Category: General Learning

I’ve been reading a bit lately from this book, Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within. I met Lois Kelly, one of the authors, at ALIA last year in Tacoma, Washington. My partner Teresa and I were offering a workshop on Strategic Mischief-Making.

Lois asked to interview me later this summer. She is researching how to lead change through hosting conversations around important questions. I don’t know if will stick, but I love her working title, “Be a Badass, Good-Hearted Change Agent: Getting Real About Leading Change.”

I’m drawn to the notion of “rebel.” I think I’ve always been the kind of human that believes there is another way. Always. There is always choice. I can’t help but think that way. It’s frustratingly confining when I find myself in an environment that has lost sight of this. Thus, some of the value I add is awareness and practices to restore choice. I recognize that I’m part rebel, good. I recognize, also, that my inner rebel is fiercely committed to evolution of choice.

Lois and her co-auther Carmen Medina offer a chart of distinctions between “good and bad rebels.” I know it isn’t that simple. I never feel that it is. I don’t think they do either. But the chart is invitation to some very good and important conversations about some qualities that are pretty bad-assed good, no?

Thanks Lois and Carmen for your work.

 

 

One of my favorite books to read with my kids when they were younger is called Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. Written in the 1980s, it’s one of those books that isn’t just for kids.

What I remember from the basic story line is that Alice, a young girl who would become Miss Rumphius, tells her grandfather that she wants to be like him when she grows up. She wants to do two things. Travel to places far away. And return to live by the sea. Her grandfather acknowledges her with a good grandfatherly smile, and then challenges her to do one more thing. Make the world more beautiful.

The story tells of Alice’s adventures around the world, and then coming to return to live by the sea. Now, grown, and aging herself, Miss Rumphius puzzles over how to make the world more beautiful. She sees wild lupines, loves them, and decides to order enough seeds to scatter to all places in and around her village. Some people thought she was crazy, walking with her hands in pockets, scattering seeds. Yet, a year later the seeds hand grown to plant and flower. Lupines everywhere! Pinks, purples, blues, whites. She became known in the story as The Lupine Lady. Miss Rumphius had made the world more beautiful.

The part that I love to tell my kids is that they too can make the world more beautiful. Lupines are just a way in, just an example that they can connect with in the story. I tell them they have many options and choices that they don’t have to know now. Through their work, their hobbies. Through the things that they like to do. Through being with friends. The specifics matter less. The energy of beauty and and doing beautifully matters much.

I’ve used the story often, when departing for my work that involves travel. In the heart tugs that I have known of going away from my kids, I tell them, honestly, that I feel I’m trying to make the world more beautiful. I’d like to think they have come to know more about that over the years. A bit here and there about how I work as a facilitator to design and lead meetings so that people can be in meaningful conversations about the things that matter most to them. Be smart together. Be heart-filled together.

I smiled yesterday as my youngest child and I walked past one of our garden patches. Amidst the bloomed California Poppies, the Columbine, the greenery of what will become thick Daisies and Brown-Eyed Susans, the small green onion patch going to seed, and an Iris ready to bloom this week, a Lupine had showed itself in bloom. Three stems. I have been trying to grow these for a few years without much luck.

It gave me a moment to stop with Elijah and ask if he remembered the story of Miss Rumphius, The Lupine Lady (he’s more interested in Mindcraft, Sims, and other online environments these days). He did. He told me a pretty good version of it. And off we went, laughing together.

In the last few months I’ve been able to do some work with friends at the local Impact Hub in Salt Lake City. They are good people, who I really enjoy, including Dustin Haggett, Soren Simonsen, Ane Axford, and Ryan Chatterton.

One of the things I love about these people is their commitment to an “impact ecology.” Bringing good ideas to life and scale. Good ideas that make sense now. Green Bike was the one that caught more of my attention yesterday. It is a bike share system in the core of SLC that helps people get around, reduces carbon footprint, builds community consciousness, and I would say influences city planning.

People at the Hub SLC, now numbering 200, are generally people that:

• get it that being together is different and more than being alone.
• have a natural spirit of entrepreneurship, co-working, and collaboration.
• are committed to social good and an impact ecosystem.

This means that people in the Hub are there, not only for the co-working space, but for the “idea” that is the Hub. For the idea and dream of culture making in Salt Lake City — creative, smart, adaptive, doers.

This was evident last night in the “members dialogue” that I hosted for them. Twenty-five people joined to explore questions about what they value most significantly at this hub, and what they need to make their big dreams happen.

Our format was simple:

• 30 minutes mingle, munch, wine, cheese
• 10 minutes introduction and context setting
• 5 minutes partner conversation — Why did you choose to come to this dialogue tonight?
• 30 minutes Round 1 World Cafe conversation table and mapped group harvest — What do you value most about this Impact Hub?
• 60 minutes Rounds 2 and 3 World Cafe and harvest with sticky notes — What do you need to make big dreams happen here?

“Less lonely lone rangers” was one of my favorite comments from the question on values. And plenty more that you can see on the harvest paper.

It’s impressive. A group that has a strong but informal commitment with one another to be curious, offer ideas, ask for help, connect with other smart people, often under the same roof that is the buzz of this Impact Hub.

 

What to do when things are simple is one thing. It’s usually clear. Not something to wrestle with. Might be a to-do. Might be a to-be.

What to do when things are complicated or complex can be a bit more muddy and challenging. More grey areas. More uncertainty. More unknowing. More unpredictability. Sometimes fear. Sometimes insecurity. Sometimes vulnerability. Sometimes stuck.

It was in recent conversation with my friend Charles LaFond that I picked up some sound advice for those complicated and complex times. His voice was clear, rolling off the tongue.

• Be as good of a person as I can be.
• Be as kind of a person as I can be.
• Make good choices for the next 15 minutes.

Be good and kind. I can relate to that. I can remember the parts of me that are good and kind, or that other people see in me as good and kind. Ahh, that’s clear. That’s a good starting point.

Make good choices for the next 15 minutes. It’s nice to feel that all of the future is NOT riding on my shoulders. All time. All people. I know it sounds enormously exaggerated, but it feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it. The mind does that. Fifteen minutes I can handle. It’s relieving and freeing.

I like the feeling of temporary, yet essential reset in Charles’ words. “What to do?” is often the question running in the background for many of us. There are times when that question is noisy beyond comprehension. Even debilitating.

I’m grateful for people like Charles who remind me that I have a possible reset, right in front of me.