his Friday quizzes, but I still don’t have the foggiest idea what algebra is or the real life problems it’s meant to solve.

There’s also something called negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when previous knowledge is incorrectly applied to new areas. In language, when one’s mother tongue interferes with the speaking of a second language, that’s a case of negative transfer. (more…)