“…. cultural leadership is distinct from political and administrative leadership. While political leaders primarily make rules and administrative leaders primarily enforce rules, cultural leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa find principled and imaginative ways to transgress those rules that inhibit the emergence of cultural sovereignty and creativity.
Leadership
Back end or Heart of House?
Writer William Gibson once famously said that the ‘The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.’ I worry more that the past is here—it’s just so evenly distributed that we can’t get to the future.
— Paul Kedrosky
A few years ago, we facilitated an event with a group of luxury car dealers in a Four Seasons hotel. They were all the owners or General Managers of the dealerships: wealthy, shrewd businesspeople with a track record of success going back a decade or more. They had come to the event to learn from other luxury and service businesses. They were exposed to world-class stimuli over the two days: leading-edge technology retailing, high-end customer service, the latest and greatest in travel and hospitality. And yet one of the most illuminating conversations came after a visit to the laundry.
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Changing the nature of conversation : “ We can if ” rather than “ We can’t because ”
Kelly couldn’t change the nature of the organization, but he could change the nature of the conversation, particularly the beginning of each sentence in the problem- solving process. He didn’t let people start with “We can’t because.” He forced them to start with “We can if.” So, for example, instead of saying “We can’t use that type of new packaging because it will slow the line down,” the person would be forced to say “We can use that kind of new packaging if we run it on someone else’s line.” The flow is maintained, and the group moves on to the next question in the chain (in this case, how to find the right line).
As Kelly notes, “can’t because” is an understandable reaction to a difficult challenge. People are used to putting up their hands to solve a problem they know how to solve; what is much harder, and more unusual, is putting up their hands to solve a problem they don’t know how to solve. And yet that is precisely what is required in constraint-driven problem solving. Without a positive construct to guide the team, the inability to have a ready answer to a difficult question kills the momentum and the flow of exploration. Continue reading
Book Recommendation – The Quarter-Life Breakthrough
The book made me feel that there’s hope in finding meaningful work even if you feel stuck knowing you need to make a change in your life but you are too afraid to take the leap and that it is possible to spend your days doing something that not only inspires you but also makes an impact in the lives of others.
When I read Adam’s book , I learned that:
Intentional Experimentation is not a waste of time when it’s done with the purpose of getting closer to your true self.
We grow by the questions we ask ourselves like: What contributions do I want to make to the world?
There’s no more linear career path, only a breakthrough career mindset where you figure out your next steps as you go aligning your actions with your purpose and surrounding yourself with people holding you accountable to your goals.
No matter how bad things get, there are always people willing to help out if we have the courage to ask
Meaningful work it’s all about doing work that reflects your interests and allows you to share your gifts to help others living in alignment with your purpose surrounded by supportive communities.
Life is a never ending journey but the time for intentional learning, experimentation, and action is now.
If you feel stuck knowing you need to make a change but are afraid to take the leap, then you should read this book. It will give you the hope and much needed courage to start living your life through intentional experimentation.
Innovation is born from the interaction between constraint and vision
Constraints can actually speed development. For instance, we often can get a sense of just how good a new concept is if we only prototype for a single day or week. Or we’ll keep team size to three people or fewer. By limiting how long we work on something or how many people work on it, we limit our investment. In the case of the Toolbar beta, several key features (custom buttons, shared bookmarks) were tried out in under a week. In fact, during the brainstorming phase, we came up with about five times as many “key features.” Most were discarded after a week of prototyping. Since only 1 in every 5 to 10 ideas works out, the strategy of limiting the time we have to prove that an idea works allows us to try out more ideas, increasing our odds of success. Continue reading
What Constitutes Success
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; Continue reading
my idea of nationalism….
We want freedom for our country but not at the expense or exploitation of others, not so as to degrade other countries. I do not want the freedom of India if it means the extinction of England or the disappearance of Englishmen. I want the freedom of my country so other countries may learn something from my free country, so the resources of my country might be utilized for the benefit of mankind.
Just as the cult of patriotism teaches us today that the individual has to die for the family, the family has to die for the village, the village for the district, the district for the province and the province for the country, even so a country has to be free in order that it may die if necessary for the benefit of the world. My love, therefore, of nationalism or my idea of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be the whole country may die so the human race may live. There is no room for race-hatred there. Let that be our nationalism.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Thought for The Week – 26th January 2015
Not to tolerate the intolerant……
“The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Continue reading
Lets Curate….
You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room.
That’s a warehouse. Continue reading
ONE TUSK 